Remember when pollsters found Boris Johnson had better ratings in Scotland than Alex Salmond?
Half of people questioned by pollsters believe that Humza Yousaf has done a bad job in his first 100 days as first minister.
Fewer than a quarter of voters (23 per cent) endorsed his tenure, which has been fraught with internal party issues and U-turns on the deposit return scheme and highly protected marine areas.
A poll in April had suggested that 19 per cent of people thought Yousaf was doing well, and 44 per cent believed the opposite, although his administration was just weeks old when it was conducted.
He [Yousaf] had a slightly better rating than Rishi Sunak, with 22 per cent of Scots saying he was doing a good job leading the UK government, compared to 59 per cent who said he was doing a bad job.
On favourability, 28 per cent had a favourable view of Yousaf, and 51 per cent had an unfavourable view.
I don't see why we need a BBC at all. There's nothing it provides that the private sector doesn't, usually rather better. If the BBC didn't exist, there's no way we'd invent it in its current form, like the NHS or the planning system. Like them, it is a relic of a much more statist, homogenous era. Unlike them, it doesn't provide services that otherwise might not be.
Sorry, no. I've lived in both Australia and the US for many years and the private sector produces absolute crap for news. My son (17) who has never lived in the UK joined me watching the BBC 6 o clock news the other day and couldn't believe how interesting, unsensational and non-parochial it was, especially compared to "ABC World News Tonight" that is rarely about the world or news at all.
Australia is little better. The ABC there survives very much on buying scraps from the BBC.
People all over the world access the BBC via VPNs. Almost no one does that for American broadcast news or Australian TV.
So again,, no. Show me a private sector doing it better and I'll listen.
The BBC suffers from having to do everything for everyone, hence has lots that doesn't appeal to everyone.
My boys did appreciate CBBC when young, and nice to have advertising free content for them. I haven't watched it since, but glad it still exists.
I think the problem is more one of "the talent" being indulged to think that the rules do not apply to them. It is a problem in TV, other media, social media influencers, politics, business, pretty much anywhere there is a household name.
I don't know who this person is, but it isn't the BBC that is sick, but rather our whole celebrity obsessed culture.
My oldest two girls (born 2010 and 2011) watched CBeebies - though Milkshake on Channel 5 and various freeview channels appeared to be providing an equally attractive offer. But its main benefit was that it was always there. By the time my youngest was born in 2014, on-demand viewing of various sorts trumped anything the BBC had to offer. None of them ever really got into CBBC, for the same reason: on-demand viewing took away the one competitive advantage of a dedicated children's channel.
The problem of "on demand viewing" is the algorithms that drive engagement, and take us all into the darkest corners of the internet very quickly.
Netflix maybe slightly better than YouTube, Facebook or TikTok, but only marginally. It soon starts feeding the cultural hegemony of (American) consumer capitalism and celebrity. The BBC often fails (who doesn't?) but at least it tries to educate more broadly.
Netflix is starting to struggle, I think. Fewer of the landmark productions and a lot of pretty meh churn programming (and a very haphazard film offering), which is chipping away at its original premium brand image. I'm not alone, I'm sure, in binning it off at £14 a month now. I might re-subscribe the next time we do a Ghibli marathon.
I had also cancelled Disney+ but turns out we missed some of the stuff on there, so it's back on the menu (boys).
I don't really like the subscription model. I can't help feeling I'm paying for a vast amount of stuff I'm never going to want. Same is true of sports. I'd pay to watch cricket and rugby on telly. But you can only buy whole packages, 90% of the cost of which is football. And I don't dislike football, but I don't like it enough to pay for it.
On the BBC; I read yesterday on the red button (which I do use usually once or twice a week) that Sharp reckons the BBC should in future be funded by a tax/fee on broadband.
I think they can sod off if that's their approach. I work online. I need an internet connection. I don't need the BBC. It's crackers, and unacceptable.
The TV licence fee is a weird anachronism which exists because it was made way back when, and it doesn't really make sense now. Instituting a new system that's complete insane is not something people will, or should, accept.
I'm not sure many people really need a TV licence these days. Having to watch a TV program at a particular time has got to be rather a quaint concept.
You still need it to watch BBC programmes online, whatever the time. There is at least some degree of gatekeeping with registration etc.
For many years when a news event happened most organisations would send one reporter and one camera operator. Often these were shared across affiliates: Channel 4 and Sky News for instance.
Not so the BBC. They would have multiple reporters and crew representing branches: so for example, BBC One News, Six O' Clock, Ten O'Clock, Five Live, Radio One, BBC News, Website etc all with their 'own' reporting crew. It wasn't uncommon to see Radio Five and BBC One with separate vans parked outside the same courtroom.
They had ample opportunity to go private funded, for example if they had made iPlayer a globally-accessible subscription service which would have rivalled anything from Netflix or Sky.
This is what happens when you have a compulsory tax-funded unaccountable organisation.
You don’t know what you’re talking about. The BBC could never have taken iPlayer global, because they do not own the rights.
To the content of all of their programmes? That's what negotiations are about. You build that in every time you commission a collaborative programme. It's what the private sector does day in, day out, all over the globe.
The BBC is farcically bloated and lacking in financial nous, partly of course because its hands are tied by an anachronistic pernicious form of state funding. They scare Grannies into propping them up with really vicious nasty court order letters which are literally in red.
I know. I have a large pile of them. Which I have ignored for years and always will.
You really don’t know what you are talking about. Yes, the BBC own very narrow rights to broadcast “their own” programmes in the UK for a limit period. I am it sure if it is the case today, but originally iPlayer used the same rules for catch up/ time shift TV. Saves a lot of money. Global rights are a negotiated separately with the production company.
I think you should probably cease throwing around that casual phrase 'you don't know what you are talking about', now with an additional 'really' added. It's fine to disagree with someone but not so fine if you try to claim some superior gnostic power when, for all you know, I may have worked for the BBC and / or on commissioning of television programmes ...
Should I leave it there? Or should I go on about how commissioning and rights work? Or should I simply suggest you pause for reflection?
Meanwhile, a true story.
I was walking along a corridor of the old television centre in 2005 when a well-known reporter turned to me and said, 'Do you know about Jimmy Savile?' He then proceeded to fill me in with lurid details which were being routinely discussed in the staff canteen.
So about six years before the story blew and at a time when the BBC still claims to have had no knowledge. People knew alright.
That's not a reason in my book to condemn the BBC, although it would be sufficient ammunition for some angry people on internet platforms. But I think it's indicative of what happens to an organisation that is bloated and state funded (the two always go together).
The BBC puts out some great stuff. No doubt. But as an organisation it is often ludicrous.
p.s. And of course iPlayer could have secured global rights.
If so then it sounds to me that the Russians do not expect to hold it for long.
I have utter contempt for anyone who shows sympathy with the Russian regime over this misadventure.
The Ukrainians are innocents in this; evil has been delivered upon them. People who try to blame the Ukrainians for this, or the west/EU/Nato, are not only excusing evil; they are actively calling for more evil to occur in the future.
What in the previous post prompted that? It hardly shows sympathy for the Russians.
p.s. the real reason iPlayer is limited to UK only has NOWT to do with their rights, most of which they share globally. It's because their hands are tied by the Government's funding model.
For many years when a news event happened most organisations would send one reporter and one camera operator. Often these were shared across affiliates: Channel 4 and Sky News for instance.
Not so the BBC. They would have multiple reporters and crew representing branches: so for example, BBC One News, Six O' Clock, Ten O'Clock, Five Live, Radio One, BBC News, Website etc all with their 'own' reporting crew. It wasn't uncommon to see Radio Five and BBC One with separate vans parked outside the same courtroom.
They had ample opportunity to go private funded, for example if they had made iPlayer a globally-accessible subscription service which would have rivalled anything from Netflix or Sky.
This is what happens when you have a compulsory tax-funded unaccountable organisation.
You don’t know what you’re talking about. The BBC could never have taken iPlayer global, because they do not own the rights.
To the content of all of their programmes? That's what negotiations are about. You build that in every time you commission a collaborative programme. It's what the private sector does day in, day out, all over the globe.
The BBC is farcically bloated and lacking in financial nous, partly of course because its hands are tied by an anachronistic pernicious form of state funding. They scare Grannies into propping them up with really vicious nasty court order letters which are literally in red.
I know. I have a large pile of them. Which I have ignored for years and always will.
You really don’t know what you are talking about. Yes, the BBC own very narrow rights to broadcast “their own” programmes in the UK for a limit period. I am it sure if it is the case today, but originally iPlayer used the same rules for catch up/ time shift TV. Saves a lot of money. Global rights are a negotiated separately with the production company.
I think you should probably cease throwing around that casual phrase 'you don't know what you are talking about', now with an additional 'really' added. It's fine to disagree with someone but not so fine if you try to claim some superior gnostic power when, for all you know, I may have worked for the BBC and / or on commissioning of television programmes ...
Should I leave it there? Or should I go on about how commissioning and rights work? Or should I simply suggest you pause for reflection?
Meanwhile, a true story.
I was walking along a corridor of the old television centre in 2005 when a well-known reporter turned to me and said, 'Do you know about Jimmy Savile?' He then proceeded to fill me in with lurid details which were being routinely discussed in the staff canteen.
So about six years before the story blew and at a time when the BBC still claims to have had no knowledge. People knew alright.
That's not a reason in my book to condemn the BBC, although it would be sufficient ammunition for some angry people on internet platforms. But I think it's indicative of what happens to an organisation that is bloated and state funded (the two always go together).
The BBC puts out some great stuff. No doubt. But as an organisation it is often ludicrous.
p.s. And of course iPlayer could have secured global rights.
BBC news content has gone from world beating to the absurd. In a desperate attempt to demonstrate non-partisanship it will determine economic balance by pitching Patrick Minford against any one of a thousand economists who hold the alternative view, it will explain the background to a story in the most patronising child focused way, and the icing on the cake, substituting Johnson's 2019 Cenotaph cock-up with footage from 2016.
The BBC has become irrelevant. Sell it to GBNews for a pound and be done with it.
The press love anything that sells papers in the silly season, they love sex scandals at any time, they love moralising about sex scandals and they love talking about themselves.
Of course they would find this one irresistible.
Also the media love talking about the media....
And media groups with rival broadcasting arms love bashing the BBC.
Well it goes both ways.
After thinking about it for 30 seconds, I'm not sure it does go both ways. Does the BBC habitually attack Fleet Street or other media groups?
ETA a quick glance at the Telegraph and Times home pages finds two other anti-BBC stories, unrelated to this one. Where is the BBC's equivalent?
None of the BBC's rivals are extracting money with menaces from the BBC's customers. You might not agree with the editorial position of, say, The Telegraph or The Guardian, but you are freenit to consume them in a way you are not with the BBC. Not surprising if anti-beebery is only one way. That said, the Beeb was right on board when Hugh Grant was trying to limit the power of the press. The BBC are keen to hit back when they can. The Beeb are very much of the view that life would be better if they were the only arbiter of the news agenda.
True and they even have their own fact check service set up with BBC Verify.
It’s time we found an alternative way to fund the BBC removing the license fee and funding the means of transmission via taxation.
Richard Sharp, yesterday, was saying the ‘well off’ should pay more for the BBC than poorer households. No. The BBC is losing listeners and viewers. The license fee in its current form is untenable. You cannot demand people pay more for a service they use less and less.
I've been saying this for years, and the reaction from many was "You just hate the BBC!"
Which is rubbish. I love the BBC. I personally have zero problem with paying the licence fee, and believe I get value for it from BBC 4 alone.
But I'm not everyone, and the world has become a much more exciting place, media-wise. People can get their entertainment and news from so many more sources, and the licence fee increasingly looks like an anachronism of little relevance to large sectors of the population.
I don't know what the answer is, but people who proclaim to love the BBC should be asking whether insisting on keeping the licence fee is actually going to kill the thing they love.
We used to pay for Sky but we found that the only channels we watched live were BBC/Sky News channels and music channels on in the background. Everything else we watched on catch up. We gradually realised how much money we were wasting by not watching broadcast TV so cancelled our subscription and decided to do without broadcast telly completely, cancelling the TV licence as well. We now watch far less TV, only watching YouTube/Netflix/Prime and that tends to be only for an hour or two in the evening. I didn't cancel the TV licence because I hate the BBC, but because we don't watch 99% of their output, same as Sky. The majority of sports are all pay per view anyway, but we're not allowed to pay for it and watch it live by a recognised broadcaster as we don't have a TV licence, so that means I can't pay 6 quid for Discovery Plus to watch the Mountain Biking Downhill World Cup because I don't pay the BBC 160 quid! Last year, when RedBull had the rights, they broadcast it live free, so we could watch it because they're not a recognised broadcaster (although that's quite a grey area). The internet does mean you can always find a stream to watch somewhere, but that's piracy and a very bad thing. My 3 boys never, ever watch broadcast TV, but know all about current programmes and "stars" because of the internet. They'll never pay the TC licence and I suspect it's the same for most of they're friends. The BBC need to find an alternative.
I am not in favour of selling off the BBC, or Channel 4. I would prefer for the licence fee to be more of a shareholding, with dividends as well as fees. The BBC and Channel 4 should be making money for the nation.
I don't see why we need a BBC at all. There's nothing it provides that the private sector doesn't, usually rather better. If the BBC didn't exist, there's no way we'd invent it in its current form, like the NHS or the planning system. Like them, it is a relic of a much more statist, homogenous era. Unlike them, it doesn't provide services that otherwise might not be.
Sorry, no. I've lived in both Australia and the US for many years and the private sector produces absolute crap for news. My son (17) who has never lived in the UK joined me watching the BBC 6 o clock news the other day and couldn't believe how interesting, unsensational and non-parochial it was, especially compared to "ABC World News Tonight" that is rarely about the world or news at all.
Australia is little better. The ABC there survives very much on buying scraps from the BBC.
People all over the world access the BBC via VPNs. Almost no one does that for American broadcast news or Australian TV.
So again,, no. Show me a private sector doing it better and I'll listen.
The BBC suffers from having to do everything for everyone, hence has lots that doesn't appeal to everyone.
My boys did appreciate CBBC when young, and nice to have advertising free content for them. I haven't watched it since, but glad it still exists.
I think the problem is more one of "the talent" being indulged to think that the rules do not apply to them. It is a problem in TV, other media, social media influencers, politics, business, pretty much anywhere there is a household name.
I don't know who this person is, but it isn't the BBC that is sick, but rather our whole celebrity obsessed culture.
My oldest two girls (born 2010 and 2011) watched CBeebies - though Milkshake on Channel 5 and various freeview channels appeared to be providing an equally attractive offer. But its main benefit was that it was always there. By the time my youngest was born in 2014, on-demand viewing of various sorts trumped anything the BBC had to offer. None of them ever really got into CBBC, for the same reason: on-demand viewing took away the one competitive advantage of a dedicated children's channel.
The problem of "on demand viewing" is the algorithms that drive engagement, and take us all into the darkest corners of the internet very quickly.
Netflix maybe slightly better than YouTube, Facebook or TikTok, but only marginally. It soon starts feeding the cultural hegemony of (American) consumer capitalism and celebrity. The BBC often fails (who doesn't?) but at least it tries to educate more broadly.
Netflix is starting to struggle, I think. Fewer of the landmark productions and a lot of pretty meh churn programming (and a very haphazard film offering), which is chipping away at its original premium brand image. I'm not alone, I'm sure, in binning it off at £14 a month now. I might re-subscribe the next time we do a Ghibli marathon.
I had also cancelled Disney+ but turns out we missed some of the stuff on there, so it's back on the menu (boys).
I think subscription works when it's comprehensive. BBC licence when it gave you access to all of TV; Netflix when it gave access to as many films as you were likely to watch. Segmentation kills the subscription model that in general is in the consumer's interest.
However much I loathe the BBC on the way its managed and the way that it now broadcasts. I want access to its library of brilliant stuff it has broadcast in the past.... especially its dramas. Today's offerings on BBC are not worth to me 14 quid a year never mind 14 quid a month....
Try britbox, I think most archived stuff is there. I subscribe for my father and he is currently rewatching all the series of dads army from the black and white era on
Why is the unidentified BBC presenter sexual predator story getting so much more coverage than the one about the unidentified MP accused of rape being allowed to stand as a candidate for the Tories at the next general election? I genuinely don’t get it. Both seem equally bad and to be of equal public interest.
BBC, echoes of Jimmy Savile, the "child" angle, and the star's anonymity and presumed fame which combine to encourage speculation.
Also: not-a-Tory-MP. Presenters usually don't have the BBC by the institutional short and curlies: Tory MPs, on the other hand ...
And bog standard BBC-the-media-competitor-bashing.
For many years when a news event happened most organisations would send one reporter and one camera operator. Often these were shared across affiliates: Channel 4 and Sky News for instance.
Not so the BBC. They would have multiple reporters and crew representing branches: so for example, BBC One News, Six O' Clock, Ten O'Clock, Five Live, Radio One, BBC News, Website etc all with their 'own' reporting crew. It wasn't uncommon to see Radio Five and BBC One with separate vans parked outside the same courtroom.
They had ample opportunity to go private funded, for example if they had made iPlayer a globally-accessible subscription service which would have rivalled anything from Netflix or Sky.
This is what happens when you have a compulsory tax-funded unaccountable organisation.
You don’t know what you’re talking about. The BBC could never have taken iPlayer global, because they do not own the rights.
To the content of all of their programmes? That's what negotiations are about. You build that in every time you commission a collaborative programme. It's what the private sector does day in, day out, all over the globe.
The BBC is farcically bloated and lacking in financial nous, partly of course because its hands are tied by an anachronistic pernicious form of state funding. They scare Grannies into propping them up with really vicious nasty court order letters which are literally in red.
I know. I have a large pile of them. Which I have ignored for years and always will.
You really don’t know what you are talking about. Yes, the BBC own very narrow rights to broadcast “their own” programmes in the UK for a limit period. I am it sure if it is the case today, but originally iPlayer used the same rules for catch up/ time shift TV. Saves a lot of money. Global rights are a negotiated separately with the production company.
I think you should probably cease throwing around that casual phrase 'you don't know what you are talking about', now with an additional 'really' added. It's fine to disagree with someone but not so fine if you try to claim some superior gnostic power when, for all you know, I may have worked for the BBC and / or on commissioning of television programmes ...
Should I leave it there? Or should I go on about how commissioning and rights work? Or should I simply suggest you pause for reflection?
Meanwhile, a true story.
I was walking along a corridor of the old television centre in 2005 when a well-known reporter turned to me and said, 'Do you know about Jimmy Savile?' He then proceeded to fill me in with lurid details which were being routinely discussed in the staff canteen.
So about six years before the story blew and at a time when the BBC still claims to have had no knowledge. People knew alright.
That's not a reason in my book to condemn the BBC, although it would be sufficient ammunition for some angry people on internet platforms. But I think it's indicative of what happens to an organisation that is bloated and state funded (the two always go together).
The BBC puts out some great stuff. No doubt. But as an organisation it is often ludicrous.
p.s. And of course iPlayer could have secured global rights.
If you knew what you were talking about you would say different things.
Have we noted that the new Thames Water wallah lady (Ross? Ex Ofwat) was on Today R4 this morning and: answered questions with apparent precision; sounded competent; had a story in which all is fine and there is nothing to see here.
I wondered if this is because she is competent and all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds and so on or otherwise.
If it was otherwise she certainly mined her exits quite well.
I don't think she was asked why her predecessor (who had sounded much the same once) had left with such speed.
The press love anything that sells papers in the silly season, they love sex scandals at any time, they love moralising about sex scandals and they love talking about themselves.
Of course they would find this one irresistible.
Also the media love talking about the media....
And media groups with rival broadcasting arms love bashing the BBC.
Well it goes both ways.
After thinking about it for 30 seconds, I'm not sure it does go both ways. Does the BBC habitually attack Fleet Street or other media groups?
ETA a quick glance at the Telegraph and Times home pages finds two other anti-BBC stories, unrelated to this one. Where is the BBC's equivalent?
None of the BBC's rivals are extracting money with menaces from the BBC's customers. You might not agree with the editorial position of, say, The Telegraph or The Guardian, but you are freenit to consume them in a way you are not with the BBC. Not surprising if anti-beebery is only one way. That said, the Beeb was right on board when Hugh Grant was trying to limit the power of the press. The BBC are keen to hit back when they can. The Beeb are very much of the view that life would be better if they were the only arbiter of the news agenda.
