The BBC is part of our cultural fabric. So is complaining about the BBC. If we lose the one we lose the other and we'd be all the poorer for it.
But that argument has basically given it immunity from any sort of quality control standards. If we say we're never going to get rid of the beeb under any circumstances, it just gets gradually worse and worse. For me, the point where the beeb became so shit it was no longer worth keeping was passed about four years ago. No one event, just a thousand drips of an ever shittier product.
If it was providing a decent product, complaints about the way it was funded would be much more muted. That's where I was a decade ago. It was a terrible way to produce content, but actually it turned out to be, on balance, worth the money. For me, that's no longer the case. For you, it might still be worth it. But it surely can't be the case that we have to keep it no matter how shit it gets because it is part of our cultural fabric? There must be a point at which everyone passes their threshold of 'this isn't worth it'. And the direction of travel is only one way.
I'd like a national broadcaster which was good and worth the money. But we haven't got one, and we're never going to get one again, and years of saying 'we need reform' have got nowhere; it just gets more and more mediocre.
BBC output looks shit to you? I can't relate to that at all. For what I pay (£3 a week) I rate it amazing value. I can't immediately think of anything in the same league in the media space on VFM. I mean, I pay about 10 times that for various subscription services for this and that, yet I'd say on hours watched I'm using the Beeb as much as all of those combined.
Are you sure it's the quality that's your main problem? Reason I ask is you once said something on this subject I found quite striking. You said you were losing patience with the BBC because you were fed up of watching tv made by people who didn't like you. It rang heartfelt and true to me. And of course if you feel like that you won't (to put it mildly) be a fan.
Well that is true. But every BBC product I might want to consume is, if not shit, considerably less good than it used to be. There is literally nothing in the drama/comedy bucket which I now find watchable - that certainly wasn't the case ten years ago; indeed, most of the jewels in our comedy crown are BBC produced. Radio, as I've mentioned, has got worse. Obviously I'm not a fan of BBC's news coverage, but that is rather less heavyweight than it was twenty years ago. Do they still do general interest science like Horizon? If so, I haven't seen it. They broadcast less and less sport and do so less and less well. They don't even do the classified football results any more (the occasion when - for no readily apparent reason - Mark E Smith reading out the classified football results was the BBC at its glorious peak. It's not as if they had a rolling roster of celebrity announcers; how MES was the only one to ever get the gig is a glorious mystery). I don't think there is a single thing they do better than ITV or Channel 5. Strictly Come Dancing doesn't hate me but it makes me want to punch myself in the face at the sheer inanity of it. How this can be considered the corporation's cultural peak is beyond me.
Have you perhaps considered that this is just a natural consequence of aging? Most TV is produced and performed by (relative) youngsters. Most viewers have nostalgia for the TV of their youth.
Hmm, so the Tories should tack left/liberal to recapture the 23% of their 2019 voters they've lost in that direction then? Surely not further right after the 15% they've lost to refuk?
I think @hyufd's argument is those lost to Lab/LD are lost for the time being no matter what they do, whereas those lost to Reform maybe recoverable. He may be correct.
Indeed. I've tangled with HYUFD on this before, hence the wink.
HYUFD's reply with 'until Labour muck up' (or similar) is relevant, though. The Tories are losing this one, but they need to be electable when Labour muck up or are seen to muck up. Going too far after Reform will make that more of a challenge, I think.
It is, of course, the hangover from 2019 - Johnson put together an astonishing coalition, but one that could only be held together by a need to do Brexit and a need to keep Corbyn out. It just didn't work otherwise.
There is though, the argument - with which I have some sympathy - that it might be better to stand and fail big from the right at this election and then tack left under a new leader, rather than lose this one from the centre(ish) and give credence to the 'being more right could have won it' idea. Much like Miliband was seen - by some - as too centrist/triangulating and it took Corbyn to put the idea of winning from the left to bed.
Personally I think if and when the Tories lose they will go to the Right before coming back to a more centrist position when going to the Right fails. Interested to know what @HYUFD thinks.
Hmm, so the Tories should tack left/liberal to recapture the 23% of their 2019 voters they've lost in that direction then? Surely not further right after the 15% they've lost to refuk?
I think @hyufd's argument is those lost to Lab/LD are lost for the time being no matter what they do, whereas those lost to Reform maybe recoverable. He may be correct.