True and they even have their own fact check service set up with BBC Verify.
It’s time we found an alternative way to fund the BBC removing the license fee and funding the means of transmission via taxation.
Richard Sharp, yesterday, was saying the ‘well off’ should pay more for the BBC than poorer households. No. The BBC is losing listeners and viewers. The license fee in its current form is untenable. You cannot demand people pay more for a service they use less and less.
I've been saying this for years, and the reaction from many was "You just hate the BBC!"
Which is rubbish. I love the BBC. I personally have zero problem with paying the licence fee, and believe I get value for it from BBC 4 alone.
But I'm not everyone, and the world has become a much more exciting place, media-wise. People can get their entertainment and news from so many more sources, and the licence fee increasingly looks like an anachronism of little relevance to large sectors of the population.
I don't know what the answer is, but people who proclaim to love the BBC should be asking whether insisting on keeping the licence fee is actually going to kill the thing they love.
We used to pay for Sky but we found that the only channels we watched live were BBC/Sky News channels and music channels on in the background. Everything else we watched on catch up. We gradually realised how much money we were wasting by not watching broadcast TV so cancelled our subscription and decided to do without broadcast telly completely, cancelling the TV licence as well. We now watch far less TV, only watching YouTube/Netflix/Prime and that tends to be only for an hour or two in the evening. I didn't cancel the TV licence because I hate the BBC, but because we don't watch 99% of their output, same as Sky. The majority of sports are all pay per view anyway, but we're not allowed to pay for it and watch it live by a recognised broadcaster as we don't have a TV licence, so that means I can't pay 6 quid for Discovery Plus to watch the Mountain Biking Downhill World Cup because I don't pay the BBC 160 quid! Last year, when RedBull had the rights, they broadcast it live free, so we could watch it because they're not a recognised broadcaster (although that's quite a grey area). The internet does mean you can always find a stream to watch somewhere, but that's piracy and a very bad thing. My 3 boys never, ever watch broadcast TV, but know all about current programmes and "stars" because of the internet. They'll never pay the TC licence and I suspect it's the same for most of they're friends. The BBC need to find an alternative.
Many moons ago, a colleague of mine got married. He had been living with his fiancé for years, and just before they tied the knot, they decided to rationalise their affairs; get wills done etc.
He had taken out a sky subscription a decade previously, on a basic sports package. But over the years, as special offers on events had occurred, he had taken out more and more subs - to the extent it was costing a fortune each month. Since they were both well-paid engineers he had not really noticed the outgoings.
So he tried to think back to what they had watched over the previous few months, realised it was next to nothing, and cancelled the lot. The thinking being that he could always get a new subscription if he wanted.
I fear it is very easy for these things to get out of hand.
The less obvious, but more important story on the front pages today.
Another important story. It looks like the Greek coastguard was trying to tow the trawler holding refugees out to sea and effectively sank the ship with the loss of 500 lives
"Duguid was first elected to the Banff and Buchan seat in 2017. He is also the vice-chair of the British offshore oil and gas industry all-party parliamentary group, supported by OEUK."
I'm also unconvinced [edit] more gemerally, and not speaking here with reference to Mr Duguid whose transfer seemingly happened before he became a MP, that blind trusts or share transfers to family members (eg one Labour family firm co-owner to his children, IIRC) do much good.
So @Dixiedean stated that (paraphrasing so I hope I have this right) to appreciate the issue for a certain group you had to be a member of that certain group (not all groups, just that particular example). You disagreed and used an analogy to demonstrate that wasn’t true. It was an excellent analogy in that in the case you gave (a completely different group) it clearly wasn’t true which was the point you wanted to make.
Analogies are very useful. They can often bring sudden clarity to an issue and can often provide easy routes to solving difficult problems (not quite the same, but the issue of 3 different sized circles with tangents on each pair of circles all interesting in a straight line is hard to prove, but easy if you change it to 3 balls and intersecting planes).
The problem with analogies is it can appear you have one when you haven’t.
Whether you agree with @Dixiedean or not, and I am sure he was generalizing anyway, but it is not true that your analogy proves him wrong as each case depends on the context (the group involved). You have picked one example that is at one extreme. His was different.
You simply picked a case that was obviously true. There are plenty of examples where what you deduce is not obviously true.
Eg. I think it is reasonable to assume that as someone who doesn’t speak Chinese I have little understanding of Chinese grammar. For me that is certainly a fact and I assume true for others. So it is true that those best able to comment are generally Chinese speakers. As a left hander I am aware that most right handers are not aware of some of the niche issues eg playing cards. Left handers are clearly more qualified to comment. You picked an example that you don’t have to be a Jew to appreciate the holocaust was wrong (paraphrasing) is true but was both tasteless and invalid compared to @dixiedean’s point.
I don’t want to harp on about other issues but you brought these up again (not me). You have called me a liar directly yesterday and implied I lied a few weeks ago by posting laughter when I apologised that I had to leave temporarily to deal with the clearance of my deceased father’s house. Yesterday you accused me of being operatic in my reaction to your post about the death of my father. Really you think I overreacted and you haven’t gone beyond the pale by posting laughter? I mean really you do think that is ok? Didn't even attempt an apology.
I just want to formally distance myself from this conversation. I only jumped in to make a point about the pervasiveness of analogy in human cognition, and much of the above is aimed at Miklosvar alone, not me. I certainly wasn't posting anything about Jews and the holocaust nor laughing at kjh's situation. kjh, I know you are already aware that what I'm saying here is the case, but just in case anybody else reads your post and thinks it's directed at me, I want them to know that it's not.
If so then it sounds to me that the Russians do not expect to hold it for long.
I have utter contempt for anyone who shows sympathy with the Russian regime over this misadventure.
The Ukrainians are innocents in this; evil has been delivered upon them. People who try to blame the Ukrainians for this, or the west/EU/Nato, are not only excusing evil; they are actively calling for more evil to occur in the future.
What in the previous post prompted that? It hardly shows sympathy for the Russians.
Not in the least.
It was prompted by the idea that the kindly Russians, forced ([poked') into this war by the iniquities of Ukrainian Nazism, the ghost of Bandera, NATO's eastwards expansion and the EU's mere existence, might be mining Ukrainian land and destroying Ukraine's infrastructure not because they care for Ukraine or Ukrainians, but because they and their supporters, excusers and appeasers are shits.
"The executive board at the Irish broadcaster RTÉ is being stood down as part of changes announced by its new director general. ... RTÉ has been under pressure after undisclosed payments made to its top presenter were discovered last month."
The press love anything that sells papers in the silly season, they love sex scandals at any time, they love moralising about sex scandals and they love talking about themselves.
Of course they would find this one irresistible.
Also the media love talking about the media....
And media groups with rival broadcasting arms love bashing the BBC.
Well it goes both ways.
After thinking about it for 30 seconds, I'm not sure it does go both ways. Does the BBC habitually attack Fleet Street or other media groups?
ETA a quick glance at the Telegraph and Times home pages finds two other anti-BBC stories, unrelated to this one. Where is the BBC's equivalent?
None of the BBC's rivals are extracting money with menaces from the BBC's customers. You might not agree with the editorial position of, say, The Telegraph or The Guardian, but you are freenit to consume them in a way you are not with the BBC. Not surprising if anti-beebery is only one way. That said, the Beeb was right on board when Hugh Grant was trying to limit the power of the press. The BBC are keen to hit back when they can. The Beeb are very much of the view that life would be better if they were the only arbiter of the news agenda.
True and they even have their own fact check service set up with BBC Verify.
It’s time we found an alternative way to fund the BBC removing the license fee and funding the means of transmission via taxation.
Richard Sharp, yesterday, was saying the ‘well off’ should pay more for the BBC than poorer households. No. The BBC is losing listeners and viewers. The license fee in its current form is untenable. You cannot demand people pay more for a service they use less and less.
I've been saying this for years, and the reaction from many was "You just hate the BBC!"
Which is rubbish. I love the BBC. I personally have zero problem with paying the licence fee, and believe I get value for it from BBC 4 alone.
But I'm not everyone, and the world has become a much more exciting place, media-wise. People can get their entertainment and news from so many more sources, and the licence fee increasingly looks like an anachronism of little relevance to large sectors of the population.
I don't know what the answer is, but people who proclaim to love the BBC should be asking whether insisting on keeping the licence fee is actually going to kill the thing they love.
We used to pay for Sky but we found that the only channels we watched live were BBC/Sky News channels and music channels on in the background. Everything else we watched on catch up. We gradually realised how much money we were wasting by not watching broadcast TV so cancelled our subscription and decided to do without broadcast telly completely, cancelling the TV licence as well. We now watch far less TV, only watching YouTube/Netflix/Prime and that tends to be only for an hour or two in the evening. I didn't cancel the TV licence because I hate the BBC, but because we don't watch 99% of their output, same as Sky. The majority of sports are all pay per view anyway, but we're not allowed to pay for it and watch it live by a recognised broadcaster as we don't have a TV licence, so that means I can't pay 6 quid for Discovery Plus to watch the Mountain Biking Downhill World Cup because I don't pay the BBC 160 quid! Last year, when RedBull had the rights, they broadcast it live free, so we could watch it because they're not a recognised broadcaster (although that's quite a grey area). The internet does mean you can always find a stream to watch somewhere, but that's piracy and a very bad thing. My 3 boys never, ever watch broadcast TV, but know all about current programmes and "stars" because of the internet. They'll never pay the TC licence and I suspect it's the same for most of they're friends. The BBC need to find an alternative.
Many moons ago, a colleague of mine got married. He had been living with his fiancé for years, and just before they tied the knot, they decided to rationalise their affairs; get wills done etc.
He had taken out a sky subscription a decade previously, on a basic sports package. But over the years, as special offers on events had occurred, he had taken out more and more subs - to the extent it was costing a fortune each month. Since they were both well-paid engineers he had not really noticed the outgoings.
So he tried to think back to what they had watched over the previous few months, realised it was next to nothing, and cancelled the lot. The thinking being that he could always get a new subscription if he wanted.
I fear it is very easy for these things to get out of hand.
FWIW I hardly ever watch telly at all because there is too much of it and the quality is pretty dire compared with reading a book, or the radio. Or indeed watching a dormouse sleeping.
I use radio a lot. We have a TV licence - like most older people - partly because of Gardeners World and bits of other live broadcasting, and the times that BBC TV news service is just sort of essential.
Radio is free, but a mix of R4, R3, R5, TMS, and World Service is easily worth double the licence fee. I use LBC a bit but the intrusive advertising is just abysmal. So long live the BBC with all its faults.
Serious question: What do politics anoraks without a TV licence do at 10pm on General Election night?
So @Dixiedean stated that (paraphrasing so I hope I have this right) to appreciate the issue for a certain group you had to be a member of that certain group (not all groups, just that particular example). You disagreed and used an analogy to demonstrate that wasn’t true. It was an excellent analogy in that in the case you gave (a completely different group) it clearly wasn’t true which was the point you wanted to make.
Analogies are very useful. They can often bring sudden clarity to an issue and can often provide easy routes to solving difficult problems (not quite the same, but the issue of 3 different sized circles with tangents on each pair of circles all interesting in a straight line is hard to prove, but easy if you change it to 3 balls and intersecting planes).
The problem with analogies is it can appear you have one when you haven’t.
Whether you agree with @Dixiedean or not, and I am sure he was generalizing anyway, but it is not true that your analogy proves him wrong as each case depends on the context (the group involved). You have picked one example that is at one extreme. His was different.
You simply picked a case that was obviously true. There are plenty of examples where what you deduce is not obviously true.
Eg. I think it is reasonable to assume that as someone who doesn’t speak Chinese I have little understanding of Chinese grammar. For me that is certainly a fact and I assume true for others. So it is true that those best able to comment are generally Chinese speakers. As a left hander I am aware that most right handers are not aware of some of the niche issues eg playing cards. Left handers are clearly more qualified to comment. You picked an example that you don’t have to be a Jew to appreciate the holocaust was wrong (paraphrasing) is true but was both tasteless and invalid compared to @dixiedean’s point.
I don’t want to harp on about other issues but you brought these up again (not me). You have called me a liar directly yesterday and implied I lied a few weeks ago by posting laughter when I apologised that I had to leave temporarily to deal with the clearance of my deceased father’s house. Yesterday you accused me of being operatic in my reaction to your post about the death of my father. Really you think I overreacted and you haven’t gone beyond the pale by posting laughter? I mean really you do think that is ok? Didn't even attempt an apology.
I just want to formally distance myself from this conversation. I only jumped in to make a point about the pervasiveness of analogy in human cognition, and much of the above is aimed at Miklosvar alone, not me. I certainly wasn't posting anything about Jews and the holocaust nor laughing at kjh's situation. kjh, I know you are already aware that what I'm saying here is the case, but just in case anybody else reads your post and thinks it's directed at me, I want them to know that it's not.
So do I.
I think you (kjh) get way over invested in Internet disagreements. I am sorry if I have offended you and will take care in future not to interact with you.
This is deeply disturbing. An investigation has claimed that the ship sinking near Greece happened because the Greek coastguard was towing it towards Italy. Survivor accounts have been tampered with and mobile phones that supposedly had documentary evidence of the towing, confiscated.
The press love anything that sells papers in the silly season, they love sex scandals at any time, they love moralising about sex scandals and they love talking about themselves.
Of course they would find this one irresistible.
Also the media love talking about the media....
And media groups with rival broadcasting arms love bashing the BBC.
Well it goes both ways.
After thinking about it for 30 seconds, I'm not sure it does go both ways. Does the BBC habitually attack Fleet Street or other media groups?
ETA a quick glance at the Telegraph and Times home pages finds two other anti-BBC stories, unrelated to this one. Where is the BBC's equivalent?
None of the BBC's rivals are extracting money with menaces from the BBC's customers. You might not agree with the editorial position of, say, The Telegraph or The Guardian, but you are freenit to consume them in a way you are not with the BBC. Not surprising if anti-beebery is only one way. That said, the Beeb was right on board when Hugh Grant was trying to limit the power of the press. The BBC are keen to hit back when they can. The Beeb are very much of the view that life would be better if they were the only arbiter of the news agenda.
True and they even have their own fact check service set up with BBC Verify.
It’s time we found an alternative way to fund the BBC removing the license fee and funding the means of transmission via taxation.
Richard Sharp, yesterday, was saying the ‘well off’ should pay more for the BBC than poorer households. No. The BBC is losing listeners and viewers. The license fee in its current form is untenable. You cannot demand people pay more for a service they use less and less.
"You cannot demand people pay more for a service they use less and less"
Have we noted that the new Thames Water wallah lady (Ross? Ex Ofwat) was on Today R4 this morning and: answered questions with apparent precision; sounded competent; had a story in which all is fine and there is nothing to see here.
I wondered if this is because she is competent and all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds and so on or otherwise.
If it was otherwise she certainly mined her exits quite well.
I don't think she was asked why her predecessor (who had sounded much the same once) had left with such speed.
We have - hence my comment upthread.
Even if it were the case that the operational side of the business is being run well (debatable), the unmentioned elephant is the existence of £14bn or so in debt, some of it rather expensive, a lot of which was run up to pay dividends to overseas investors. There's no good reason at all why the company should be allowed to raise prices just to pay for that debt. But it sounds as though the regulator (whose executives seem to move in to jobs managing the water industry with curious regularity) is bending that way.
Remember when pollsters found Boris Johnson had better ratings in Scotland than Alex Salmond?
Half of people questioned by pollsters believe that Humza Yousaf has done a bad job in his first 100 days as first minister.
Fewer than a quarter of voters (23 per cent) endorsed his tenure, which has been fraught with internal party issues and U-turns on the deposit return scheme and highly protected marine areas.
A poll in April had suggested that 19 per cent of people thought Yousaf was doing well, and 44 per cent believed the opposite, although his administration was just weeks old when it was conducted.
He [Yousaf] had a slightly better rating than Rishi Sunak, with 22 per cent of Scots saying he was doing a good job leading the UK government, compared to 59 per cent who said he was doing a bad job.
On favourability, 28 per cent had a favourable view of Yousaf, and 51 per cent had an unfavourable view.
So @Dixiedean stated that (paraphrasing so I hope I have this right) to appreciate the issue for a certain group you had to be a member of that certain group (not all groups, just that particular example). You disagreed and used an analogy to demonstrate that wasn’t true. It was an excellent analogy in that in the case you gave (a completely different group) it clearly wasn’t true which was the point you wanted to make.
Analogies are very useful. They can often bring sudden clarity to an issue and can often provide easy routes to solving difficult problems (not quite the same, but the issue of 3 different sized circles with tangents on each pair of circles all interesting in a straight line is hard to prove, but easy if you change it to 3 balls and intersecting planes).
The problem with analogies is it can appear you have one when you haven’t.
Whether you agree with @Dixiedean or not, and I am sure he was generalizing anyway, but it is not true that your analogy proves him wrong as each case depends on the context (the group involved). You have picked one example that is at one extreme. His was different.
You simply picked a case that was obviously true. There are plenty of examples where what you deduce is not obviously true.
Eg. I think it is reasonable to assume that as someone who doesn’t speak Chinese I have little understanding of Chinese grammar. For me that is certainly a fact and I assume true for others. So it is true that those best able to comment are generally Chinese speakers. As a left hander I am aware that most right handers are not aware of some of the niche issues eg playing cards. Left handers are clearly more qualified to comment. You picked an example that you don’t have to be a Jew to appreciate the holocaust was wrong (paraphrasing) is true but was both tasteless and invalid compared to @dixiedean’s point.
I don’t want to harp on about other issues but you brought these up again (not me). You have called me a liar directly yesterday and implied I lied a few weeks ago by posting laughter when I apologised that I had to leave temporarily to deal with the clearance of my deceased father’s house. Yesterday you accused me of being operatic in my reaction to your post about the death of my father. Really you think I overreacted and you haven’t gone beyond the pale by posting laughter? I mean really you do think that is ok? Didn't even attempt an apology.
I just want to formally distance myself from this conversation. I only jumped in to make a point about the pervasiveness of analogy in human cognition, and much of the above is aimed at Miklosvar alone, not me. I certainly wasn't posting anything about Jews and the holocaust nor laughing at kjh's situation. kjh, I know you are already aware that what I'm saying here is the case, but just in case anybody else reads your post and thinks it's directed at me, I want them to know that it's not.
My apologies @Farooq. Absolutely. We have only ever had positive conversations and the occasional laugh and both liked each other's posts.
This is deeply disturbing. An investigation has claimed that the ship sinking near Greece happened because the Greek coastguard was towing it towards Italy. Survivor accounts have been tampered with and mobile phones that supposedly had documentary evidence of the towing, confiscated.
If this is what happened, it's quite a blow against those who naively think that towing ships back is a good solution.
For sure towing ships is a difficult and dangerous operation always, and when you have incredibly strong grounds for thinking a ship has overloading and stability issues you don't do it.
The press love anything that sells papers in the silly season, they love sex scandals at any time, they love moralising about sex scandals and they love talking about themselves.
Of course they would find this one irresistible.
Also the media love talking about the media....
And media groups with rival broadcasting arms love bashing the BBC.
Well it goes both ways.
After thinking about it for 30 seconds, I'm not sure it does go both ways. Does the BBC habitually attack Fleet Street or other media groups?
ETA a quick glance at the Telegraph and Times home pages finds two other anti-BBC stories, unrelated to this one. Where is the BBC's equivalent?
None of the BBC's rivals are extracting money with menaces from the BBC's customers. You might not agree with the editorial position of, say, The Telegraph or The Guardian, but you are freenit to consume them in a way you are not with the BBC. Not surprising if anti-beebery is only one way. That said, the Beeb was right on board when Hugh Grant was trying to limit the power of the press. The BBC are keen to hit back when they can. The Beeb are very much of the view that life would be better if they were the only arbiter of the news agenda.
True and they even have their own fact check service set up with BBC Verify.
It’s time we found an alternative way to fund the BBC removing the license fee and funding the means of transmission via taxation.
Richard Sharp, yesterday, was saying the ‘well off’ should pay more for the BBC than poorer households. No. The BBC is losing listeners and viewers. The license fee in its current form is untenable. You cannot demand people pay more for a service they use less and less.
I've been saying this for years, and the reaction from many was "You just hate the BBC!"
Which is rubbish. I love the BBC. I personally have zero problem with paying the licence fee, and believe I get value for it from BBC 4 alone.
But I'm not everyone, and the world has become a much more exciting place, media-wise. People can get their entertainment and news from so many more sources, and the licence fee increasingly looks like an anachronism of little relevance to large sectors of the population.
I don't know what the answer is, but people who proclaim to love the BBC should be asking whether insisting on keeping the licence fee is actually going to kill the thing they love.
We used to pay for Sky but we found that the only channels we watched live were BBC/Sky News channels and music channels on in the background. Everything else we watched on catch up. We gradually realised how much money we were wasting by not watching broadcast TV so cancelled our subscription and decided to do without broadcast telly completely, cancelling the TV licence as well. We now watch far less TV, only watching YouTube/Netflix/Prime and that tends to be only for an hour or two in the evening. I didn't cancel the TV licence because I hate the BBC, but because we don't watch 99% of their output, same as Sky. The majority of sports are all pay per view anyway, but we're not allowed to pay for it and watch it live by a recognised broadcaster as we don't have a TV licence, so that means I can't pay 6 quid for Discovery Plus to watch the Mountain Biking Downhill World Cup because I don't pay the BBC 160 quid! Last year, when RedBull had the rights, they broadcast it live free, so we could watch it because they're not a recognised broadcaster (although that's quite a grey area). The internet does mean you can always find a stream to watch somewhere, but that's piracy and a very bad thing. My 3 boys never, ever watch broadcast TV, but know all about current programmes and "stars" because of the internet. They'll never pay the TC licence and I suspect it's the same for most of they're friends. The BBC need to find an alternative.
Many moons ago, a colleague of mine got married. He had been living with his fiancé for years, and just before they tied the knot, they decided to rationalise their affairs; get wills done etc.
He had taken out a sky subscription a decade previously, on a basic sports package. But over the years, as special offers on events had occurred, he had taken out more and more subs - to the extent it was costing a fortune each month. Since they were both well-paid engineers he had not really noticed the outgoings.
So he tried to think back to what they had watched over the previous few months, realised it was next to nothing, and cancelled the lot. The thinking being that he could always get a new subscription if he wanted.
I fear it is very easy for these things to get out of hand.
FWIW I hardly ever watch telly at all because there is too much of it and the quality is pretty dire compared with reading a book, or the radio. Or indeed watching a dormouse sleeping.
I use radio a lot. We have a TV licence - like most older people - partly because of Gardeners World and bits of other live broadcasting, and the times that BBC TV news service is just sort of essential.
Radio is free, but a mix of R4, R3, R5, TMS, and World Service is easily worth double the licence fee. I use LBC a bit but the intrusive advertising is just abysmal. So long live the BBC with all its faults.
Serious question: What do politics anoraks without a TV licence do at 10pm on General Election night?
"The executive board at the Irish broadcaster RTÉ is being stood down as part of changes announced by its new director general. ... RTÉ has been under pressure after undisclosed payments made to its top presenter were discovered last month."
This is deeply disturbing. An investigation has claimed that the ship sinking near Greece happened because the Greek coastguard was towing it towards Italy. Survivor accounts have been tampered with and mobile phones that supposedly had documentary evidence of the towing, confiscated.
If this is what happened, it's quite a blow against those who naively think that towing ships back is a good solution.
On the towing point, the Channel invasion, as I understand it, uses much smaller ships, or rather dinghies, than the Med-crossing ones, presumably.
And safe towing speed will depend in part on the hull length of the towed vessel (basic physics of displacement hulls and the wave generated by the hull).
The UK agency (whichever it is) with the ships will need to have bigger, more powerful, and more stable ships than your average refugee dinghy, just to stay at sea with any safety to the crews themselves - and towing a dinghy or RIB at any speed would at best give a waterskiing type experience. And one little dinghy slowly towed at a time? Forget it.
Remember when pollsters found Boris Johnson had better ratings in Scotland than Alex Salmond?
Half of people questioned by pollsters believe that Humza Yousaf has done a bad job in his first 100 days as first minister.
Fewer than a quarter of voters (23 per cent) endorsed his tenure, which has been fraught with internal party issues and U-turns on the deposit return scheme and highly protected marine areas.
A poll in April had suggested that 19 per cent of people thought Yousaf was doing well, and 44 per cent believed the opposite, although his administration was just weeks old when it was conducted.
He [Yousaf] had a slightly better rating than Rishi Sunak, with 22 per cent of Scots saying he was doing a good job leading the UK government, compared to 59 per cent who said he was doing a bad job.
On favourability, 28 per cent had a favourable view of Yousaf, and 51 per cent had an unfavourable view.
Those are awful numbers for Yousaf, looks like the SNP in Scotland could see a swing against them to Labour as bad as the Tories in England do
Both the SNP and the Tories are proof that party members are not the best people to choose party leaders.
Hmmm, I'm not sure that's the applicable lesson here. I suspect Yousaf's numbers would have been replicated no matter who the membership chose as leader. The damage is around the investigations related to Sturgeon's time as leader.
EDIT: given the choice available, my own view is that the SNP membership chose well. I was a little surprised it was as close as it was.
"The executive board at the Irish broadcaster RTÉ is being stood down as part of changes announced by its new director general. ... RTÉ has been under pressure after undisclosed payments made to its top presenter were discovered last month."
The less obvious, but more important story on the front pages today.
Another important story. It looks like the Greek coastguard was trying to tow the trawler holding refugees out to sea and effectively sank the ship with the loss of 500 lives
How interesting. I have no fondness for our Home Secretary, this government, or its policies on boats. But, SFAICS, as yet no actions of the UK agencies have actually been causally linked with migrant deaths. And I think (tentatively) that even now UK public opinion would not accept it.
If the nation of Solon, Socrates and Leonidas has behaved in such ways, how comfortable are the other nations of the EU with being in 'ever closer' political union with them, and funding the means of doing it.
This is deeply disturbing. An investigation has claimed that the ship sinking near Greece happened because the Greek coastguard was towing it towards Italy. Survivor accounts have been tampered with and mobile phones that supposedly had documentary evidence of the towing, confiscated.
If this is what happened, it's quite a blow against those who naively think that towing ships back is a good solution.
Actually I suspect some of those that think towing boats back is a good idea would see this as a price worth paying, in fact useful décourager les autres.
I am not in favour of selling off the BBC, or Channel 4. I would prefer for the licence fee to be more of a shareholding, with dividends as well as fees. The BBC and Channel 4 should be making money for the nation.
Tory governments scuppered the chances of the BBC being a profitable, self-funding, world leader in media by restricting what they could do in the name of 'competition' (aka pandering to their media mogul friends and donors).
The press love anything that sells papers in the silly season, they love sex scandals at any time, they love moralising about sex scandals and they love talking about themselves.
Of course they would find this one irresistible.
Also the media love talking about the media....
And media groups with rival broadcasting arms love bashing the BBC.
Well it goes both ways.
After thinking about it for 30 seconds, I'm not sure it does go both ways. Does the BBC habitually attack Fleet Street or other media groups?
ETA a quick glance at the Telegraph and Times home pages finds two other anti-BBC stories, unrelated to this one. Where is the BBC's equivalent?
None of the BBC's rivals are extracting money with menaces from the BBC's customers. You might not agree with the editorial position of, say, The Telegraph or The Guardian, but you are freenit to consume them in a way you are not with the BBC. Not surprising if anti-beebery is only one way. That said, the Beeb was right on board when Hugh Grant was trying to limit the power of the press. The BBC are keen to hit back when they can. The Beeb are very much of the view that life would be better if they were the only arbiter of the news agenda.
True and they even have their own fact check service set up with BBC Verify.
It’s time we found an alternative way to fund the BBC removing the license fee and funding the means of transmission via taxation.
Richard Sharp, yesterday, was saying the ‘well off’ should pay more for the BBC than poorer households. No. The BBC is losing listeners and viewers. The license fee in its current form is untenable. You cannot demand people pay more for a service they use less and less.
I've been saying this for years, and the reaction from many was "You just hate the BBC!"
Which is rubbish. I love the BBC. I personally have zero problem with paying the licence fee, and believe I get value for it from BBC 4 alone.
But I'm not everyone, and the world has become a much more exciting place, media-wise. People can get their entertainment and news from so many more sources, and the licence fee increasingly looks like an anachronism of little relevance to large sectors of the population.
I don't know what the answer is, but people who proclaim to love the BBC should be asking whether insisting on keeping the licence fee is actually going to kill the thing they love.
We used to pay for Sky but we found that the only channels we watched live were BBC/Sky News channels and music channels on in the background. Everything else we watched on catch up. We gradually realised how much money we were wasting by not watching broadcast TV so cancelled our subscription and decided to do without broadcast telly completely, cancelling the TV licence as well. We now watch far less TV, only watching YouTube/Netflix/Prime and that tends to be only for an hour or two in the evening. I didn't cancel the TV licence because I hate the BBC, but because we don't watch 99% of their output, same as Sky. The majority of sports are all pay per view anyway, but we're not allowed to pay for it and watch it live by a recognised broadcaster as we don't have a TV licence, so that means I can't pay 6 quid for Discovery Plus to watch the Mountain Biking Downhill World Cup because I don't pay the BBC 160 quid! Last year, when RedBull had the rights, they broadcast it live free, so we could watch it because they're not a recognised broadcaster (although that's quite a grey area). The internet does mean you can always find a stream to watch somewhere, but that's piracy and a very bad thing. My 3 boys never, ever watch broadcast TV, but know all about current programmes and "stars" because of the internet. They'll never pay the TC licence and I suspect it's the same for most of they're friends. The BBC need to find an alternative.
Many moons ago, a colleague of mine got married. He had been living with his fiancé for years, and just before they tied the knot, they decided to rationalise their affairs; get wills done etc.
He had taken out a sky subscription a decade previously, on a basic sports package. But over the years, as special offers on events had occurred, he had taken out more and more subs - to the extent it was costing a fortune each month. Since they were both well-paid engineers he had not really noticed the outgoings.
So he tried to think back to what they had watched over the previous few months, realised it was next to nothing, and cancelled the lot. The thinking being that he could always get a new subscription if he wanted.
I fear it is very easy for these things to get out of hand.
FWIW I hardly ever watch telly at all because there is too much of it and the quality is pretty dire compared with reading a book, or the radio. Or indeed watching a dormouse sleeping.
I use radio a lot. We have a TV licence - like most older people - partly because of Gardeners World and bits of other live broadcasting, and the times that BBC TV news service is just sort of essential.
Radio is free, but a mix of R4, R3, R5, TMS, and World Service is easily worth double the licence fee. I use LBC a bit but the intrusive advertising is just abysmal. So long live the BBC with all its faults.
Serious question: What do politics anoraks without a TV licence do at 10pm on General Election night?
Personally, on election nights, I'm on here. Coverage is far better, more intelligent and more even handed. 90% of the time talking political heads say exactly what you would have expected them to say.
That said, last election, I was so nervous I couldn't watch anything except the price of the pound. Once it became apparent that that had gone up a bit, it was apparent enough that my worst case scenario had been avoided. I watched a bit of the BBC coverage, but it was like watching a funeral, so I turned over to ITV, where the coverage was surprisingly good. The Balls/Osborne double act, in particular, was excellent, as was Alan Johnson. That would have been worth paying for, except that because of the unique way ITV is funded, you don't have to.
Anyway - a quick audit of my viewing habits over the past fortnight puts Amazon prime well out in front, because I'm re-watching Parks and Recreation from the start - but in second place is Channel 5 and its moderately interesting real life shows about the emergency services or railways or life in picturesque parts of England. TV that doesn't hate you.
So @Dixiedean stated that (paraphrasing so I hope I have this right) to appreciate the issue for a certain group you had to be a member of that certain group (not all groups, just that particular example). You disagreed and used an analogy to demonstrate that wasn’t true. It was an excellent analogy in that in the case you gave (a completely different group) it clearly wasn’t true which was the point you wanted to make.
Analogies are very useful. They can often bring sudden clarity to an issue and can often provide easy routes to solving difficult problems (not quite the same, but the issue of 3 different sized circles with tangents on each pair of circles all interesting in a straight line is hard to prove, but easy if you change it to 3 balls and intersecting planes).
The problem with analogies is it can appear you have one when you haven’t.
Whether you agree with @Dixiedean or not, and I am sure he was generalizing anyway, but it is not true that your analogy proves him wrong as each case depends on the context (the group involved). You have picked one example that is at one extreme. His was different.
You simply picked a case that was obviously true. There are plenty of examples where what you deduce is not obviously true.
Eg. I think it is reasonable to assume that as someone who doesn’t speak Chinese I have little understanding of Chinese grammar. For me that is certainly a fact and I assume true for others. So it is true that those best able to comment are generally Chinese speakers. As a left hander I am aware that most right handers are not aware of some of the niche issues eg playing cards. Left handers are clearly more qualified to comment. You picked an example that you don’t have to be a Jew to appreciate the holocaust was wrong (paraphrasing) is true but was both tasteless and invalid compared to @dixiedean’s point.
I don’t want to harp on about other issues but you brought these up again (not me). You have called me a liar directly yesterday and implied I lied a few weeks ago by posting laughter when I apologised that I had to leave temporarily to deal with the clearance of my deceased father’s house. Yesterday you accused me of being operatic in my reaction to your post about the death of my father. Really you think I overreacted and you haven’t gone beyond the pale by posting laughter? I mean really you do think that is ok? Didn't even attempt an apology.
I just want to formally distance myself from this conversation. I only jumped in to make a point about the pervasiveness of analogy in human cognition, and much of the above is aimed at Miklosvar alone, not me. I certainly wasn't posting anything about Jews and the holocaust nor laughing at kjh's situation. kjh, I know you are already aware that what I'm saying here is the case, but just in case anybody else reads your post and thinks it's directed at me, I want them to know that it's not.
So do I.
I think you (kjh) get way over invested in Internet disagreements. I am sorry if I have offended you and will take care in future not to interact with you.
Apology accepted, thank you. Seeing as I rarely have internet disagreements (I can't remember the last one I had that wasn't with you) and you are having them with a number of people all the time and not surprising with comments like 'you are not very good at this are you' to @dixiedean I suspect the issue is with you and not me. I have been a poster here (in one guise or another since the very beginning). Nobody has ever called me a liar before. You managed or implied it twice in a matter of weeks.
How to sing a National Anthem: 1. Play a few bars and let the crowd do the rest - see Welsh football fans or Scottish rugby fans. 2. Ask an American actor/Elvis impersonator to do a novelty version.....
Discuss
It was very embarrassing to say the least, sounded like a cat had it's tail stuck in the door.
This is deeply disturbing. An investigation has claimed that the ship sinking near Greece happened because the Greek coastguard was towing it towards Italy. Survivor accounts have been tampered with and mobile phones that supposedly had documentary evidence of the towing, confiscated.
If this is what happened, it's quite a blow against those who naively think that towing ships back is a good solution.
Actually I suspect some of those that think towing boats back is a good idea would see this as a price worth paying, in fact useful décourager les autres.
Yes, it crossed my mind to mention that, but I would prefer to let those people distinguish themselves from those who might have thought towbacks sound good in theory but would be put off by the practical dangers. I don't want to tar the merely naive with the brush of callousness.
How to sing a National Anthem: 1. Play a few bars and let the crowd do the rest - see Welsh football fans or Scottish rugby fans. 2. Ask an American actor/Elvis impersonator to do a novelty version.....
Discuss
It was very embarrassing to say the least, sounded like a cat had it's tail stuck in the door.
The less obvious, but more important story on the front pages today.
Another important story. It looks like the Greek coastguard was trying to tow the trawler holding refugees out to sea and effectively sank the ship with the loss of 500 lives
How interesting. I have no fondness for our Home Secretary, this government, or its policies on boats. But, SFAICS, as yet no actions of the UK agencies have actually been causally linked with migrant deaths. And I think (tentatively) that even now UK public opinion would not accept it.
If the nation of Solon, Socrates and Leonidas has behaved in such ways, how comfortable are the other nations of the EU with being in 'ever closer' political union with them, and funding the means of doing it.
Classical Athens and indeed sparta did something at least as shitty as this at a bare minimum of once a year throughout the 5th century.
Why is the unidentified BBC presenter sexual predator story getting so much more coverage than the one about the unidentified MP accused of rape being allowed to stand as a candidate for the Tories at the next general election? I genuinely don’t get it. Both seem equally bad and to be of equal public interest.
The less obvious, but more important story on the front pages today.
Another important story. It looks like the Greek coastguard was trying to tow the trawler holding refugees out to sea and effectively sank the ship with the loss of 500 lives
This is deeply disturbing. An investigation has claimed that the ship sinking near Greece happened because the Greek coastguard was towing it towards Italy. Survivor accounts have been tampered with and mobile phones that supposedly had documentary evidence of the towing, confiscated.
If this is what happened, it's quite a blow against those who naively think that towing ships back is a good solution.
Actually I suspect some of those that think towing boats back is a good idea would see this as a price worth paying, in fact useful décourager les autres.
Yes, it crossed my mind to mention that, but I would prefer to let those people distinguish themselves from those who might have thought towbacks sound good in theory but would be put off by the practical dangers. I don't want to tar the merely naive with the brush of callousness.
A past PBer no longer posting occasionally posted the passage from 1984 where Winston is at a cinema watching a newsreel of refugees being machine gunned in the water, much to the audiences enjoyment.
So @Dixiedean stated that (paraphrasing so I hope I have this right) to appreciate the issue for a certain group you had to be a member of that certain group (not all groups, just that particular example). You disagreed and used an analogy to demonstrate that wasn’t true. It was an excellent analogy in that in the case you gave (a completely different group) it clearly wasn’t true which was the point you wanted to make.
Analogies are very useful. They can often bring sudden clarity to an issue and can often provide easy routes to solving difficult problems (not quite the same, but the issue of 3 different sized circles with tangents on each pair of circles all interesting in a straight line is hard to prove, but easy if you change it to 3 balls and intersecting planes).
The problem with analogies is it can appear you have one when you haven’t.
Whether you agree with @Dixiedean or not, and I am sure he was generalizing anyway, but it is not true that your analogy proves him wrong as each case depends on the context (the group involved). You have picked one example that is at one extreme. His was different.
You simply picked a case that was obviously true. There are plenty of examples where what you deduce is not obviously true.
Eg. I think it is reasonable to assume that as someone who doesn’t speak Chinese I have little understanding of Chinese grammar. For me that is certainly a fact and I assume true for others. So it is true that those best able to comment are generally Chinese speakers. As a left hander I am aware that most right handers are not aware of some of the niche issues eg playing cards. Left handers are clearly more qualified to comment. You picked an example that you don’t have to be a Jew to appreciate the holocaust was wrong (paraphrasing) is true but was both tasteless and invalid compared to @dixiedean’s point.
I don’t want to harp on about other issues but you brought these up again (not me). You have called me a liar directly yesterday and implied I lied a few weeks ago by posting laughter when I apologised that I had to leave temporarily to deal with the clearance of my deceased father’s house. Yesterday you accused me of being operatic in my reaction to your post about the death of my father. Really you think I overreacted and you haven’t gone beyond the pale by posting laughter? I mean really you do think that is ok? Didn't even attempt an apology.
I just want to formally distance myself from this conversation. I only jumped in to make a point about the pervasiveness of analogy in human cognition, and much of the above is aimed at Miklosvar alone, not me. I certainly wasn't posting anything about Jews and the holocaust nor laughing at kjh's situation. kjh, I know you are already aware that what I'm saying here is the case, but just in case anybody else reads your post and thinks it's directed at me, I want them to know that it's not.
So do I.
I think you (kjh) get way over invested in Internet disagreements. I am sorry if I have offended you and will take care in future not to interact with you.
Apology accepted, thank you. Seeing as I rarely have internet disagreements (I can't remember the last one I had that wasn't with you)
You are regularly triggered by @HYUFD and feel the need to point out, at length, why this is so.
Why is the unidentified BBC presenter sexual predator story getting so much more coverage than the one about the unidentified MP accused of rape being allowed to stand as a candidate for the Tories at the next general election? I genuinely don’t get it. Both seem equally bad and to be of equal public interest.