Indeed. I've tangled with HYUFD on this before, hence the wink.
HYUFD's reply with 'until Labour muck up' (or similar) is relevant, though. The Tories are losing this one, but they need to be electable when Labour muck up or are seen to muck up. Going too far after Reform will make that more of a challenge, I think.
It is, of course, the hangover from 2019 - Johnson put together an astonishing coalition, but one that could only be held together by a need to do Brexit and a need to keep Corbyn out. It just didn't work otherwise.
There is though, the argument - with which I have some sympathy - that it might be better to stand and fail big from the right at this election and then tack left under a new leader, rather than lose this one from the centre(ish) and give credence to the 'being more right could have won it' idea. Much like Miliband was seen - by some - as too centrist/triangulating and it took Corbyn to put the idea of winning from the left to bed.
The very high probability for me is that the Tories will indulge themselves by selecting someone completely unelectable, just as Labour did with Corbyn, for the same delusional reasons. When they have received another hammering in 2028/9 they will start to focus on winning again and come back to the centre with a Cameron equivalent. Tories have much less of a taste for losing than Labour and seem unlikely to me to indulge themselves twice like Labour did.
The interesting thing is that the Tories face strong competition on the right from RefUK. Right now the Tories can claim ownership of right of centre votes because they are clearly the party that will win seats under FPTP. What if the Tories do really badly in the next election - like win 100 seats or fewer - not my baseline at all but it could happen. Then couldn't an emboldened RefUK leapfrog them as the Tories collapse into infighting? Perhaps the Tories are tilting right to shore up their right flank and stop that from happening. But isn't the risk that they are simply legitimising RefUK positions, and people will prefer to vote for the real thing? Labour never faced this intense competition on the Left, in England at least, because the post coalition Lib Dems are clearly not a left wing party, and the Greens remain quite small.
Merger with Farage as leader. Job done.
Yes that might be where we're heading but first Farage needs to be elected as an MP. In the meantime the Tories in defeat will pick a new leader from among their remaining MPs. Unless Farage is elected at the general election or before he won't be in the running.
Logistical challenge especially for the next leader market on Betfair. But it is where the members want to be.
The BBC is part of our cultural fabric. So is complaining about the BBC. If we lose the one we lose the other and we'd be all the poorer for it.
But that argument has basically given it immunity from any sort of quality control standards. If we say we're never going to get rid of the beeb under any circumstances, it just gets gradually worse and worse. For me, the point where the beeb became so shit it was no longer worth keeping was passed about four years ago. No one event, just a thousand drips of an ever shittier product.
If it was providing a decent product, complaints about the way it was funded would be much more muted. That's where I was a decade ago. It was a terrible way to produce content, but actually it turned out to be, on balance, worth the money. For me, that's no longer the case. For you, it might still be worth it. But it surely can't be the case that we have to keep it no matter how shit it gets because it is part of our cultural fabric? There must be a point at which everyone passes their threshold of 'this isn't worth it'. And the direction of travel is only one way.
I'd like a national broadcaster which was good and worth the money. But we haven't got one, and we're never going to get one again, and years of saying 'we need reform' have got nowhere; it just gets more and more mediocre.
BBC output looks shit to you? I can't relate to that at all. For what I pay (£3 a week) I rate it amazing value. I can't immediately think of anything in the same league in the media space on VFM. I mean, I pay about 10 times that for various subscription services for this and that, yet I'd say on hours watched I'm using the Beeb as much as all of those combined.
Are you sure it's the quality that's your main problem? Reason I ask is you once said something on this subject I found quite striking. You said you were losing patience with the BBC because you were fed up of watching tv made by people who didn't like you. It rang heartfelt and true to me. And of course if you feel like that you won't (to put it mildly) be a fan.
Well that is true. But every BBC product I might want to consume is, if not shit, considerably less good than it used to be. There is literally nothing in the drama/comedy bucket which I now find watchable - that certainly wasn't the case ten years ago; indeed, most of the jewels in our comedy crown are BBC produced. Radio, as I've mentioned, has got worse. Obviously I'm not a fan of BBC's news coverage, but that is rather less heavyweight than it was twenty years ago. Do they still do general interest science like Horizon? If so, I haven't seen it. They broadcast less and less sport and do so less and less well. They don't even do the classified football results any more (the occasion when - for no readily apparent reason - Mark E Smith reading out the classified football results was the BBC at its glorious peak. It's not as if they had a rolling roster of celebrity announcers; how MES was the only one to ever get the gig is a glorious mystery). I don't think there is a single thing they do better than ITV or Channel 5. Strictly Come Dancing doesn't hate me but it makes me want to punch myself in the face at the sheer inanity of it. How this can be considered the corporation's cultural peak is beyond me.
Strictly is very popular (although I don't these days, I only do BakeOff in that genre, reality compos, I mean, not dance, there's no dancing in BakeOff), and BakeOff used to be BBC of course, that's where it was incubated; Sport, they have all the big snooker, they have Wimbo, MOTD is a great way of keeping abreast of the Premier league without devoting your life to it, they have extended highlights of Masters and Open and Ryder Cup golf, the Boat race they have, I could go on, it's not bad in this era of Sky and Prime etc, esp for £3 a week. There's rolling 24/7 news. Then all the dramas and the films, all the weighty docu stuff on BBC4, plenty of good culture on there, and on top of that the vast array of radio progs, and also Sounds, there's lots of terrific podcasts on Sounds as well as the back menu of radio you might have missed, all for - and I'll say it again since I think it merits it - all for £3 a week. A frothy coffee (if you're lucky).
I think the BBC is best served by becoming some kind of mutual organisation, paying membership of which is only open to UK citizens. However, it would be free to get paying subscribers from anywhere else in the world and to go into the financial markets to raise capital. Crucially, it would have full copyright control over its back catalogue and, therefore, the ability to decide where its programmes appear and for how much. Put all that together and I think you get something that ensures the BBC's viability and full independence, while still being an important lever of UK soft power.
The BBC is part of our cultural fabric. So is complaining about the BBC. If we lose the one we lose the other and we'd be all the poorer for it.
But that argument has basically given it immunity from any sort of quality control standards. If we say we're never going to get rid of the beeb under any circumstances, it just gets gradually worse and worse. For me, the point where the beeb became so shit it was no longer worth keeping was passed about four years ago. No one event, just a thousand drips of an ever shittier product.
If it was providing a decent product, complaints about the way it was funded would be much more muted. That's where I was a decade ago. It was a terrible way to produce content, but actually it turned out to be, on balance, worth the money. For me, that's no longer the case. For you, it might still be worth it. But it surely can't be the case that we have to keep it no matter how shit it gets because it is part of our cultural fabric? There must be a point at which everyone passes their threshold of 'this isn't worth it'. And the direction of travel is only one way.
I'd like a national broadcaster which was good and worth the money. But we haven't got one, and we're never going to get one again, and years of saying 'we need reform' have got nowhere; it just gets more and more mediocre.
BBC output looks shit to you? I can't relate to that at all. For what I pay (£3 a week) I rate it amazing value. I can't immediately think of anything in the same league in the media space on VFM. I mean, I pay about 10 times that for various subscription services for this and that, yet I'd say on hours watched I'm using the Beeb as much as all of those combined.
Are you sure it's the quality that's your main problem? Reason I ask is you once said something on this subject I found quite striking. You said you were losing patience with the BBC because you were fed up of watching tv made by people who didn't like you. It rang heartfelt and true to me. And of course if you feel like that you won't (to put it mildly) be a fan.
Well that is true. But every BBC product I might want to consume is, if not shit, considerably less good than it used to be. There is literally nothing in the drama/comedy bucket which I now find watchable - that certainly wasn't the case ten years ago; indeed, most of the jewels in our comedy crown are BBC produced. Radio, as I've mentioned, has got worse. Obviously I'm not a fan of BBC's news coverage, but that is rather less heavyweight than it was twenty years ago. Do they still do general interest science like Horizon? If so, I haven't seen it. They broadcast less and less sport and do so less and less well. They don't even do the classified football results any more (the occasion when - for no readily apparent reason - Mark E Smith reading out the classified football results was the BBC at its glorious peak. It's not as if they had a rolling roster of celebrity announcers; how MES was the only one to ever get the gig is a glorious mystery). I don't think there is a single thing they do better than ITV or Channel 5. Strictly Come Dancing doesn't hate me but it makes me want to punch myself in the face at the sheer inanity of it. How this can be considered the corporation's cultural peak is beyond me.