Tories obviously have better control of the media
Tories suspended their bloke pretty swiftly. Also, BBC presenters are more interesting than backbench Tories. I used to know which tory it was but I have forgotten.
The press love anything that sells papers in the silly season, they love sex scandals at any time, they love moralising about sex scandals and they love talking about themselves.
Of course they would find this one irresistible.
Also the media love talking about the media....
And media groups with rival broadcasting arms love bashing the BBC.
Well it goes both ways.
After thinking about it for 30 seconds, I'm not sure it does go both ways. Does the BBC habitually attack Fleet Street or other media groups?
ETA a quick glance at the Telegraph and Times home pages finds two other anti-BBC stories, unrelated to this one. Where is the BBC's equivalent?
None of the BBC's rivals are extracting money with menaces from the BBC's customers. You might not agree with the editorial position of, say, The Telegraph or The Guardian, but you are freenit to consume them in a way you are not with the BBC. Not surprising if anti-beebery is only one way. That said, the Beeb was right on board when Hugh Grant was trying to limit the power of the press. The BBC are keen to hit back when they can. The Beeb are very much of the view that life would be better if they were the only arbiter of the news agenda.
True and they even have their own fact check service set up with BBC Verify.
It’s time we found an alternative way to fund the BBC removing the license fee and funding the means of transmission via taxation.
Richard Sharp, yesterday, was saying the ‘well off’ should pay more for the BBC than poorer households. No. The BBC is losing listeners and viewers. The license fee in its current form is untenable. You cannot demand people pay more for a service they use less and less.
I've been saying this for years, and the reaction from many was "You just hate the BBC!"
Which is rubbish. I love the BBC. I personally have zero problem with paying the licence fee, and believe I get value for it from BBC 4 alone.
But I'm not everyone, and the world has become a much more exciting place, media-wise. People can get their entertainment and news from so many more sources, and the licence fee increasingly looks like an anachronism of little relevance to large sectors of the population.
I don't know what the answer is, but people who proclaim to love the BBC should be asking whether insisting on keeping the licence fee is actually going to kill the thing they love.
We used to pay for Sky but we found that the only channels we watched live were BBC/Sky News channels and music channels on in the background. Everything else we watched on catch up. We gradually realised how much money we were wasting by not watching broadcast TV so cancelled our subscription and decided to do without broadcast telly completely, cancelling the TV licence as well. We now watch far less TV, only watching YouTube/Netflix/Prime and that tends to be only for an hour or two in the evening. I didn't cancel the TV licence because I hate the BBC, but because we don't watch 99% of their output, same as Sky. The majority of sports are all pay per view anyway, but we're not allowed to pay for it and watch it live by a recognised broadcaster as we don't have a TV licence, so that means I can't pay 6 quid for Discovery Plus to watch the Mountain Biking Downhill World Cup because I don't pay the BBC 160 quid! Last year, when RedBull had the rights, they broadcast it live free, so we could watch it because they're not a recognised broadcaster (although that's quite a grey area). The internet does mean you can always find a stream to watch somewhere, but that's piracy and a very bad thing. My 3 boys never, ever watch broadcast TV, but know all about current programmes and "stars" because of the internet. They'll never pay the TC licence and I suspect it's the same for most of they're friends. The BBC need to find an alternative.
Many moons ago, a colleague of mine got married. He had been living with his fiancé for years, and just before they tied the knot, they decided to rationalise their affairs; get wills done etc.
He had taken out a sky subscription a decade previously, on a basic sports package. But over the years, as special offers on events had occurred, he had taken out more and more subs - to the extent it was costing a fortune each month. Since they were both well-paid engineers he had not really noticed the outgoings.
So he tried to think back to what they had watched over the previous few months, realised it was next to nothing, and cancelled the lot. The thinking being that he could always get a new subscription if he wanted.
I fear it is very easy for these things to get out of hand.
FWIW I hardly ever watch telly at all because there is too much of it and the quality is pretty dire compared with reading a book, or the radio. Or indeed watching a dormouse sleeping.
I use radio a lot. We have a TV licence - like most older people - partly because of Gardeners World and bits of other live broadcasting, and the times that BBC TV news service is just sort of essential.
Radio is free, but a mix of R4, R3, R5, TMS, and World Service is easily worth double the licence fee. I use LBC a bit but the intrusive advertising is just abysmal. So long live the BBC with all its faults.
Serious question: What do politics anoraks without a TV licence do at 10pm on General Election night?
Personally, on election nights, I'm on here. Coverage is far better, more intelligent and more even handed. 90% of the time talking political heads say exactly what you would have expected them to say.
That said, last election, I was so nervous I couldn't watch anything except the price of the pound. Once it became apparent that that had gone up a bit, it was apparent enough that my worst case scenario had been avoided. I watched a bit of the BBC coverage, but it was like watching a funeral, so I turned over to ITV, where the coverage was surprisingly good. The Balls/Osborne double act, in particular, was excellent, as was Alan Johnson. That would have been worth paying for, except that because of the unique way ITV is funded, you don't have to.
Anyway - a quick audit of my viewing habits over the past fortnight puts Amazon prime well out in front, because I'm re-watching Parks and Recreation from the start - but in second place is Channel 5 and its moderately interesting real life shows about the emergency services or railways or life in picturesque parts of England. TV that doesn't hate you.
Point taken re election night, in part I do the same; but PB content on election night is, in general, an informed distillation from material coming in from multiple media sources, so it won't do on its own. For me - a traditionalist - the BBC remains the best single constant source, though not the quickest, on election night. Though it has dire moments.
Election night is ritual as well as information. BBC does this best still.
Some apparent bans over the weekend - have people been Voldermorting?*
*naming (s)he who must not be named (I assume it's probably a he, but guess it might not be; I don't know the identity and have no particular interest - if there's anything to the allegations it will no doubt be public soon enough)
On the BBC; I read yesterday on the red button (which I do use usually once or twice a week) that Sharp reckons the BBC should in future be funded by a tax/fee on broadband.
I think they can sod off if that's their approach. I work online. I need an internet connection. I don't need the BBC. It's crackers, and unacceptable.
The TV licence fee is a weird anachronism which exists because it was made way back when, and it doesn't really make sense now. Instituting a new system that's complete insane is not something people will, or should, accept.
I'm not sure many people really need a TV licence these days. Having to watch a TV program at a particular time has got to be rather a quaint concept.
You still need it to watch BBC programmes online, whatever the time. There is at least some degree of gatekeeping with registration etc.
So make it a subscription service for those who wish to watch BBC programmes, like Netflix or Amazon Prime Video or any other subscription service.
Compulsorily charging those who don't want to watch BBC programmes but want to watch other TV live, like sport services on Sky etc, has no ethical justification.
This is deeply disturbing. An investigation has claimed that the ship sinking near Greece happened because the Greek coastguard was towing it towards Italy. Survivor accounts have been tampered with and mobile phones that supposedly had documentary evidence of the towing, confiscated.
If this is what happened, it's quite a blow against those who naively think that towing ships back is a good solution.
Actually I suspect some of those that think towing boats back is a good idea would see this as a price worth paying, in fact useful décourager les autres.
Yes, it crossed my mind to mention that, but I would prefer to let those people distinguish themselves from those who might have thought towbacks sound good in theory but would be put off by the practical dangers. I don't want to tar the merely naive with the brush of callousness.
Playing devil's advocate:
If towbacks are a bad idea, surely so are tow forwards? Both involve putting a hawser onto the ship's bow (usually), and towing it. If the land area they came from is nearest, surely it's better to tow them there than a greater distance?
On the BBC; I read yesterday on the red button (which I do use usually once or twice a week) that Sharp reckons the BBC should in future be funded by a tax/fee on broadband.
I think they can sod off if that's their approach. I work online. I need an internet connection. I don't need the BBC. It's crackers, and unacceptable.
The TV licence fee is a weird anachronism which exists because it was made way back when, and it doesn't really make sense now. Instituting a new system that's complete insane is not something people will, or should, accept.
I'm not sure many people really need a TV licence these days. Having to watch a TV program at a particular time has got to be rather a quaint concept.
You still need it to watch BBC programmes online, whatever the time. There is at least some degree of gatekeeping with registration etc.
So make it a subscription service for those who wish to watch BBC programmes, like Netflix or Amazon Prime Video or any other subscription service.
Compulsorily charging those who don't want to watch BBC programmes but want to watch other TV live, like sport services on Sky etc, has no ethical justification.
Correct, that is the real injustice, and it is disproportionately unjust to the poor.
Why is the unidentified BBC presenter sexual predator story getting so much more coverage than the one about the unidentified MP accused of rape being allowed to stand as a candidate for the Tories at the next general election? I genuinely don’t get it. Both seem equally bad and to be of equal public interest.
Tories obviously have better control of the media
However, that whole dismal saga has rumbled on for an unconscionable length of time;
This is deeply disturbing. An investigation has claimed that the ship sinking near Greece happened because the Greek coastguard was towing it towards Italy. Survivor accounts have been tampered with and mobile phones that supposedly had documentary evidence of the towing, confiscated.
This is deeply disturbing. An investigation has claimed that the ship sinking near Greece happened because the Greek coastguard was towing it towards Italy. Survivor accounts have been tampered with and mobile phones that supposedly had documentary evidence of the towing, confiscated.
If this is what happened, it's quite a blow against those who naively think that towing ships back is a good solution.
Actually I suspect some of those that think towing boats back is a good idea would see this as a price worth paying, in fact useful décourager les autres.
Yes, it crossed my mind to mention that, but I would prefer to let those people distinguish themselves from those who might have thought towbacks sound good in theory but would be put off by the practical dangers. I don't want to tar the merely naive with the brush of callousness.
Playing devil's advocate:
If towbacks are a bad idea, surely so are tow forwards? Both involve putting a hawser onto the ship's bow (usually), and towing it. If the land area they came from is nearest, surely it's better to tow them there than a greater distance?
Why is towing problematic, and towbacks worse?
Basically it's not what ships are designed for (odd exceptions like barges and harbour tugs), and you have 2 large masses pulling each other about unpredictably. The distinction is not so much tow back vs forward as voluntary and cooperative vs hostile tow. You want to have your towing bridle set up just so, not just hook one rope to the bugger and pull.
Has anyone actually said these things? The children mown down were sitting outside, on the grass, having an end-of-term tea party. They were not walking to school, nor were they in a classroom behind a shoddily-built wall.
So @Dixiedean stated that (paraphrasing so I hope I have this right) to appreciate the issue for a certain group you had to be a member of that certain group (not all groups, just that particular example). You disagreed and used an analogy to demonstrate that wasn’t true. It was an excellent analogy in that in the case you gave (a completely different group) it clearly wasn’t true which was the point you wanted to make.
Analogies are very useful. They can often bring sudden clarity to an issue and can often provide easy routes to solving difficult problems (not quite the same, but the issue of 3 different sized circles with tangents on each pair of circles all interesting in a straight line is hard to prove, but easy if you change it to 3 balls and intersecting planes).
The problem with analogies is it can appear you have one when you haven’t.
Whether you agree with @Dixiedean or not, and I am sure he was generalizing anyway, but it is not true that your analogy proves him wrong as each case depends on the context (the group involved). You have picked one example that is at one extreme. His was different.
You simply picked a case that was obviously true. There are plenty of examples where what you deduce is not obviously true.
Eg. I think it is reasonable to assume that as someone who doesn’t speak Chinese I have little understanding of Chinese grammar. For me that is certainly a fact and I assume true for others. So it is true that those best able to comment are generally Chinese speakers. As a left hander I am aware that most right handers are not aware of some of the niche issues eg playing cards. Left handers are clearly more qualified to comment. You picked an example that you don’t have to be a Jew to appreciate the holocaust was wrong (paraphrasing) is true but was both tasteless and invalid compared to @dixiedean’s point.
I don’t want to harp on about other issues but you brought these up again (not me). You have called me a liar directly yesterday and implied I lied a few weeks ago by posting laughter when I apologised that I had to leave temporarily to deal with the clearance of my deceased father’s house. Yesterday you accused me of being operatic in my reaction to your post about the death of my father. Really you think I overreacted and you haven’t gone beyond the pale by posting laughter? I mean really you do think that is ok? Didn't even attempt an apology.
I just want to formally distance myself from this conversation. I only jumped in to make a point about the pervasiveness of analogy in human cognition, and much of the above is aimed at Miklosvar alone, not me. I certainly wasn't posting anything about Jews and the holocaust nor laughing at kjh's situation. kjh, I know you are already aware that what I'm saying here is the case, but just in case anybody else reads your post and thinks it's directed at me, I want them to know that it's not.
So do I.
I think you (kjh) get way over invested in Internet disagreements. I am sorry if I have offended you and will take care in future not to interact with you.
Apology accepted, thank you. Seeing as I rarely have internet disagreements (I can't remember the last one I had that wasn't with you)
You are regularly triggered by @HYUFD and feel the need to point out, at length, why this is so.
FWIW, I feel that kjh does a valuable service arguing with HYUFD so I don't have to
(HYUFD makes many valuable posts and I think he adds to PB, but he also does write some nonsense - as we all do, of course - which someone should probably point out, but (like with Bart) you could easily lose the best years of your life arguing with HYUFD)
The press love anything that sells papers in the silly season, they love sex scandals at any time, they love moralising about sex scandals and they love talking about themselves.
Of course they would find this one irresistible.
Also the media love talking about the media....
And media groups with rival broadcasting arms love bashing the BBC.
Well it goes both ways.
After thinking about it for 30 seconds, I'm not sure it does go both ways. Does the BBC habitually attack Fleet Street or other media groups?
ETA a quick glance at the Telegraph and Times home pages finds two other anti-BBC stories, unrelated to this one. Where is the BBC's equivalent?
None of the BBC's rivals are extracting money with menaces from the BBC's customers. You might not agree with the editorial position of, say, The Telegraph or The Guardian, but you are freenit to consume them in a way you are not with the BBC. Not surprising if anti-beebery is only one way. That said, the Beeb was right on board when Hugh Grant was trying to limit the power of the press. The BBC are keen to hit back when they can. The Beeb are very much of the view that life would be better if they were the only arbiter of the news agenda.
True and they even have their own fact check service set up with BBC Verify.
It’s time we found an alternative way to fund the BBC removing the license fee and funding the means of transmission via taxation.
Richard Sharp, yesterday, was saying the ‘well off’ should pay more for the BBC than poorer households. No. The BBC is losing listeners and viewers. The license fee in its current form is untenable. You cannot demand people pay more for a service they use less and less.
I've been saying this for years, and the reaction from many was "You just hate the BBC!"
Which is rubbish. I love the BBC. I personally have zero problem with paying the licence fee, and believe I get value for it from BBC 4 alone.
But I'm not everyone, and the world has become a much more exciting place, media-wise. People can get their entertainment and news from so many more sources, and the licence fee increasingly looks like an anachronism of little relevance to large sectors of the population.
I don't know what the answer is, but people who proclaim to love the BBC should be asking whether insisting on keeping the licence fee is actually going to kill the thing they love.
We used to pay for Sky but we found that the only channels we watched live were BBC/Sky News channels and music channels on in the background. Everything else we watched on catch up. We gradually realised how much money we were wasting by not watching broadcast TV so cancelled our subscription and decided to do without broadcast telly completely, cancelling the TV licence as well. We now watch far less TV, only watching YouTube/Netflix/Prime and that tends to be only for an hour or two in the evening. I didn't cancel the TV licence because I hate the BBC, but because we don't watch 99% of their output, same as Sky. The majority of sports are all pay per view anyway, but we're not allowed to pay for it and watch it live by a recognised broadcaster as we don't have a TV licence, so that means I can't pay 6 quid for Discovery Plus to watch the Mountain Biking Downhill World Cup because I don't pay the BBC 160 quid! Last year, when RedBull had the rights, they broadcast it live free, so we could watch it because they're not a recognised broadcaster (although that's quite a grey area). The internet does mean you can always find a stream to watch somewhere, but that's piracy and a very bad thing. My 3 boys never, ever watch broadcast TV, but know all about current programmes and "stars" because of the internet. They'll never pay the TC licence and I suspect it's the same for most of they're friends. The BBC need to find an alternative.
Many moons ago, a colleague of mine got married. He had been living with his fiancé for years, and just before they tied the knot, they decided to rationalise their affairs; get wills done etc.
He had taken out a sky subscription a decade previously, on a basic sports package. But over the years, as special offers on events had occurred, he had taken out more and more subs - to the extent it was costing a fortune each month. Since they were both well-paid engineers he had not really noticed the outgoings.
So he tried to think back to what they had watched over the previous few months, realised it was next to nothing, and cancelled the lot. The thinking being that he could always get a new subscription if he wanted.
I fear it is very easy for these things to get out of hand.
FWIW I hardly ever watch telly at all because there is too much of it and the quality is pretty dire compared with reading a book, or the radio. Or indeed watching a dormouse sleeping.
I use radio a lot. We have a TV licence - like most older people - partly because of Gardeners World and bits of other live broadcasting, and the times that BBC TV news service is just sort of essential.
Radio is free, but a mix of R4, R3, R5, TMS, and World Service is easily worth double the licence fee. I use LBC a bit but the intrusive advertising is just abysmal. So long live the BBC with all its faults.
Serious question: What do politics anoraks without a TV licence do at 10pm on General Election night?
Personally, on election nights, I'm on here. Coverage is far better, more intelligent and more even handed. 90% of the time talking political heads say exactly what you would have expected them to say.
That said, last election, I was so nervous I couldn't watch anything except the price of the pound. Once it became apparent that that had gone up a bit, it was apparent enough that my worst case scenario had been avoided. I watched a bit of the BBC coverage, but it was like watching a funeral, so I turned over to ITV, where the coverage was surprisingly good. The Balls/Osborne double act, in particular, was excellent, as was Alan Johnson. That would have been worth paying for, except that because of the unique way ITV is funded, you don't have to.
Anyway - a quick audit of my viewing habits over the past fortnight puts Amazon prime well out in front, because I'm re-watching Parks and Recreation from the start - but in second place is Channel 5 and its moderately interesting real life shows about the emergency services or railways or life in picturesque parts of England. TV that doesn't hate you.
Point taken re election night, in part I do the same; but PB content on election night is, in general, an informed distillation from material coming in from multiple media sources, so it won't do on its own. For me - a traditionalist - the BBC remains the best single constant source, though not the quickest, on election night. Though it has dire moments.
Election night is ritual as well as information. BBC does this best still.
What the BBC has on general election night is the period from 9.58 to 10.00 and 20 seconds or so. The most dramatic, theatrical nerve wracking, brilliantly presented two and half minutes of telly in any year.
After that it quickly goes downhill, at least until the first declaration - though even the most brilliant broadcasters find it difficult to fill dead time like that (remember Huw Edwards basically having to fill four hours of time with 'we don't yet know for sure that the Queen is Dead'? Skilfully done, but excrutiating.)
The pigs ear the BBC are making of this matter is quite something to behold. They seem to be making every possible mistake - it's an absolute masterclass in How To Take A Bad Situation and Make it Much Much Worse.
This is deeply disturbing. An investigation has claimed that the ship sinking near Greece happened because the Greek coastguard was towing it towards Italy. Survivor accounts have been tampered with and mobile phones that supposedly had documentary evidence of the towing, confiscated.
If this is what happened, it's quite a blow against those who naively think that towing ships back is a good solution.
Actually I suspect some of those that think towing boats back is a good idea would see this as a price worth paying, in fact useful décourager les autres.
The continued fantasies of sinking boats in the Channel seem to come from one side of the debate.
Who seem upset that it hasn’t been done.
You rather get the impression that the current government implantation - pick them up, give them Domino’s pizza, house them in the kind of hotels that put the gym next to the indoor pool - doesn’t include enough dead people for their private fantasy life.
The press love anything that sells papers in the silly season, they love sex scandals at any time, they love moralising about sex scandals and they love talking about themselves.
Of course they would find this one irresistible.
Also the media love talking about the media....
And media groups with rival broadcasting arms love bashing the BBC.
Well it goes both ways.
After thinking about it for 30 seconds, I'm not sure it does go both ways. Does the BBC habitually attack Fleet Street or other media groups?
ETA a quick glance at the Telegraph and Times home pages finds two other anti-BBC stories, unrelated to this one. Where is the BBC's equivalent?
None of the BBC's rivals are extracting money with menaces from the BBC's customers. You might not agree with the editorial position of, say, The Telegraph or The Guardian, but you are freenit to consume them in a way you are not with the BBC. Not surprising if anti-beebery is only one way. That said, the Beeb was right on board when Hugh Grant was trying to limit the power of the press. The BBC are keen to hit back when they can. The Beeb are very much of the view that life would be better if they were the only arbiter of the news agenda.
True and they even have their own fact check service set up with BBC Verify.
It’s time we found an alternative way to fund the BBC removing the license fee and funding the means of transmission via taxation.
Richard Sharp, yesterday, was saying the ‘well off’ should pay more for the BBC than poorer households. No. The BBC is losing listeners and viewers. The license fee in its current form is untenable. You cannot demand people pay more for a service they use less and less.
I've been saying this for years, and the reaction from many was "You just hate the BBC!"
Which is rubbish. I love the BBC. I personally have zero problem with paying the licence fee, and believe I get value for it from BBC 4 alone.
But I'm not everyone, and the world has become a much more exciting place, media-wise. People can get their entertainment and news from so many more sources, and the licence fee increasingly looks like an anachronism of little relevance to large sectors of the population.
I don't know what the answer is, but people who proclaim to love the BBC should be asking whether insisting on keeping the licence fee is actually going to kill the thing they love.
We used to pay for Sky but we found that the only channels we watched live were BBC/Sky News channels and music channels on in the background. Everything else we watched on catch up. We gradually realised how much money we were wasting by not watching broadcast TV so cancelled our subscription and decided to do without broadcast telly completely, cancelling the TV licence as well. We now watch far less TV, only watching YouTube/Netflix/Prime and that tends to be only for an hour or two in the evening. I didn't cancel the TV licence because I hate the BBC, but because we don't watch 99% of their output, same as Sky. The majority of sports are all pay per view anyway, but we're not allowed to pay for it and watch it live by a recognised broadcaster as we don't have a TV licence, so that means I can't pay 6 quid for Discovery Plus to watch the Mountain Biking Downhill World Cup because I don't pay the BBC 160 quid! Last year, when RedBull had the rights, they broadcast it live free, so we could watch it because they're not a recognised broadcaster (although that's quite a grey area). The internet does mean you can always find a stream to watch somewhere, but that's piracy and a very bad thing. My 3 boys never, ever watch broadcast TV, but know all about current programmes and "stars" because of the internet. They'll never pay the TC licence and I suspect it's the same for most of they're friends. The BBC need to find an alternative.
Many moons ago, a colleague of mine got married. He had been living with his fiancé for years, and just before they tied the knot, they decided to rationalise their affairs; get wills done etc.
He had taken out a sky subscription a decade previously, on a basic sports package. But over the years, as special offers on events had occurred, he had taken out more and more subs - to the extent it was costing a fortune each month. Since they were both well-paid engineers he had not really noticed the outgoings.
So he tried to think back to what they had watched over the previous few months, realised it was next to nothing, and cancelled the lot. The thinking being that he could always get a new subscription if he wanted.
I fear it is very easy for these things to get out of hand.
FWIW I hardly ever watch telly at all because there is too much of it and the quality is pretty dire compared with reading a book, or the radio. Or indeed watching a dormouse sleeping.
I use radio a lot. We have a TV licence - like most older people - partly because of Gardeners World and bits of other live broadcasting, and the times that BBC TV news service is just sort of essential.
Radio is free, but a mix of R4, R3, R5, TMS, and World Service is easily worth double the licence fee. I use LBC a bit but the intrusive advertising is just abysmal. So long live the BBC with all its faults.
Serious question: What do politics anoraks without a TV licence do at 10pm on General Election night?
Personally, on election nights, I'm on here. Coverage is far better, more intelligent and more even handed. 90% of the time talking political heads say exactly what you would have expected them to say.
That said, last election, I was so nervous I couldn't watch anything except the price of the pound. Once it became apparent that that had gone up a bit, it was apparent enough that my worst case scenario had been avoided. I watched a bit of the BBC coverage, but it was like watching a funeral, so I turned over to ITV, where the coverage was surprisingly good. The Balls/Osborne double act, in particular, was excellent, as was Alan Johnson. That would have been worth paying for, except that because of the unique way ITV is funded, you don't have to.
Anyway - a quick audit of my viewing habits over the past fortnight puts Amazon prime well out in front, because I'm re-watching Parks and Recreation from the start - but in second place is Channel 5 and its moderately interesting real life shows about the emergency services or railways or life in picturesque parts of England. TV that doesn't hate you.
Point taken re election night, in part I do the same; but PB content on election night is, in general, an informed distillation from material coming in from multiple media sources, so it won't do on its own. For me - a traditionalist - the BBC remains the best single constant source, though not the quickest, on election night. Though it has dire moments.
Election night is ritual as well as information. BBC does this best still.
Sorry but the BBC is no better at that than Sky or other sources, let alone PB which is far, far better.
The days of the BBC being somehow without peer are long, long gone.
Why is the unidentified BBC presenter sexual predator story getting so much more coverage than the one about the unidentified MP accused of rape being allowed to stand as a candidate for the Tories at the next general election? I genuinely don’t get it. Both seem equally bad and to be of equal public interest.
Tories obviously have better control of the media
However, that whole dismal saga has rumbled on for an unconscionable length of time;
Complaint made in May 2020 Datained May 2022 Bail repeatedly extended
It's not fair on anyone- not the complainant, the MP involved or their constituents who have been unrepresented for over a year.
Are they unrepresented? Is the person not attending parliament/voting etc/doing constituency surgeries? Not wishing to identify, of course, though if all those things are not happening then presumably a lot of people will know who it is.
Agree not fair to take so long for everyone involved, unless there's very good reasons.
ETA: Ah, if I actually read the linked article :"The Conservative Chief Whip has asked that the MP in question not to attend the Parliamentary Estate while the police probe is ongoing."
E2TA: Which does, presumably, identify the person fairly easily from e.g. voting records - assuming other MPs do at least turn up and vote occasionally
The pigs ear the BBC are making of this matter is quite something to behold. They seem to be making every possible mistake - it's an absolute masterclass in How To Take A Bad Situation and Make it Much Much Worse.
After each fuck up, Lessons Were Learned.
Once again, this reminds me of a crappy Vietnam film where the demolition guy creates a set of bobby traps. The bad guys run from one into the next, into the next etc etc…
Until the system is really fixed (culture), you will get more and more performative bullshit. And performative bullshit has one small flaw. It doesn’t fix the problem.
So @Dixiedean stated that (paraphrasing so I hope I have this right) to appreciate the issue for a certain group you had to be a member of that certain group (not all groups, just that particular example). You disagreed and used an analogy to demonstrate that wasn’t true. It was an excellent analogy in that in the case you gave (a completely different group) it clearly wasn’t true which was the point you wanted to make.
Analogies are very useful. They can often bring sudden clarity to an issue and can often provide easy routes to solving difficult problems (not quite the same, but the issue of 3 different sized circles with tangents on each pair of circles all interesting in a straight line is hard to prove, but easy if you change it to 3 balls and intersecting planes).
The problem with analogies is it can appear you have one when you haven’t.
Whether you agree with @Dixiedean or not, and I am sure he was generalizing anyway, but it is not true that your analogy proves him wrong as each case depends on the context (the group involved). You have picked one example that is at one extreme. His was different.
You simply picked a case that was obviously true. There are plenty of examples where what you deduce is not obviously true.
Eg. I think it is reasonable to assume that as someone who doesn’t speak Chinese I have little understanding of Chinese grammar. For me that is certainly a fact and I assume true for others. So it is true that those best able to comment are generally Chinese speakers. As a left hander I am aware that most right handers are not aware of some of the niche issues eg playing cards. Left handers are clearly more qualified to comment. You picked an example that you don’t have to be a Jew to appreciate the holocaust was wrong (paraphrasing) is true but was both tasteless and invalid compared to @dixiedean’s point.
I don’t want to harp on about other issues but you brought these up again (not me). You have called me a liar directly yesterday and implied I lied a few weeks ago by posting laughter when I apologised that I had to leave temporarily to deal with the clearance of my deceased father’s house. Yesterday you accused me of being operatic in my reaction to your post about the death of my father. Really you think I overreacted and you haven’t gone beyond the pale by posting laughter? I mean really you do think that is ok? Didn't even attempt an apology.
I just want to formally distance myself from this conversation. I only jumped in to make a point about the pervasiveness of analogy in human cognition, and much of the above is aimed at Miklosvar alone, not me. I certainly wasn't posting anything about Jews and the holocaust nor laughing at kjh's situation. kjh, I know you are already aware that what I'm saying here is the case, but just in case anybody else reads your post and thinks it's directed at me, I want them to know that it's not.
So do I.
I think you (kjh) get way over invested in Internet disagreements. I am sorry if I have offended you and will take care in future not to interact with you.
Apology accepted, thank you. Seeing as I rarely have internet disagreements (I can't remember the last one I had that wasn't with you)
You are regularly triggered by @HYUFD and feel the need to point out, at length, why this is so.
Used to a long time ago. Don't now and haven't for a very, very long time. @HYUFD and I get on very well now with which I think he will agree. We obviously discuss things but it is always very amicable now and are more likely to like each others posts than argue. I really can't think of the last time we had a spat, but I do agree we used to. Can't think of a single other person really. I suppose occasionally with Leon, but that is mainly banter.
Remember when pollsters found Boris Johnson had better ratings in Scotland than Alex Salmond?
Half of people questioned by pollsters believe that Humza Yousaf has done a bad job in his first 100 days as first minister.
Fewer than a quarter of voters (23 per cent) endorsed his tenure, which has been fraught with internal party issues and U-turns on the deposit return scheme and highly protected marine areas.
A poll in April had suggested that 19 per cent of people thought Yousaf was doing well, and 44 per cent believed the opposite, although his administration was just weeks old when it was conducted.
He [Yousaf] had a slightly better rating than Rishi Sunak, with 22 per cent of Scots saying he was doing a good job leading the UK government, compared to 59 per cent who said he was doing a bad job.
On favourability, 28 per cent had a favourable view of Yousaf, and 51 per cent had an unfavourable view.
Those are awful numbers for Yousaf, looks like the SNP in Scotland could see a swing against them to Labour as bad as the Tories in England do
Both the SNP and the Tories are proof that party members are not the best people to choose party leaders.
Albeit Labour members also chose Starmer and Truss was Tory members choice not Sunak. Perhaps if the SNP ratings continue to freefall the SNP may try and remove SNP members choice Yousaf and replace him with Forbes as Tory MPs replaced Truss with Sunak
Thames Water secures extra £750m from shareholders to help stave off nationalisation Money follows £500m injection in March but troubled utility warns much more future funding needed https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/jul/10/thames-water-secures-extra-750m-from-shareholders-to-help-stave-off-nationalisation ...The company said on Monday it had secured £750m to run to March 2025. It indicated that a further £2.5bn would be needed to cover the five years to 2030 and said that shareholders had “acknowledged” that further equity support would be needed to turn around the ailing company.
Last year, Thames secured an agreement that its shareholders would put £1.5bn into the ailing water firm. The first cash injection, of £500m, came in March while a further £1bn had been expected this year.
The company said the latest funds should not be viewed as a paring back of support as “£750m is also the maximum we can feasibly spend over the next two years of this regulatory settlement period within our current delivery capacity”...
The pigs ear the BBC are making of this matter is quite something to behold. They seem to be making every possible mistake - it's an absolute masterclass in How To Take A Bad Situation and Make it Much Much Worse.
I can imagine that every male BBC presenter was phoning their agents over the weekend to see how quickly they can appear on the BBC...
The less obvious, but more important story on the front pages today.
‘What first attracted you to speaking out on this issue?’
This really is a "so what" non story.
Is it? Surely this is the definition of a vested interest? Surely this is why MPs register and declare financial interests.
Having said that, generous-minded folk like me doubt that MPs can be bought for such low considerations. More cynical observers would think more venal MPs would use their status for insider trading and sell rather than look to protect any shares. (These cynics would point to the United States Congress for a body that seems to do rather well for its members' investment portfolios.)
Why is the unidentified BBC presenter sexual predator story getting so much more coverage than the one about the unidentified MP accused of rape being allowed to stand as a candidate for the Tories at the next general election? I genuinely don’t get it. Both seem equally bad and to be of equal public interest.
Tories obviously have better control of the media
Tories suspended their bloke pretty swiftly. Also, BBC presenters are more interesting than backbench Tories. I used to know which tory it was but I have forgotten.
Are BBC presenters more interesting? Lots of people here are saying they don't watch the BBC!
Its exit from Thames Water proved to be well timed...
...Macquarie has had enormous success buying public infrastructure and placing it in their funds. It can then charge fees, and receive dividends for its part-ownership, as well as enjoy any increase in the asset price.
Estimates have put dividends paid to underlying investors, including itself, for Thames Water at £2.7bn over the 11-year period it oversaw the asset.
“The dividend yield to equity shareholders earned from our funds’ investment was in line with listed UK water utility companies,” Macquarie says....
Remember when pollsters found Boris Johnson had better ratings in Scotland than Alex Salmond?
Half of people questioned by pollsters believe that Humza Yousaf has done a bad job in his first 100 days as first minister.
Fewer than a quarter of voters (23 per cent) endorsed his tenure, which has been fraught with internal party issues and U-turns on the deposit return scheme and highly protected marine areas.
A poll in April had suggested that 19 per cent of people thought Yousaf was doing well, and 44 per cent believed the opposite, although his administration was just weeks old when it was conducted.
He [Yousaf] had a slightly better rating than Rishi Sunak, with 22 per cent of Scots saying he was doing a good job leading the UK government, compared to 59 per cent who said he was doing a bad job.
On favourability, 28 per cent had a favourable view of Yousaf, and 51 per cent had an unfavourable view.
Those are awful numbers for Yousaf, looks like the SNP in Scotland could see a swing against them to Labour as bad as the Tories in England do
Both the SNP and the Tories are proof that party members are not the best people to choose party leaders.
Albeit Labour members also chose Starmer and Truss was Tory members choice not Sunak. Perhaps if the SNP ratings continue to freefall the SNP may try and remove SNP members choice Yousaf and replace him with Forbes as Tory MPs replaced Truss with Sunak
Should also be mentioned in 2005 Tory members chose Cameron so even they can sometimes get it right
Why is the unidentified BBC presenter sexual predator story getting so much more coverage than the one about the unidentified MP accused of rape being allowed to stand as a candidate for the Tories at the next general election? I genuinely don’t get it. Both seem equally bad and to be of equal public interest.
Tories obviously have better control of the media
Tories suspended their bloke pretty swiftly. Also, BBC presenters are more interesting than backbench Tories. I used to know which tory it was but I have forgotten.
Are BBC presenters more interesting? Lots of people here are saying they don't watch the BBC!
Well, not to me. Only two I can think of have been ruled out.
This is deeply disturbing. An investigation has claimed that the ship sinking near Greece happened because the Greek coastguard was towing it towards Italy. Survivor accounts have been tampered with and mobile phones that supposedly had documentary evidence of the towing, confiscated.
If this is what happened, it's quite a blow against those who naively think that towing ships back is a good solution.
Actually I suspect some of those that think towing boats back is a good idea would see this as a price worth paying, in fact useful décourager les autres.
Yes, it crossed my mind to mention that, but I would prefer to let those people distinguish themselves from those who might have thought towbacks sound good in theory but would be put off by the practical dangers. I don't want to tar the merely naive with the brush of callousness.
Playing devil's advocate:
If towbacks are a bad idea, surely so are tow forwards? Both involve putting a hawser onto the ship's bow (usually), and towing it. If the land area they came from is nearest, surely it's better to tow them there than a greater distance?
Why is towing problematic, and towbacks worse?
The Australian approach to towing is to herd the informal immigrants (at the business end of a Minimi) into a lifeboat of known seaworthiness and then tow that. That takes a lot of the risk of a capsize, sinking, etc. out of it.
Why is the unidentified BBC presenter sexual predator story getting so much more coverage than the one about the unidentified MP accused of rape being allowed to stand as a candidate for the Tories at the next general election? I genuinely don’t get it. Both seem equally bad and to be of equal public interest.
Tories obviously have better control of the media
Tories suspended their bloke pretty swiftly. Also, BBC presenters are more interesting than backbench Tories. I used to know which tory it was but I have forgotten.
Are BBC presenters more interesting? Lots of people here are saying they don't watch the BBC!
For those who engage in gossip etc, probably yes.
That doesn't include me. I don't watch the BBC, I couldn't care less what happened on Eastenders, and I don't try to keep up with the Kardashians. But many people do and they probably care more about such celebrity gossip than the ins and outs of politics.
The key is to have choice. Let those who watch the BBC and want its programming choose to fund it.
Its exit from Thames Water proved to be well timed...
...Macquarie has had enormous success buying public infrastructure and placing it in their funds. It can then charge fees, and receive dividends for its part-ownership, as well as enjoy any increase in the asset price.
Estimates have put dividends paid to underlying investors, including itself, for Thames Water at £2.7bn over the 11-year period it oversaw the asset.
“The dividend yield to equity shareholders earned from our funds’ investment was in line with listed UK water utility companies,” Macquarie says....
If Macquarie sold its final stake six years ago (so from a reading of that began selling even further back) then its not their responsibility.
Presumably whoever bought the stock six or more years ago did their due diligence at the time of purchase?
I mean fancy having a main topic which is so incendiary for a comments board such as this.
Yes, we're not really allowed to be on-topic for this one, are we?
I was convinced it was going to be Lineker. But no. Not only has he denied it (MRDA), but as my wife pointed out to me yesterday, he earns a seven figure salary, not a six figure salary.
The press love anything that sells papers in the silly season, they love sex scandals at any time, they love moralising about sex scandals and they love talking about themselves.
Of course they would find this one irresistible.
Also the media love talking about the media....
And media groups with rival broadcasting arms love bashing the BBC.
Well it goes both ways.
After thinking about it for 30 seconds, I'm not sure it does go both ways. Does the BBC habitually attack Fleet Street or other media groups?
ETA a quick glance at the Telegraph and Times home pages finds two other anti-BBC stories, unrelated to this one. Where is the BBC's equivalent?
None of the BBC's rivals are extracting money with menaces from the BBC's customers. You might not agree with the editorial position of, say, The Telegraph or The Guardian, but you are freenit to consume them in a way you are not with the BBC. Not surprising if anti-beebery is only one way. That said, the Beeb was right on board when Hugh Grant was trying to limit the power of the press. The BBC are keen to hit back when they can. The Beeb are very much of the view that life would be better if they were the only arbiter of the news agenda.
True and they even have their own fact check service set up with BBC Verify.
It’s time we found an alternative way to fund the BBC removing the license fee and funding the means of transmission via taxation.
Richard Sharp, yesterday, was saying the ‘well off’ should pay more for the BBC than poorer households. No. The BBC is losing listeners and viewers. The license fee in its current form is untenable. You cannot demand people pay more for a service they use less and less.
I've been saying this for years, and the reaction from many was "You just hate the BBC!"
Which is rubbish. I love the BBC. I personally have zero problem with paying the licence fee, and believe I get value for it from BBC 4 alone.
But I'm not everyone, and the world has become a much more exciting place, media-wise. People can get their entertainment and news from so many more sources, and the licence fee increasingly looks like an anachronism of little relevance to large sectors of the population.
I don't know what the answer is, but people who proclaim to love the BBC should be asking whether insisting on keeping the licence fee is actually going to kill the thing they love.
We used to pay for Sky but we found that the only channels we watched live were BBC/Sky News channels and music channels on in the background. Everything else we watched on catch up. We gradually realised how much money we were wasting by not watching broadcast TV so cancelled our subscription and decided to do without broadcast telly completely, cancelling the TV licence as well. We now watch far less TV, only watching YouTube/Netflix/Prime and that tends to be only for an hour or two in the evening. I didn't cancel the TV licence because I hate the BBC, but because we don't watch 99% of their output, same as Sky. The majority of sports are all pay per view anyway, but we're not allowed to pay for it and watch it live by a recognised broadcaster as we don't have a TV licence, so that means I can't pay 6 quid for Discovery Plus to watch the Mountain Biking Downhill World Cup because I don't pay the BBC 160 quid! Last year, when RedBull had the rights, they broadcast it live free, so we could watch it because they're not a recognised broadcaster (although that's quite a grey area). The internet does mean you can always find a stream to watch somewhere, but that's piracy and a very bad thing. My 3 boys never, ever watch broadcast TV, but know all about current programmes and "stars" because of the internet. They'll never pay the TC licence and I suspect it's the same for most of they're friends. The BBC need to find an alternative.