Much truth in what you say
And yet every so often it produces a total gem which gives me hope
SAS: Rogue Heroes is brilliant. Co-pro with MGM
Totally unwoke and actually patriotic
They are making an 8 hour coproduction with CBS (I think) on 1066 with James Norton as Harold and Nicolai Coster-Waldau as Guillaume le Bâtard which I’m hoping will be good and without any crowbarring in anything like a trans Harald Hadrada, and definitely not a Sandy Tostig.
The BBC is part of our cultural fabric. So is complaining about the BBC. If we lose the one we lose the other and we'd be all the poorer for it.
But that argument has basically given it immunity from any sort of quality control standards. If we say we're never going to get rid of the beeb under any circumstances, it just gets gradually worse and worse. For me, the point where the beeb became so shit it was no longer worth keeping was passed about four years ago. No one event, just a thousand drips of an ever shittier product.
If it was providing a decent product, complaints about the way it was funded would be much more muted. That's where I was a decade ago. It was a terrible way to produce content, but actually it turned out to be, on balance, worth the money. For me, that's no longer the case. For you, it might still be worth it. But it surely can't be the case that we have to keep it no matter how shit it gets because it is part of our cultural fabric? There must be a point at which everyone passes their threshold of 'this isn't worth it'. And the direction of travel is only one way.
I'd like a national broadcaster which was good and worth the money. But we haven't got one, and we're never going to get one again, and years of saying 'we need reform' have got nowhere; it just gets more and more mediocre.
BBC output looks shit to you? I can't relate to that at all. For what I pay (£3 a week) I rate it amazing value. I can't immediately think of anything in the same league in the media space on VFM. I mean, I pay about 10 times that for various subscription services for this and that, yet I'd say on hours watched I'm using the Beeb as much as all of those combined.
Are you sure it's the quality that's your main problem? Reason I ask is you once said something on this subject I found quite striking. You said you were losing patience with the BBC because you were fed up of watching tv made by people who didn't like you. It rang heartfelt and true to me. And of course if you feel like that you won't (to put it mildly) be a fan.
Well that is true. But every BBC product I might want to consume is, if not shit, considerably less good than it used to be. There is literally nothing in the drama/comedy bucket which I now find watchable - that certainly wasn't the case ten years ago; indeed, most of the jewels in our comedy crown are BBC produced. Radio, as I've mentioned, has got worse. Obviously I'm not a fan of BBC's news coverage, but that is rather less heavyweight than it was twenty years ago. Do they still do general interest science like Horizon? If so, I haven't seen it. They broadcast less and less sport and do so less and less well. They don't even do the classified football results any more (the occasion when - for no readily apparent reason - Mark E Smith reading out the classified football results was the BBC at its glorious peak. It's not as if they had a rolling roster of celebrity announcers; how MES was the only one to ever get the gig is a glorious mystery). I don't think there is a single thing they do better than ITV or Channel 5. Strictly Come Dancing doesn't hate me but it makes me want to punch myself in the face at the sheer inanity of it. How this can be considered the corporation's cultural peak is beyond me.
Strictly is very popular (although I don't these days, I only do BakeOff in that genre, reality compos, I mean, not dance, there's no dancing in BakeOff), and BakeOff used to be BBC of course, that's where it was incubated; Sport, they have all the big snooker, they have Wimbo, MOTD is a great way of keeping abreast of the Premier league without devoting your life to it, they have extended highlights of Masters and Open and Ryder Cup golf, the Boat race they have, I could go on, it's not bad in this era of Sky and Prime etc, esp for £3 a week. There's rolling 24/7 news. Then all the dramas and the films, all the weighty docu stuff on BBC4, plenty of good culture on there, and on top of that the vast array of radio progs, and also Sounds, there's lots of terrific podcasts on Sounds as well as the back menu of radio you might have missed, all for - and I'll say it again since I think it merits it - all for £3 a week. A frothy coffee (if you're lucky).
It's great value, absolutely. But also, not everybody wants that output. The trouble with the licence fee is that the wording is so ambiguous, bordering on the threatening. Witness the confusion on here about "live" streaming.