Many moons ago, a colleague of mine got married. He had been living with his fiancé for years, and just before they tied the knot, they decided to rationalise their affairs; get wills done etc.
He had taken out a sky subscription a decade previously, on a basic sports package. But over the years, as special offers on events had occurred, he had taken out more and more subs - to the extent it was costing a fortune each month. Since they were both well-paid engineers he had not really noticed the outgoings.
So he tried to think back to what they had watched over the previous few months, realised it was next to nothing, and cancelled the lot. The thinking being that he could always get a new subscription if he wanted.
I fear it is very easy for these things to get out of hand.
FWIW I hardly ever watch telly at all because there is too much of it and the quality is pretty dire compared with reading a book, or the radio. Or indeed watching a dormouse sleeping.
I use radio a lot. We have a TV licence - like most older people - partly because of Gardeners World and bits of other live broadcasting, and the times that BBC TV news service is just sort of essential.
Radio is free, but a mix of R4, R3, R5, TMS, and World Service is easily worth double the licence fee. I use LBC a bit but the intrusive advertising is just abysmal. So long live the BBC with all its faults.
Serious question: What do politics anoraks without a TV licence do at 10pm on General Election night?
Personally, on election nights, I'm on here. Coverage is far better, more intelligent and more even handed. 90% of the time talking political heads say exactly what you would have expected them to say.
That said, last election, I was so nervous I couldn't watch anything except the price of the pound. Once it became apparent that that had gone up a bit, it was apparent enough that my worst case scenario had been avoided. I watched a bit of the BBC coverage, but it was like watching a funeral, so I turned over to ITV, where the coverage was surprisingly good. The Balls/Osborne double act, in particular, was excellent, as was Alan Johnson. That would have been worth paying for, except that because of the unique way ITV is funded, you don't have to.
Anyway - a quick audit of my viewing habits over the past fortnight puts Amazon prime well out in front, because I'm re-watching Parks and Recreation from the start - but in second place is Channel 5 and its moderately interesting real life shows about the emergency services or railways or life in picturesque parts of England. TV that doesn't hate you.
Point taken re election night, in part I do the same; but PB content on election night is, in general, an informed distillation from material coming in from multiple media sources, so it won't do on its own. For me - a traditionalist - the BBC remains the best single constant source, though not the quickest, on election night. Though it has dire moments.
Election night is ritual as well as information. BBC does this best still.
Sorry but the BBC is no better at that than Sky or other sources, let alone PB which is far, far better.
The days of the BBC being somehow without peer are long, long gone.
Unfair comparison. PB (comments) is almost exclusively relying on the reporting of the BBC and others, so of course it is more up to date than any one source, but they are primary sources with people on the ground - say if the PA makes a mistake, the reporters can often see that there's been an error, while all data service users can do is speculate.
Why is the unidentified BBC presenter sexual predator story getting so much more coverage than the one about the unidentified MP accused of rape being allowed to stand as a candidate for the Tories at the next general election? I genuinely don’t get it. Both seem equally bad and to be of equal public interest.
Tories obviously have better control of the media
Tories suspended their bloke pretty swiftly. Also, BBC presenters are more interesting than backbench Tories. I used to know which tory it was but I have forgotten.
Are BBC presenters more interesting? Lots of people here are saying they don't watch the BBC!
For those who engage in gossip etc, probably yes.
That doesn't include me. I don't watch the BBC, I couldn't care less what happened on Eastenders, and I don't try to keep up with the Kardashians. But many people do and they probably care more about such celebrity gossip than the ins and outs of politics.
The key is to have choice. Let those who watch the BBC and want its programming choose to fund it.
The pool of people who are willing to pay the TV licence are slowly dying out or deciding they don't need it. As I've said before, my lads will never pay the TV licence. Not because they hate the BBC, but because they don't consume its content and its format isn't something they can understand- sitting down, at a certain time to watch a soap or reality show every week? Why?
This is deeply disturbing. An investigation has claimed that the ship sinking near Greece happened because the Greek coastguard was towing it towards Italy. Survivor accounts have been tampered with and mobile phones that supposedly had documentary evidence of the towing, confiscated.
If this is what happened, it's quite a blow against those who naively think that towing ships back is a good solution.
Actually I suspect some of those that think towing boats back is a good idea would see this as a price worth paying, in fact useful décourager les autres.
Yes, it crossed my mind to mention that, but I would prefer to let those people distinguish themselves from those who might have thought towbacks sound good in theory but would be put off by the practical dangers. I don't want to tar the merely naive with the brush of callousness.
Playing devil's advocate:
If towbacks are a bad idea, surely so are tow forwards? Both involve putting a hawser onto the ship's bow (usually), and towing it. If the land area they came from is nearest, surely it's better to tow them there than a greater distance?
Why is towing problematic, and towbacks worse?
Basically it's not what ships are designed for (odd exceptions like barges and harbour tugs), and you have 2 large masses pulling each other about unpredictably. The distinction is not so much tow back vs forward as voluntary and cooperative vs hostile tow. You want to have your towing bridle set up just so, not just hook one rope to the bugger and pull.
The number of people who seem to think that pulling one boat from another, means that the towed boat will happily follow the towing boat, neatly and without fuss….
Just consider the transient loads on the towing rope/cable.
The press love anything that sells papers in the silly season, they love sex scandals at any time, they love moralising about sex scandals and they love talking about themselves.
Of course they would find this one irresistible.
Also the media love talking about the media....
And media groups with rival broadcasting arms love bashing the BBC.
Well it goes both ways.
After thinking about it for 30 seconds, I'm not sure it does go both ways. Does the BBC habitually attack Fleet Street or other media groups?
ETA a quick glance at the Telegraph and Times home pages finds two other anti-BBC stories, unrelated to this one. Where is the BBC's equivalent?
None of the BBC's rivals are extracting money with menaces from the BBC's customers. You might not agree with the editorial position of, say, The Telegraph or The Guardian, but you are freenit to consume them in a way you are not with the BBC. Not surprising if anti-beebery is only one way. That said, the Beeb was right on board when Hugh Grant was trying to limit the power of the press. The BBC are keen to hit back when they can. The Beeb are very much of the view that life would be better if they were the only arbiter of the news agenda.
True and they even have their own fact check service set up with BBC Verify.
It’s time we found an alternative way to fund the BBC removing the license fee and funding the means of transmission via taxation.
Richard Sharp, yesterday, was saying the ‘well off’ should pay more for the BBC than poorer households. No. The BBC is losing listeners and viewers. The license fee in its current form is untenable. You cannot demand people pay more for a service they use less and less.
I've been saying this for years, and the reaction from many was "You just hate the BBC!"
Which is rubbish. I love the BBC. I personally have zero problem with paying the licence fee, and believe I get value for it from BBC 4 alone.
But I'm not everyone, and the world has become a much more exciting place, media-wise. People can get their entertainment and news from so many more sources, and the licence fee increasingly looks like an anachronism of little relevance to large sectors of the population.
I don't know what the answer is, but people who proclaim to love the BBC should be asking whether insisting on keeping the licence fee is actually going to kill the thing they love.
We used to pay for Sky but we found that the only channels we watched live were BBC/Sky News channels and music channels on in the background. Everything else we watched on catch up. We gradually realised how much money we were wasting by not watching broadcast TV so cancelled our subscription and decided to do without broadcast telly completely, cancelling the TV licence as well. We now watch far less TV, only watching YouTube/Netflix/Prime and that tends to be only for an hour or two in the evening. I didn't cancel the TV licence because I hate the BBC, but because we don't watch 99% of their output, same as Sky. The majority of sports are all pay per view anyway, but we're not allowed to pay for it and watch it live by a recognised broadcaster as we don't have a TV licence, so that means I can't pay 6 quid for Discovery Plus to watch the Mountain Biking Downhill World Cup because I don't pay the BBC 160 quid! Last year, when RedBull had the rights, they broadcast it live free, so we could watch it because they're not a recognised broadcaster (although that's quite a grey area). The internet does mean you can always find a stream to watch somewhere, but that's piracy and a very bad thing. My 3 boys never, ever watch broadcast TV, but know all about current programmes and "stars" because of the internet. They'll never pay the TC licence and I suspect it's the same for most of they're friends. The BBC need to find an alternative.
Many moons ago, a colleague of mine got married. He had been living with his fiancé for years, and just before they tied the knot, they decided to rationalise their affairs; get wills done etc.
He had taken out a sky subscription a decade previously, on a basic sports package. But over the years, as special offers on events had occurred, he had taken out more and more subs - to the extent it was costing a fortune each month. Since they were both well-paid engineers he had not really noticed the outgoings.
So he tried to think back to what they had watched over the previous few months, realised it was next to nothing, and cancelled the lot. The thinking being that he could always get a new subscription if he wanted.
I fear it is very easy for these things to get out of hand.
FWIW I hardly ever watch telly at all because there is too much of it and the quality is pretty dire compared with reading a book, or the radio. Or indeed watching a dormouse sleeping.
I use radio a lot. We have a TV licence - like most older people - partly because of Gardeners World and bits of other live broadcasting, and the times that BBC TV news service is just sort of essential.
Radio is free, but a mix of R4, R3, R5, TMS, and World Service is easily worth double the licence fee. I use LBC a bit but the intrusive advertising is just abysmal. So long live the BBC with all its faults.
Serious question: What do politics anoraks without a TV licence do at 10pm on General Election night?
Personally, on election nights, I'm on here. Coverage is far better, more intelligent and more even handed. 90% of the time talking political heads say exactly what you would have expected them to say.
That said, last election, I was so nervous I couldn't watch anything except the price of the pound. Once it became apparent that that had gone up a bit, it was apparent enough that my worst case scenario had been avoided. I watched a bit of the BBC coverage, but it was like watching a funeral, so I turned over to ITV, where the coverage was surprisingly good. The Balls/Osborne double act, in particular, was excellent, as was Alan Johnson. That would have been worth paying for, except that because of the unique way ITV is funded, you don't have to.
Anyway - a quick audit of my viewing habits over the past fortnight puts Amazon prime well out in front, because I'm re-watching Parks and Recreation from the start - but in second place is Channel 5 and its moderately interesting real life shows about the emergency services or railways or life in picturesque parts of England. TV that doesn't hate you.
Point taken re election night, in part I do the same; but PB content on election night is, in general, an informed distillation from material coming in from multiple media sources, so it won't do on its own. For me - a traditionalist - the BBC remains the best single constant source, though not the quickest, on election night. Though it has dire moments.
Election night is ritual as well as information. BBC does this best still.
Sorry but the BBC is no better at that than Sky or other sources, let alone PB which is far, far better.
The days of the BBC being somehow without peer are long, long gone.
Unfair comparison. PB (comments) is almost exclusively relying on the reporting of the BBC and others, so of course it is more up to date than any one source, but they are primary sources with people on the ground - say if the PA makes a mistake, the reporters can often see that there's been an error, while all data service users can do is speculate.
Sorry but no, PB is normally well ahead of the BBC. Hence why PBers can make good money on election nights, by being ahead of the curve.
But if you wish to compare the BBC to other on the ground sources, there seems little to no difference between election night reporting from the BBC or from Sky News, as I'd already said in that comment you responded to.
Remember when pollsters found Boris Johnson had better ratings in Scotland than Alex Salmond?
Half of people questioned by pollsters believe that Humza Yousaf has done a bad job in his first 100 days as first minister.
Fewer than a quarter of voters (23 per cent) endorsed his tenure, which has been fraught with internal party issues and U-turns on the deposit return scheme and highly protected marine areas.
A poll in April had suggested that 19 per cent of people thought Yousaf was doing well, and 44 per cent believed the opposite, although his administration was just weeks old when it was conducted.
He [Yousaf] had a slightly better rating than Rishi Sunak, with 22 per cent of Scots saying he was doing a good job leading the UK government, compared to 59 per cent who said he was doing a bad job.
On favourability, 28 per cent had a favourable view of Yousaf, and 51 per cent had an unfavourable view.
Those are awful numbers for Yousaf, looks like the SNP in Scotland could see a swing against them to Labour as bad as the Tories in England do
Both the SNP and the Tories are proof that party members are not the best people to choose party leaders.
Albeit Labour members also chose Starmer and Truss was Tory members choice not Sunak. Perhaps if the SNP ratings continue to freefall the SNP may try and remove SNP members choice Yousaf and replace him with Forbes as Tory MPs replaced Truss with Sunak
I don't see it happening any time soon. My impression is that Yousaf was the establishment choice as well as the members' choice. If people believe Yousaf is responsible for the poor polling, fair enough, it might happen. But I don't think that's the case. Similarly, I don't think it's consensus in Conservative circles that Sunak is bad per se, just struggling against headwinds that would hurt any leader. I know that a sizeable portion of conservatives do blame Sunak, but it feels to me like a faction rather than a majority.
Its exit from Thames Water proved to be well timed...
...Macquarie has had enormous success buying public infrastructure and placing it in their funds. It can then charge fees, and receive dividends for its part-ownership, as well as enjoy any increase in the asset price.
Estimates have put dividends paid to underlying investors, including itself, for Thames Water at £2.7bn over the 11-year period it oversaw the asset.
“The dividend yield to equity shareholders earned from our funds’ investment was in line with listed UK water utility companies,” Macquarie says....
If Macquarie sold its final stake six years ago (so from a reading of that began selling even further back) then its not their responsibility.
Presumably whoever bought the stock six or more years ago did their due diligence at the time of purchase?
They loaded the company with debt (a fair amount of which they allegedly still hold) partially in order to pay themselves outsize dividends. So the current financial state uf the company is very much their doing. Legally they escape responsibility, as they have passed the equity in the whole mess on to some other suckers.
Those in charge of regulator which allowed them to do so is also responsible - though again will avoid any consequences.
Privatisation of monopoly utilities is a heads they win, tails the customer loses, proposition. Utterly indefensible.
If the government and regulator had any guts, they'd refuse price rises, which would probably drive the whole operation into bankruptcy. That's the only way Macquarie would (as bond holders) suffer any consequences.
Why is the unidentified BBC presenter sexual predator story getting so much more coverage than the one about the unidentified MP accused of rape being allowed to stand as a candidate for the Tories at the next general election? I genuinely don’t get it. Both seem equally bad and to be of equal public interest.
Tories obviously have better control of the media
Tories suspended their bloke pretty swiftly. Also, BBC presenters are more interesting than backbench Tories. I used to know which tory it was but I have forgotten.
Are BBC presenters more interesting? Lots of people here are saying they don't watch the BBC!
For those who engage in gossip etc, probably yes.
That doesn't include me. I don't watch the BBC, I couldn't care less what happened on Eastenders, and I don't try to keep up with the Kardashians. But many people do and they probably care more about such celebrity gossip than the ins and outs of politics.
The key is to have choice. Let those who watch the BBC and want its programming choose to fund it.
Given the next government (nearly certain), the change from license fee to internet access tax is inevitable now, I think.
Politically, it is the simplest solution.
If you provide internet access in the U.K. (mobile or fixed), then there will be x added to the bill.
The press love anything that sells papers in the silly season, they love sex scandals at any time, they love moralising about sex scandals and they love talking about themselves.
Of course they would find this one irresistible.
Also the media love talking about the media....
And media groups with rival broadcasting arms love bashing the BBC.
Well it goes both ways.
After thinking about it for 30 seconds, I'm not sure it does go both ways. Does the BBC habitually attack Fleet Street or other media groups?
ETA a quick glance at the Telegraph and Times home pages finds two other anti-BBC stories, unrelated to this one. Where is the BBC's equivalent?
None of the BBC's rivals are extracting money with menaces from the BBC's customers. You might not agree with the editorial position of, say, The Telegraph or The Guardian, but you are freenit to consume them in a way you are not with the BBC. Not surprising if anti-beebery is only one way. That said, the Beeb was right on board when Hugh Grant was trying to limit the power of the press. The BBC are keen to hit back when they can. The Beeb are very much of the view that life would be better if they were the only arbiter of the news agenda.
True and they even have their own fact check service set up with BBC Verify.
It’s time we found an alternative way to fund the BBC removing the license fee and funding the means of transmission via taxation.
Richard Sharp, yesterday, was saying the ‘well off’ should pay more for the BBC than poorer households. No. The BBC is losing listeners and viewers. The license fee in its current form is untenable. You cannot demand people pay more for a service they use less and less.
I've been saying this for years, and the reaction from many was "You just hate the BBC!"
Which is rubbish. I love the BBC. I personally have zero problem with paying the licence fee, and believe I get value for it from BBC 4 alone.
But I'm not everyone, and the world has become a much more exciting place, media-wise. People can get their entertainment and news from so many more sources, and the licence fee increasingly looks like an anachronism of little relevance to large sectors of the population.
I don't know what the answer is, but people who proclaim to love the BBC should be asking whether insisting on keeping the licence fee is actually going to kill the thing they love.
We used to pay for Sky but we found that the only channels we watched live were BBC/Sky News channels and music channels on in the background. Everything else we watched on catch up. We gradually realised how much money we were wasting by not watching broadcast TV so cancelled our subscription and decided to do without broadcast telly completely, cancelling the TV licence as well. We now watch far less TV, only watching YouTube/Netflix/Prime and that tends to be only for an hour or two in the evening. I didn't cancel the TV licence because I hate the BBC, but because we don't watch 99% of their output, same as Sky. The majority of sports are all pay per view anyway, but we're not allowed to pay for it and watch it live by a recognised broadcaster as we don't have a TV licence, so that means I can't pay 6 quid for Discovery Plus to watch the Mountain Biking Downhill World Cup because I don't pay the BBC 160 quid! Last year, when RedBull had the rights, they broadcast it live free, so we could watch it because they're not a recognised broadcaster (although that's quite a grey area). The internet does mean you can always find a stream to watch somewhere, but that's piracy and a very bad thing. My 3 boys never, ever watch broadcast TV, but know all about current programmes and "stars" because of the internet. They'll never pay the TC licence and I suspect it's the same for most of they're friends. The BBC need to find an alternative.
Many moons ago, a colleague of mine got married. He had been living with his fiancé for years, and just before they tied the knot, they decided to rationalise their affairs; get wills done etc.
He had taken out a sky subscription a decade previously, on a basic sports package. But over the years, as special offers on events had occurred, he had taken out more and more subs - to the extent it was costing a fortune each month. Since they were both well-paid engineers he had not really noticed the outgoings.
So he tried to think back to what they had watched over the previous few months, realised it was next to nothing, and cancelled the lot. The thinking being that he could always get a new subscription if he wanted.
I fear it is very easy for these things to get out of hand.
FWIW I hardly ever watch telly at all because there is too much of it and the quality is pretty dire compared with reading a book, or the radio. Or indeed watching a dormouse sleeping.
I use radio a lot. We have a TV licence - like most older people - partly because of Gardeners World and bits of other live broadcasting, and the times that BBC TV news service is just sort of essential.
Radio is free, but a mix of R4, R3, R5, TMS, and World Service is easily worth double the licence fee. I use LBC a bit but the intrusive advertising is just abysmal. So long live the BBC with all its faults.
Serious question: What do politics anoraks without a TV licence do at 10pm on General Election night?
Personally, on election nights, I'm on here. Coverage is far better, more intelligent and more even handed. 90% of the time talking political heads say exactly what you would have expected them to say.
That said, last election, I was so nervous I couldn't watch anything except the price of the pound. Once it became apparent that that had gone up a bit, it was apparent enough that my worst case scenario had been avoided. I watched a bit of the BBC coverage, but it was like watching a funeral, so I turned over to ITV, where the coverage was surprisingly good. The Balls/Osborne double act, in particular, was excellent, as was Alan Johnson. That would have been worth paying for, except that because of the unique way ITV is funded, you don't have to.
Anyway - a quick audit of my viewing habits over the past fortnight puts Amazon prime well out in front, because I'm re-watching Parks and Recreation from the start - but in second place is Channel 5 and its moderately interesting real life shows about the emergency services or railways or life in picturesque parts of England. TV that doesn't hate you.
Point taken re election night, in part I do the same; but PB content on election night is, in general, an informed distillation from material coming in from multiple media sources, so it won't do on its own. For me - a traditionalist - the BBC remains the best single constant source, though not the quickest, on election night. Though it has dire moments.
Election night is ritual as well as information. BBC does this best still.
Sorry but the BBC is no better at that than Sky or other sources, let alone PB which is far, far better.
The days of the BBC being somehow without peer are long, long gone.
Unfair comparison. PB (comments) is almost exclusively relying on the reporting of the BBC and others, so of course it is more up to date than any one source, but they are primary sources with people on the ground - say if the PA makes a mistake, the reporters can often see that there's been an error, while all data service users can do is speculate.
Agree you do need the people on the ground (or at least, we benefit from them). It's just no longer obviously the case that the BBC do it any better than anyone else. For my tastes, they're slightly less good than their direct competitors at ITN and Sky.
Its exit from Thames Water proved to be well timed...
...Macquarie has had enormous success buying public infrastructure and placing it in their funds. It can then charge fees, and receive dividends for its part-ownership, as well as enjoy any increase in the asset price.
Estimates have put dividends paid to underlying investors, including itself, for Thames Water at £2.7bn over the 11-year period it oversaw the asset.
“The dividend yield to equity shareholders earned from our funds’ investment was in line with listed UK water utility companies,” Macquarie says....
If Macquarie sold its final stake six years ago (so from a reading of that began selling even further back) then its not their responsibility.
Presumably whoever bought the stock six or more years ago did their due diligence at the time of purchase?
They loaded the company with debt (a fair amount of which they allegedly still hold) partially in order to pay themselves outsize dividends. So the current financial state uf the company is very much their doing. Legally they escape responsibility, as they have passed the equity in the whole mess on to some other suckers.
Those in charge of regulator which allowed them to do so is also responsible - though again will avoid any consequences.
Privatisation of monopoly utilities is a heads they win, tails the customer loses, proposition. Utterly indefensible.
Sorry but they sold their stake to private firms who did their own due diligence and decided it was worth investing in.
Now maybe that due diligence was flawed, but if it was it was there responsibility, not the taxpayers and not Macquaries.
Though you haven't said how the customer loses if Thames goes bust. The losers will be the 'suckers' who failed to do good enough due diligence presumably, and the bondholders, not the customers. If Thames goes bust and gets nationalised for £1 with the bondholders and the shareholders wiped out then the losses will be purely in the private sector, not the taxpayer or customer's burden.
The press love anything that sells papers in the silly season, they love sex scandals at any time, they love moralising about sex scandals and they love talking about themselves.
Of course they would find this one irresistible.
Also the media love talking about the media....
And media groups with rival broadcasting arms love bashing the BBC.
Well it goes both ways.
After thinking about it for 30 seconds, I'm not sure it does go both ways. Does the BBC habitually attack Fleet Street or other media groups?
ETA a quick glance at the Telegraph and Times home pages finds two other anti-BBC stories, unrelated to this one. Where is the BBC's equivalent?
None of the BBC's rivals are extracting money with menaces from the BBC's customers. You might not agree with the editorial position of, say, The Telegraph or The Guardian, but you are freenit to consume them in a way you are not with the BBC. Not surprising if anti-beebery is only one way. That said, the Beeb was right on board when Hugh Grant was trying to limit the power of the press. The BBC are keen to hit back when they can. The Beeb are very much of the view that life would be better if they were the only arbiter of the news agenda.
True and they even have their own fact check service set up with BBC Verify.
It’s time we found an alternative way to fund the BBC removing the license fee and funding the means of transmission via taxation.
Richard Sharp, yesterday, was saying the ‘well off’ should pay more for the BBC than poorer households. No. The BBC is losing listeners and viewers. The license fee in its current form is untenable. You cannot demand people pay more for a service they use less and less.
I've been saying this for years, and the reaction from many was "You just hate the BBC!"
Which is rubbish. I love the BBC. I personally have zero problem with paying the licence fee, and believe I get value for it from BBC 4 alone.
But I'm not everyone, and the world has become a much more exciting place, media-wise. People can get their entertainment and news from so many more sources, and the licence fee increasingly looks like an anachronism of little relevance to large sectors of the population.
I don't know what the answer is, but people who proclaim to love the BBC should be asking whether insisting on keeping the licence fee is actually going to kill the thing they love.
We used to pay for Sky but we found that the only channels we watched live were BBC/Sky News channels and music channels on in the background. Everything else we watched on catch up. We gradually realised how much money we were wasting by not watching broadcast TV so cancelled our subscription and decided to do without broadcast telly completely, cancelling the TV licence as well. We now watch far less TV, only watching YouTube/Netflix/Prime and that tends to be only for an hour or two in the evening. I didn't cancel the TV licence because I hate the BBC, but because we don't watch 99% of their output, same as Sky. The majority of sports are all pay per view anyway, but we're not allowed to pay for it and watch it live by a recognised broadcaster as we don't have a TV licence, so that means I can't pay 6 quid for Discovery Plus to watch the Mountain Biking Downhill World Cup because I don't pay the BBC 160 quid! Last year, when RedBull had the rights, they broadcast it live free, so we could watch it because they're not a recognised broadcaster (although that's quite a grey area). The internet does mean you can always find a stream to watch somewhere, but that's piracy and a very bad thing. My 3 boys never, ever watch broadcast TV, but know all about current programmes and "stars" because of the internet. They'll never pay the TC licence and I suspect it's the same for most of they're friends. The BBC need to find an alternative.
Many moons ago, a colleague of mine got married. He had been living with his fiancé for years, and just before they tied the knot, they decided to rationalise their affairs; get wills done etc.
He had taken out a sky subscription a decade previously, on a basic sports package. But over the years, as special offers on events had occurred, he had taken out more and more subs - to the extent it was costing a fortune each month. Since they were both well-paid engineers he had not really noticed the outgoings.
So he tried to think back to what they had watched over the previous few months, realised it was next to nothing, and cancelled the lot. The thinking being that he could always get a new subscription if he wanted.
I fear it is very easy for these things to get out of hand.
FWIW I hardly ever watch telly at all because there is too much of it and the quality is pretty dire compared with reading a book, or the radio. Or indeed watching a dormouse sleeping.
I use radio a lot. We have a TV licence - like most older people - partly because of Gardeners World and bits of other live broadcasting, and the times that BBC TV news service is just sort of essential.
Radio is free, but a mix of R4, R3, R5, TMS, and World Service is easily worth double the licence fee. I use LBC a bit but the intrusive advertising is just abysmal. So long live the BBC with all its faults.
Serious question: What do politics anoraks without a TV licence do at 10pm on General Election night?
Personally, on election nights, I'm on here. Coverage is far better, more intelligent and more even handed. 90% of the time talking political heads say exactly what you would have expected them to say.
That said, last election, I was so nervous I couldn't watch anything except the price of the pound. Once it became apparent that that had gone up a bit, it was apparent enough that my worst case scenario had been avoided. I watched a bit of the BBC coverage, but it was like watching a funeral, so I turned over to ITV, where the coverage was surprisingly good. The Balls/Osborne double act, in particular, was excellent, as was Alan Johnson. That would have been worth paying for, except that because of the unique way ITV is funded, you don't have to.
Anyway - a quick audit of my viewing habits over the past fortnight puts Amazon prime well out in front, because I'm re-watching Parks and Recreation from the start - but in second place is Channel 5 and its moderately interesting real life shows about the emergency services or railways or life in picturesque parts of England. TV that doesn't hate you.
Point taken re election night, in part I do the same; but PB content on election night is, in general, an informed distillation from material coming in from multiple media sources, so it won't do on its own. For me - a traditionalist - the BBC remains the best single constant source, though not the quickest, on election night. Though it has dire moments.
Election night is ritual as well as information. BBC does this best still.
Sorry but the BBC is no better at that than Sky or other sources, let alone PB which is far, far better.
The days of the BBC being somehow without peer are long, long gone.
Unfair comparison. PB (comments) is almost exclusively relying on the reporting of the BBC and others, so of course it is more up to date than any one source, but they are primary sources with people on the ground - say if the PA makes a mistake, the reporters can often see that there's been an error, while all data service users can do is speculate.
Sorry but no, PB is normally well ahead of the BBC. Hence why PBers can make good money on election nights, by being ahead of the curve.
But if you wish to compare the BBC to other on the ground sources, there seems little to no difference between election night reporting from the BBC or from Sky News.
Not sure what your disagreement is. PB (comments) is only as up to date as the sum of all media sources. The BBC could do the same if they began just republishing ITV / Sky work, which is probably against professional courtesy. But the fallacy that the Internet is smarter than media really bugs me.
So @Dixiedean stated that (paraphrasing so I hope I have this right) to appreciate the issue for a certain group you had to be a member of that certain group (not all groups, just that particular example). You disagreed and used an analogy to demonstrate that wasn’t true. It was an excellent analogy in that in the case you gave (a completely different group) it clearly wasn’t true which was the point you wanted to make.
Analogies are very useful. They can often bring sudden clarity to an issue and can often provide easy routes to solving difficult problems (not quite the same, but the issue of 3 different sized circles with tangents on each pair of circles all interesting in a straight line is hard to prove, but easy if you change it to 3 balls and intersecting planes).
The problem with analogies is it can appear you have one when you haven’t.
Whether you agree with @Dixiedean or not, and I am sure he was generalizing anyway, but it is not true that your analogy proves him wrong as each case depends on the context (the group involved). You have picked one example that is at one extreme. His was different.
You simply picked a case that was obviously true. There are plenty of examples where what you deduce is not obviously true.
Eg. I think it is reasonable to assume that as someone who doesn’t speak Chinese I have little understanding of Chinese grammar. For me that is certainly a fact and I assume true for others. So it is true that those best able to comment are generally Chinese speakers. As a left hander I am aware that most right handers are not aware of some of the niche issues eg playing cards. Left handers are clearly more qualified to comment. You picked an example that you don’t have to be a Jew to appreciate the holocaust was wrong (paraphrasing) is true but was both tasteless and invalid compared to @dixiedean’s point.
I don’t want to harp on about other issues but you brought these up again (not me). You have called me a liar directly yesterday and implied I lied a few weeks ago by posting laughter when I apologised that I had to leave temporarily to deal with the clearance of my deceased father’s house. Yesterday you accused me of being operatic in my reaction to your post about the death of my father. Really you think I overreacted and you haven’t gone beyond the pale by posting laughter? I mean really you do think that is ok? Didn't even attempt an apology.
I just want to formally distance myself from this conversation. I only jumped in to make a point about the pervasiveness of analogy in human cognition, and much of the above is aimed at Miklosvar alone, not me. I certainly wasn't posting anything about Jews and the holocaust nor laughing at kjh's situation. kjh, I know you are already aware that what I'm saying here is the case, but just in case anybody else reads your post and thinks it's directed at me, I want them to know that it's not.
So do I.
I think you (kjh) get way over invested in Internet disagreements. I am sorry if I have offended you and will take care in future not to interact with you.
Apology accepted, thank you. Seeing as I rarely have internet disagreements (I can't remember the last one I had that wasn't with you)
You are regularly triggered by @HYUFD and feel the need to point out, at length, why this is so.
Used to a long time ago. Don't now and haven't for a very, very long time. @HYUFD and I get on very well now with which I think he will agree. We obviously discuss things but it is always very amicable now and are more likely to like each others posts than argue. I really can't think of the last time we had a spat, but I do agree we used to. Can't think of a single other person really. I suppose occasionally with Leon, but that is mainly banter.
Also, which I should have said, I can't take credit for all of that. There is at least 50% credit due to @hyufd.
I'm embarrassed that you remember that @TOPPING , especially after so much time.
The press love anything that sells papers in the silly season, they love sex scandals at any time, they love moralising about sex scandals and they love talking about themselves.
Of course they would find this one irresistible.
Also the media love talking about the media....
And media groups with rival broadcasting arms love bashing the BBC.
Well it goes both ways.
After thinking about it for 30 seconds, I'm not sure it does go both ways. Does the BBC habitually attack Fleet Street or other media groups?
ETA a quick glance at the Telegraph and Times home pages finds two other anti-BBC stories, unrelated to this one. Where is the BBC's equivalent?
None of the BBC's rivals are extracting money with menaces from the BBC's customers. You might not agree with the editorial position of, say, The Telegraph or The Guardian, but you are freenit to consume them in a way you are not with the BBC. Not surprising if anti-beebery is only one way. That said, the Beeb was right on board when Hugh Grant was trying to limit the power of the press. The BBC are keen to hit back when they can. The Beeb are very much of the view that life would be better if they were the only arbiter of the news agenda.
True and they even have their own fact check service set up with BBC Verify.
It’s time we found an alternative way to fund the BBC removing the license fee and funding the means of transmission via taxation.
Richard Sharp, yesterday, was saying the ‘well off’ should pay more for the BBC than poorer households. No. The BBC is losing listeners and viewers. The license fee in its current form is untenable. You cannot demand people pay more for a service they use less and less.
I've been saying this for years, and the reaction from many was "You just hate the BBC!"
Which is rubbish. I love the BBC. I personally have zero problem with paying the licence fee, and believe I get value for it from BBC 4 alone.
But I'm not everyone, and the world has become a much more exciting place, media-wise. People can get their entertainment and news from so many more sources, and the licence fee increasingly looks like an anachronism of little relevance to large sectors of the population.
I don't know what the answer is, but people who proclaim to love the BBC should be asking whether insisting on keeping the licence fee is actually going to kill the thing they love.
We used to pay for Sky but we found that the only channels we watched live were BBC/Sky News channels and music channels on in the background. Everything else we watched on catch up. We gradually realised how much money we were wasting by not watching broadcast TV so cancelled our subscription and decided to do without broadcast telly completely, cancelling the TV licence as well. We now watch far less TV, only watching YouTube/Netflix/Prime and that tends to be only for an hour or two in the evening. I didn't cancel the TV licence because I hate the BBC, but because we don't watch 99% of their output, same as Sky. The majority of sports are all pay per view anyway, but we're not allowed to pay for it and watch it live by a recognised broadcaster as we don't have a TV licence, so that means I can't pay 6 quid for Discovery Plus to watch the Mountain Biking Downhill World Cup because I don't pay the BBC 160 quid! Last year, when RedBull had the rights, they broadcast it live free, so we could watch it because they're not a recognised broadcaster (although that's quite a grey area). The internet does mean you can always find a stream to watch somewhere, but that's piracy and a very bad thing. My 3 boys never, ever watch broadcast TV, but know all about current programmes and "stars" because of the internet. They'll never pay the TC licence and I suspect it's the same for most of they're friends. The BBC need to find an alternative.
Many moons ago, a colleague of mine got married. He had been living with his fiancé for years, and just before they tied the knot, they decided to rationalise their affairs; get wills done etc.
He had taken out a sky subscription a decade previously, on a basic sports package. But over the years, as special offers on events had occurred, he had taken out more and more subs - to the extent it was costing a fortune each month. Since they were both well-paid engineers he had not really noticed the outgoings.
So he tried to think back to what they had watched over the previous few months, realised it was next to nothing, and cancelled the lot. The thinking being that he could always get a new subscription if he wanted.
I fear it is very easy for these things to get out of hand.
FWIW I hardly ever watch telly at all because there is too much of it and the quality is pretty dire compared with reading a book, or the radio. Or indeed watching a dormouse sleeping.
I use radio a lot. We have a TV licence - like most older people - partly because of Gardeners World and bits of other live broadcasting, and the times that BBC TV news service is just sort of essential.
Radio is free, but a mix of R4, R3, R5, TMS, and World Service is easily worth double the licence fee. I use LBC a bit but the intrusive advertising is just abysmal. So long live the BBC with all its faults.
Serious question: What do politics anoraks without a TV licence do at 10pm on General Election night?
Personally, on election nights, I'm on here. Coverage is far better, more intelligent and more even handed. 90% of the time talking political heads say exactly what you would have expected them to say.
That said, last election, I was so nervous I couldn't watch anything except the price of the pound. Once it became apparent that that had gone up a bit, it was apparent enough that my worst case scenario had been avoided. I watched a bit of the BBC coverage, but it was like watching a funeral, so I turned over to ITV, where the coverage was surprisingly good. The Balls/Osborne double act, in particular, was excellent, as was Alan Johnson. That would have been worth paying for, except that because of the unique way ITV is funded, you don't have to.
Anyway - a quick audit of my viewing habits over the past fortnight puts Amazon prime well out in front, because I'm re-watching Parks and Recreation from the start - but in second place is Channel 5 and its moderately interesting real life shows about the emergency services or railways or life in picturesque parts of England. TV that doesn't hate you.
Point taken re election night, in part I do the same; but PB content on election night is, in general, an informed distillation from material coming in from multiple media sources, so it won't do on its own. For me - a traditionalist - the BBC remains the best single constant source, though not the quickest, on election night. Though it has dire moments.
Election night is ritual as well as information. BBC does this best still.
Sorry but the BBC is no better at that than Sky or other sources, let alone PB which is far, far better.
The days of the BBC being somehow without peer are long, long gone.
Unfair comparison. PB (comments) is almost exclusively relying on the reporting of the BBC and others, so of course it is more up to date than any one source, but they are primary sources with people on the ground - say if the PA makes a mistake, the reporters can often see that there's been an error, while all data service users can do is speculate.
Sorry but no, PB is normally well ahead of the BBC. Hence why PBers can make good money on election nights, by being ahead of the curve.
But if you wish to compare the BBC to other on the ground sources, there seems little to no difference between election night reporting from the BBC or from Sky News.
Not sure what your disagreement is. PB (comments) is only as up to date as the sum of all media sources. The BBC could do the same if they began just republishing ITV / Sky work, which is probably against professional courtesy. But the fallacy that the Internet is smarter than media really bugs me.
The disagreement is with the idea that the BBC is somehow 'better'.
The BBC is no better than Sky/ITV.
That PB is better than the BBC is not a fallacy, because collating multiple sources including Press Association etc that aren't on TV immediately is better than relying upon a single, solitary, inferior source like the BBC - or any other single, solitary source.
Why is the unidentified BBC presenter sexual predator story getting so much more coverage than the one about the unidentified MP accused of rape being allowed to stand as a candidate for the Tories at the next general election? I genuinely don’t get it. Both seem equally bad and to be of equal public interest.
Tories obviously have better control of the media
Tories suspended their bloke pretty swiftly. Also, BBC presenters are more interesting than backbench Tories. I used to know which tory it was but I have forgotten.
Are BBC presenters more interesting? Lots of people here are saying they don't watch the BBC!
For those who engage in gossip etc, probably yes.
That doesn't include me. I don't watch the BBC, I couldn't care less what happened on Eastenders, and I don't try to keep up with the Kardashians. But many people do and they probably care more about such celebrity gossip than the ins and outs of politics.
The key is to have choice. Let those who watch the BBC and want its programming choose to fund it.
The pool of people who are willing to pay the TV licence are slowly dying out or deciding they don't need it. As I've said before, my lads will never pay the TV licence. Not because they hate the BBC, but because they don't consume its content and its format isn't something they can understand- sitting down, at a certain time to watch a soap or reality show every week? Why?
You need to pay the license fee if you so much as watch four seconds of Wimbledon in a year. My TV has no aerial. I do actually pay the license fee because I watch stuff on iplayer. Anyone with an aerial or who turns iplayer on for 5 or 6 seconds is required to pay the license fee. I reckon most people who don't think they need it (Not saying this is you btw !) do actually need it even if it's just happening to have ITV say (It doesn't need to be the BBC remember) on their smart TV as they turn it on to click the Netflix menu on their remote.
Also this story is clearly going to keep going for longer than it otherwise would have done because everyone loves a good game of "Guess Who" and amatuer jigsaw identification via social media. The UK's libel laws mean everyone can tell their mates who it is too but nary a nod or wink toward Presenter X on social media means you're skating on thin ice..
The press love anything that sells papers in the silly season, they love sex scandals at any time, they love moralising about sex scandals and they love talking about themselves.