I think the BBC is best served by becoming some kind of mutual organisation, paying membership of which is only open to UK citizens. However, it would be free to get paying subscribers from anywhere else in the world and to go into the financial markets to raise capital. Crucially, it would have full copyright control over its back catalogue and, therefore, the ability to decide where its programmes appear and for how much. Put all that together and I think you get something that ensures the BBC's viability and full independence, while still being an important lever of UK soft power.
Why would it have full copyright control over its back catalogue? It doesn't now. It could decide to do that for new productions going forwards, but they would then be more expensive.
The BBC as a mutual organisation would become a BBC for part of the nation. Those, like Cookie, who don't like the BBC's current output, would become irrelevant, whereas now the BBC is required to listen to everyone. The BBC would be less representative of the country, and thus less appropriate as a level of soft power.
Also, such a BBC would end up with much less money. It wouldn't be the BBC we know today.
The BBC is part of our cultural fabric. So is complaining about the BBC. If we lose the one we lose the other and we'd be all the poorer for it.
But that argument has basically given it immunity from any sort of quality control standards. If we say we're never going to get rid of the beeb under any circumstances, it just gets gradually worse and worse. For me, the point where the beeb became so shit it was no longer worth keeping was passed about four years ago. No one event, just a thousand drips of an ever shittier product.
If it was providing a decent product, complaints about the way it was funded would be much more muted. That's where I was a decade ago. It was a terrible way to produce content, but actually it turned out to be, on balance, worth the money. For me, that's no longer the case. For you, it might still be worth it. But it surely can't be the case that we have to keep it no matter how shit it gets because it is part of our cultural fabric? There must be a point at which everyone passes their threshold of 'this isn't worth it'. And the direction of travel is only one way.
I'd like a national broadcaster which was good and worth the money. But we haven't got one, and we're never going to get one again, and years of saying 'we need reform' have got nowhere; it just gets more and more mediocre.
BBC output looks shit to you? I can't relate to that at all. For what I pay (£3 a week) I rate it amazing value. I can't immediately think of anything in the same league in the media space on VFM. I mean, I pay about 10 times that for various subscription services for this and that, yet I'd say on hours watched I'm using the Beeb as much as all of those combined.
Are you sure it's the quality that's your main problem? Reason I ask is you once said something on this subject I found quite striking. You said you were losing patience with the BBC because you were fed up of watching tv made by people who didn't like you. It rang heartfelt and true to me. And of course if you feel like that you won't (to put it mildly) be a fan.
Well that is true. But every BBC product I might want to consume is, if not shit, considerably less good than it used to be. There is literally nothing in the drama/comedy bucket which I now find watchable - that certainly wasn't the case ten years ago; indeed, most of the jewels in our comedy crown are BBC produced. Radio, as I've mentioned, has got worse. Obviously I'm not a fan of BBC's news coverage, but that is rather less heavyweight than it was twenty years ago. Do they still do general interest science like Horizon? If so, I haven't seen it. They broadcast less and less sport and do so less and less well. They don't even do the classified football results any more (the occasion when - for no readily apparent reason - Mark E Smith reading out the classified football results was the BBC at its glorious peak. It's not as if they had a rolling roster of celebrity announcers; how MES was the only one to ever get the gig is a glorious mystery). I don't think there is a single thing they do better than ITV or Channel 5. Strictly Come Dancing doesn't hate me but it makes me want to punch myself in the face at the sheer inanity of it. How this can be considered the corporation's cultural peak is beyond me.
Have you perhaps considered that this is just a natural consequence of aging? Most TV is produced and performed by (relative) youngsters. Most viewers have nostalgia for the TV of their youth.
Well up to a point. But my parents at my age consumed hours and hours of BBC. Horizon, documentaries about WW2, Ryder Cup golf, One Foot in the Grave, things featuring Terry Wogan. When I was 15 it felt like the BBC was aiming straight for the 48-year-old suburbanite viewer. Now I'm a 48-year-old suburbanite viewer it feels like the BBC is aiming for 15 year olds, but 15 year olds who don't really exist.
Part of the BBC’s problem is that its output is so vast the good stuff can get missed
That's right. It's a challenge to home in on what you want and avoid what you don't want. A challenge you have to rise to, though, because life's too short to be sitting there for hour after hour watching the telly just hoping something good's going to come on at some point. I find the TV Guide in the Times on Saturday pretty useful. It lists out what's on in the coming week and makes recommendations.