Of course they would find this one irresistible.
Also the media love talking about the media....
And media groups with rival broadcasting arms love bashing the BBC.
Well it goes both ways.
After thinking about it for 30 seconds, I'm not sure it does go both ways. Does the BBC habitually attack Fleet Street or other media groups?
ETA a quick glance at the Telegraph and Times home pages finds two other anti-BBC stories, unrelated to this one. Where is the BBC's equivalent?
None of the BBC's rivals are extracting money with menaces from the BBC's customers. You might not agree with the editorial position of, say, The Telegraph or The Guardian, but you are freenit to consume them in a way you are not with the BBC. Not surprising if anti-beebery is only one way. That said, the Beeb was right on board when Hugh Grant was trying to limit the power of the press. The BBC are keen to hit back when they can. The Beeb are very much of the view that life would be better if they were the only arbiter of the news agenda.
True and they even have their own fact check service set up with BBC Verify.
It’s time we found an alternative way to fund the BBC removing the license fee and funding the means of transmission via taxation.
Richard Sharp, yesterday, was saying the ‘well off’ should pay more for the BBC than poorer households. No. The BBC is losing listeners and viewers. The license fee in its current form is untenable. You cannot demand people pay more for a service they use less and less.
I've been saying this for years, and the reaction from many was "You just hate the BBC!"
Which is rubbish. I love the BBC. I personally have zero problem with paying the licence fee, and believe I get value for it from BBC 4 alone.
But I'm not everyone, and the world has become a much more exciting place, media-wise. People can get their entertainment and news from so many more sources, and the licence fee increasingly looks like an anachronism of little relevance to large sectors of the population.
I don't know what the answer is, but people who proclaim to love the BBC should be asking whether insisting on keeping the licence fee is actually going to kill the thing they love.
We used to pay for Sky but we found that the only channels we watched live were BBC/Sky News channels and music channels on in the background. Everything else we watched on catch up. We gradually realised how much money we were wasting by not watching broadcast TV so cancelled our subscription and decided to do without broadcast telly completely, cancelling the TV licence as well. We now watch far less TV, only watching YouTube/Netflix/Prime and that tends to be only for an hour or two in the evening. I didn't cancel the TV licence because I hate the BBC, but because we don't watch 99% of their output, same as Sky. The majority of sports are all pay per view anyway, but we're not allowed to pay for it and watch it live by a recognised broadcaster as we don't have a TV licence, so that means I can't pay 6 quid for Discovery Plus to watch the Mountain Biking Downhill World Cup because I don't pay the BBC 160 quid! Last year, when RedBull had the rights, they broadcast it live free, so we could watch it because they're not a recognised broadcaster (although that's quite a grey area). The internet does mean you can always find a stream to watch somewhere, but that's piracy and a very bad thing. My 3 boys never, ever watch broadcast TV, but know all about current programmes and "stars" because of the internet. They'll never pay the TC licence and I suspect it's the same for most of they're friends. The BBC need to find an alternative.
Many moons ago, a colleague of mine got married. He had been living with his fiancé for years, and just before they tied the knot, they decided to rationalise their affairs; get wills done etc.
He had taken out a sky subscription a decade previously, on a basic sports package. But over the years, as special offers on events had occurred, he had taken out more and more subs - to the extent it was costing a fortune each month. Since they were both well-paid engineers he had not really noticed the outgoings.
So he tried to think back to what they had watched over the previous few months, realised it was next to nothing, and cancelled the lot. The thinking being that he could always get a new subscription if he wanted.
I fear it is very easy for these things to get out of hand.
FWIW I hardly ever watch telly at all because there is too much of it and the quality is pretty dire compared with reading a book, or the radio. Or indeed watching a dormouse sleeping.
I use radio a lot. We have a TV licence - like most older people - partly because of Gardeners World and bits of other live broadcasting, and the times that BBC TV news service is just sort of essential.
Radio is free, but a mix of R4, R3, R5, TMS, and World Service is easily worth double the licence fee. I use LBC a bit but the intrusive advertising is just abysmal. So long live the BBC with all its faults.
Serious question: What do politics anoraks without a TV licence do at 10pm on General Election night?
Personally, on election nights, I'm on here. Coverage is far better, more intelligent and more even handed. 90% of the time talking political heads say exactly what you would have expected them to say.
That said, last election, I was so nervous I couldn't watch anything except the price of the pound. Once it became apparent that that had gone up a bit, it was apparent enough that my worst case scenario had been avoided. I watched a bit of the BBC coverage, but it was like watching a funeral, so I turned over to ITV, where the coverage was surprisingly good. The Balls/Osborne double act, in particular, was excellent, as was Alan Johnson. That would have been worth paying for, except that because of the unique way ITV is funded, you don't have to.
Anyway - a quick audit of my viewing habits over the past fortnight puts Amazon prime well out in front, because I'm re-watching Parks and Recreation from the start - but in second place is Channel 5 and its moderately interesting real life shows about the emergency services or railways or life in picturesque parts of England. TV that doesn't hate you.
Point taken re election night, in part I do the same; but PB content on election night is, in general, an informed distillation from material coming in from multiple media sources, so it won't do on its own. For me - a traditionalist - the BBC remains the best single constant source, though not the quickest, on election night. Though it has dire moments.
Election night is ritual as well as information. BBC does this best still.
Sorry but the BBC is no better at that than Sky or other sources, let alone PB which is far, far better.
The days of the BBC being somehow without peer are long, long gone.
Unfair comparison. PB (comments) is almost exclusively relying on the reporting of the BBC and others, so of course it is more up to date than any one source, but they are primary sources with people on the ground - say if the PA makes a mistake, the reporters can often see that there's been an error, while all data service users can do is speculate.
Sorry but no, PB is normally well ahead of the BBC. Hence why PBers can make good money on election nights, by being ahead of the curve.
But if you wish to compare the BBC to other on the ground sources, there seems little to no difference between election night reporting from the BBC or from Sky News.
Not sure what your disagreement is. PB (comments) is only as up to date as the sum of all media sources. The BBC could do the same if they began just republishing ITV / Sky work, which is probably against professional courtesy. But the fallacy that the Internet is smarter than media really bugs me.
PB comments are definitely faster than reputable news sources. But we also get a lot of speculation ported directly from Twitter with very little by way of filter. There have been multiple instances of outright lies being thoughtlessly cut and paste from Another Place to this house.
Fast is a virtue, but other virtues can be sacrificed upon its altar.
Comments
Same is true of sports. I'd pay to watch cricket and rugby on telly. But you can only buy whole packages, 90% of the cost of which is football. And I don't dislike football, but I don't like it enough to pay for it.
Should I leave it there? Or should I go on about how commissioning and rights work? Or should I simply suggest you pause for reflection?
Meanwhile, a true story.
I was walking along a corridor of the old television centre in 2005 when a well-known reporter turned to me and said, 'Do you know about Jimmy Savile?' He then proceeded to fill me in with lurid details which were being routinely discussed in the staff canteen.
So about six years before the story blew and at a time when the BBC still claims to have had no knowledge. People knew alright.
That's not a reason in my book to condemn the BBC, although it would be sufficient ammunition for some angry people on internet platforms. But I think it's indicative of what happens to an organisation that is bloated and state funded (the two always go together).
The BBC puts out some great stuff. No doubt. But as an organisation it is often ludicrous.
p.s. And of course iPlayer could have secured global rights.
xx
Shopping beckons.
Ciao ciao xx
The BBC has become irrelevant. Sell it to GBNews for a pound and be done with it.
The majority of sports are all pay per view anyway, but we're not allowed to pay for it and watch it live by a recognised broadcaster as we don't have a TV licence, so that means I can't pay 6 quid for Discovery Plus to watch the Mountain Biking Downhill World Cup because I don't pay the BBC 160 quid! Last year, when RedBull had the rights, they broadcast it live free, so we could watch it because they're not a recognised broadcaster (although that's quite a grey area).
The internet does mean you can always find a stream to watch somewhere, but that's piracy and a very bad thing.
My 3 boys never, ever watch broadcast TV, but know all about current programmes and "stars" because of the internet. They'll never pay the TC licence and I suspect it's the same for most of they're friends.
The BBC need to find an alternative.
And bog standard BBC-the-media-competitor-bashing.
I wondered if this is because she is competent and all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds and so on or otherwise.
If it was otherwise she certainly mined her exits quite well.
I don't think she was asked why her predecessor (who had sounded much the same once) had left with such speed.
He had taken out a sky subscription a decade previously, on a basic sports package. But over the years, as special offers on events had occurred, he had taken out more and more subs - to the extent it was costing a fortune each month. Since they were both well-paid engineers he had not really noticed the outgoings.
So he tried to think back to what they had watched over the previous few months, realised it was next to nothing, and cancelled the lot. The thinking being that he could always get a new subscription if he wanted.
I fear it is very easy for these things to get out of hand.
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2023/jul/10/greek-shipwreck-hi-tech-investigation-suggests-coastguard-responsible-for-sinking
https://www.thenational.scot/news/23643712.wife-scottish-tory-mp-slammed-windfall-tax-bp-shares/
"Duguid was first elected to the Banff and Buchan seat in 2017. He is also the vice-chair of the British offshore oil and gas industry all-party parliamentary group, supported by OEUK."
I'm also unconvinced [edit] more gemerally, and not speaking here with reference to Mr Duguid whose transfer seemingly happened before he became a MP, that blind trusts or share transfers to family members (eg one Labour family firm co-owner to his children, IIRC) do much good.
It was prompted by the idea that the kindly Russians, forced ([poked') into this war by the iniquities of Ukrainian Nazism, the ghost of Bandera, NATO's eastwards expansion and the EU's mere existence, might be mining Ukrainian land and destroying Ukraine's infrastructure not because they care for Ukraine or Ukrainians, but because they and their supporters, excusers and appeasers are shits.
"The executive board at the Irish broadcaster RTÉ is being stood down as part of changes announced by its new director general.
...
RTÉ has been under pressure after undisclosed payments made to its top presenter were discovered last month."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3g810w4544o
I use radio a lot. We have a TV licence - like most older people - partly because of Gardeners World and bits of other live broadcasting, and the times that BBC TV news service is just sort of essential.
Radio is free, but a mix of R4, R3, R5, TMS, and World Service is easily worth double the licence fee. I use LBC a bit but the intrusive advertising is just abysmal. So long live the BBC with all its faults.
Serious question: What do politics anoraks without a TV licence do at 10pm on General Election night?
I think you (kjh) get way over invested in Internet disagreements. I am sorry if I have offended you and will take care in future not to interact with you.
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2023/jul/10/greek-shipwreck-hi-tech-investigation-suggests-coastguard-responsible-for-sinking
If this is what happened, it's quite a blow against those who naively think that towing ships back is a good solution.
Can we apply that dictum to the NHS?
Even if it were the case that the operational side of the business is being run well (debatable), the unmentioned elephant is the existence of £14bn or so in debt, some of it rather expensive, a lot of which
was run up to pay dividends to overseas investors.
There's no good reason at all why the company should be allowed to raise prices just to pay for that debt. But it sounds as though the regulator (whose executives seem to move in to jobs managing the water industry with curious regularity) is bending that way.
And NZ gets to join the massive Horizon Europe science collaboration, so there are winners all round.
https://twitter.com/edwinhayward/status/1678201110333386755
And safe towing speed will depend in part on the hull length of the towed vessel (basic physics of displacement hulls and the wave generated by the hull).
The UK agency (whichever it is) with the ships will need to have bigger, more powerful, and more stable ships than your average refugee dinghy, just to stay at sea with any safety to the crews themselves - and towing a dinghy or RIB at any speed would at best give a waterskiing type experience. And one little dinghy slowly towed at a time? Forget it.
EDIT: given the choice available, my own view is that the SNP membership chose well. I was a little surprised it was as close as it was.
"It was the driver, not the 2.6 tonne Defender (in gold)"
"The primary school should have had SUV proof walls"
"It's irresponsible to walk or cycle to school - you should do the right thing and protect your children with your own SUV"
"MUH FREEDOM"
Actual Landrover tweet, April 2023: "Locked and loaded. Defender 130 Outbound." https://twitter.com/LandRover/status/1651360516701315072?t=NhSJ7QvbyAUIl3F1zPN94Q&s=19
If the nation of Solon, Socrates and Leonidas has behaved in such ways, how comfortable are the other nations of the EU with being in 'ever closer' political union with them, and funding the means of doing it.
Tory governments scuppered the chances of the BBC being a profitable, self-funding, world leader in media by restricting what they could do in the name of 'competition' (aka pandering to their media mogul friends and donors).
That said, last election, I was so nervous I couldn't watch anything except the price of the pound. Once it became apparent that that had gone up a bit, it was apparent enough that my worst case scenario had been avoided. I watched a bit of the BBC coverage, but it was like watching a funeral, so I turned over to ITV, where the coverage was surprisingly good. The Balls/Osborne double act, in particular, was excellent, as was Alan Johnson. That would have been worth paying for, except that because of the unique way ITV is funded, you don't have to.
Anyway - a quick audit of my viewing habits over the past fortnight puts Amazon prime well out in front, because I'm re-watching Parks and Recreation from the start - but in second place is Channel 5 and its moderately interesting real life shows about the emergency services or railways or life in picturesque parts of England. TV that doesn't hate you.
For me - a traditionalist - the BBC remains the best single constant source, though not the quickest, on election night. Though it has dire moments.
Election night is ritual as well as information. BBC does this best still.
*naming (s)he who must not be named (I assume it's probably a he, but guess it might not be; I don't know the identity and have no particular interest - if there's anything to the allegations it will no doubt be public soon enough)
Compulsorily charging those who don't want to watch BBC programmes but want to watch other TV live, like sport services on Sky etc, has no ethical justification.
If towbacks are a bad idea, surely so are tow forwards? Both involve putting a hawser onto the ship's bow (usually), and towing it. If the land area they came from is nearest, surely it's better to tow them there than a greater distance?
Why is towing problematic, and towbacks worse?
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/police-seeking-fifth-bail-extension-tory-mp-arrested-suspicion-rape-b1082756.html
Complaint made in May 2020
Datained May 2022
Bail repeatedly extended
It's not fair on anyone- not the complainant, the MP involved or their constituents who have been unrepresented for over a year.
It’s one of those things that sounds simple, but requires skill to do.
I’ve seen people screwing up towing a dingy on the non-tidal Thames. Which is a pond, compared to the sea.
(HYUFD makes many valuable posts and I think he adds to PB, but he also does write some nonsense - as we all do, of course - which someone should probably point out, but (like with Bart) you could easily lose the best years of your life arguing with HYUFD)
After that it quickly goes downhill, at least until the first declaration - though even the most brilliant broadcasters find it difficult to fill dead time like that (remember Huw Edwards basically having to fill four hours of time with 'we don't yet know for sure that the Queen is Dead'? Skilfully done, but excrutiating.)
Who seem upset that it hasn’t been done.
You rather get the impression that the current government implantation - pick them up, give them Domino’s pizza, house them in the kind of hotels that put the gym next to the indoor pool - doesn’t include enough dead people for their private fantasy life.
The days of the BBC being somehow without peer are long, long gone.
Agree not fair to take so long for everyone involved, unless there's very good reasons.
ETA: Ah, if I actually read the linked article :"The Conservative Chief Whip has asked that the MP in question not to attend the Parliamentary Estate while the police probe is ongoing."
E2TA: Which does, presumably, identify the person fairly easily from e.g. voting records - assuming other MPs do at least turn up and vote occasionally
Once again, this reminds me of a crappy Vietnam film where the demolition guy creates a set of bobby traps. The bad guys run from one into the next, into the next etc etc…
Until the system is really fixed (culture), you will get more and more performative bullshit. And performative bullshit has one small flaw. It doesn’t fix the problem.
Money follows £500m injection in March but troubled utility warns much more future funding needed
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/jul/10/thames-water-secures-extra-750m-from-shareholders-to-help-stave-off-nationalisation
...The company said on Monday it had secured £750m to run to March 2025. It indicated that a further £2.5bn would be needed to cover the five years to 2030 and said that shareholders had “acknowledged” that further equity support would be needed to turn around the ailing company.
Last year, Thames secured an agreement that its shareholders would put £1.5bn into the ailing water firm. The first cash injection, of £500m, came in March while a further £1bn had been expected this year.
The company said the latest funds should not be viewed as a paring back of support as “£750m is also the maximum we can feasibly spend over the next two years of this regulatory settlement period within our current delivery capacity”...
Having said that, generous-minded folk like me doubt that MPs can be bought for such low considerations. More cynical observers would think more venal MPs would use their status for insider trading and sell rather than look to protect any shares. (These cynics would point to the United States Congress for a body that seems to do rather well for its members' investment portfolios.)
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/jul/10/as-thames-water-sinks-macquarie-group-continues-its-unstoppable-rise
...Macquarie sold its final stake in Thames in 2017, the same year it snapped up the government’s Green Investment Bank for £2.3bn despite concerns taxpayers were being shortchanged.
Its exit from Thames Water proved to be well timed...
...Macquarie has had enormous success buying public infrastructure and placing it in their funds. It can then charge fees, and receive dividends for its part-ownership, as well as enjoy any increase in the asset price.
Estimates have put dividends paid to underlying investors, including itself, for Thames Water at £2.7bn over the 11-year period it oversaw the asset.
“The dividend yield to equity shareholders earned from our funds’ investment was in line with listed UK water utility companies,” Macquarie says....
The Australian approach to towing is to herd the informal immigrants (at the business end of a Minimi) into a lifeboat of known seaworthiness and then tow that. That takes a lot of the risk of a capsize, sinking, etc. out of it.
" ..................................................................................."
I mean fancy having a main topic which is so incendiary for a comments board such as this.
That doesn't include me. I don't watch the BBC, I couldn't care less what happened on Eastenders, and I don't try to keep up with the Kardashians. But many people do and they probably care more about such celebrity gossip than the ins and outs of politics.
The key is to have choice. Let those who watch the BBC and want its programming choose to fund it.
Presumably whoever bought the stock six or more years ago did their due diligence at the time of purchase?
I was convinced it was going to be Lineker. But no. Not only has he denied it (MRDA), but as my wife pointed out to me yesterday, he earns a seven figure salary, not a six figure salary.
Just consider the transient loads on the towing rope/cable.
But if you wish to compare the BBC to other on the ground sources, there seems little to no difference between election night reporting from the BBC or from Sky News, as I'd already said in that comment you responded to.
Similarly, I don't think it's consensus in Conservative circles that Sunak is bad per se, just struggling against headwinds that would hurt any leader. I know that a sizeable portion of conservatives do blame Sunak, but it feels to me like a faction rather than a majority.
Legally they escape responsibility, as they have passed the equity in the whole mess on to some other suckers.
Those in charge of regulator which allowed them to do so is also responsible - though again will avoid any consequences.
Privatisation of monopoly utilities is a heads they win, tails the customer loses, proposition.
Utterly indefensible.
If the government and regulator had any guts, they'd refuse price rises, which would probably drive the whole operation into bankruptcy. That's the only way Macquarie would (as bond holders) suffer any consequences.
Politically, it is the simplest solution.
If you provide internet access in the U.K. (mobile or fixed), then there will be x added to the bill.
Now maybe that due diligence was flawed, but if it was it was there responsibility, not the taxpayers and not Macquaries.
Though you haven't said how the customer loses if Thames goes bust. The losers will be the 'suckers' who failed to do good enough due diligence presumably, and the bondholders, not the customers. If Thames goes bust and gets nationalised for £1 with the bondholders and the shareholders wiped out then the losses will be purely in the private sector, not the taxpayer or customer's burden.
Seems to work with everything else.
I'm embarrassed that you remember that @TOPPING , especially after so much time.
The BBC is no better than Sky/ITV.
That PB is better than the BBC is not a fallacy, because collating multiple sources including Press Association etc that aren't on TV immediately is better than relying upon a single, solitary, inferior source like the BBC - or any other single, solitary source.
Also this story is clearly going to keep going for longer than it otherwise would have done because everyone loves a good game of "Guess Who" and amatuer jigsaw identification via social media. The UK's libel laws mean everyone can tell their mates who it is too but nary a nod or wink toward Presenter X on social media means you're skating on thin ice..
Fast is a virtue, but other virtues can be sacrificed upon its altar.