Part of the BBC’s problem is that its output is so vast the good stuff can get missed
That's right. It's a challenge to home in on what you want and avoid what you don't want. A challenge you have to rise to, though, because life's too short to be sitting there for hour after hour watching the telly just hoping something good's going to come on at some point. I find the TV Guide in the Times on Saturday pretty useful. It lists out what's on in the coming week and makes recommendations.
If it's the case that they produce just as much good stuff as they ever did, just - because of the need to fill so much extra space - also a lot more dross (this isn't an argument I buy, but let's go with it) - there's a very simple solution: just go back to two channels and stop producing the dross.
The BBC is part of our cultural fabric. So is complaining about the BBC. If we lose the one we lose the other and we'd be all the poorer for it.
But that argument has basically given it immunity from any sort of quality control standards. If we say we're never going to get rid of the beeb under any circumstances, it just gets gradually worse and worse. For me, the point where the beeb became so shit it was no longer worth keeping was passed about four years ago. No one event, just a thousand drips of an ever shittier product.
If it was providing a decent product, complaints about the way it was funded would be much more muted. That's where I was a decade ago. It was a terrible way to produce content, but actually it turned out to be, on balance, worth the money. For me, that's no longer the case. For you, it might still be worth it. But it surely can't be the case that we have to keep it no matter how shit it gets because it is part of our cultural fabric? There must be a point at which everyone passes their threshold of 'this isn't worth it'. And the direction of travel is only one way.
I'd like a national broadcaster which was good and worth the money. But we haven't got one, and we're never going to get one again, and years of saying 'we need reform' have got nowhere; it just gets more and more mediocre.
BBC output looks shit to you? I can't relate to that at all. For what I pay (£3 a week) I rate it amazing value. I can't immediately think of anything in the same league in the media space on VFM. I mean, I pay about 10 times that for various subscription services for this and that, yet I'd say on hours watched I'm using the Beeb as much as all of those combined.
Are you sure it's the quality that's your main problem? Reason I ask is you once said something on this subject I found quite striking. You said you were losing patience with the BBC because you were fed up of watching tv made by people who didn't like you. It rang heartfelt and true to me. And of course if you feel like that you won't (to put it mildly) be a fan.
Well that is true. But every BBC product I might want to consume is, if not shit, considerably less good than it used to be. There is literally nothing in the drama/comedy bucket which I now find watchable - that certainly wasn't the case ten years ago; indeed, most of the jewels in our comedy crown are BBC produced. Radio, as I've mentioned, has got worse. Obviously I'm not a fan of BBC's news coverage, but that is rather less heavyweight than it was twenty years ago. Do they still do general interest science like Horizon? If so, I haven't seen it. They broadcast less and less sport and do so less and less well. They don't even do the classified football results any more (the occasion when - for no readily apparent reason - Mark E Smith reading out the classified football results was the BBC at its glorious peak. It's not as if they had a rolling roster of celebrity announcers; how MES was the only one to ever get the gig is a glorious mystery). I don't think there is a single thing they do better than ITV or Channel 5. Strictly Come Dancing doesn't hate me but it makes me want to punch myself in the face at the sheer inanity of it. How this can be considered the corporation's cultural peak is beyond me.
Have you perhaps considered that this is just a natural consequence of aging? Most TV is produced and performed by (relative) youngsters. Most viewers have nostalgia for the TV of their youth.
Well up to a point. But my parents at my age consumed hours and hours of BBC. Horizon, documentaries about WW2, Ryder Cup golf, One Foot in the Grave, things featuring Terry Wogan. When I was 15 it felt like the BBC was aiming straight for the 48-year-old suburbanite viewer. Now I'm a 48-year-old suburbanite viewer it feels like the BBC is aiming for 15 year olds, but 15 year olds who don't really exist.
Not a dissimilar age and remember my parents bemused why the BBC had pop stars like Boy George dressing like a woman on top of the pops. And they are middle of the road to liberal, the Mary Whitehouse types were already making all the same points you do about the BBC back then.
Anyway it wasn't quite the Last Flight out of Saigon but despite cancellation of all the trains, abandoned cars and lots and lots and LOTS of snow, managed to charm a lovely man with 4WD to drive me to Lancaster.
So am now on the train to London and have even managed a seat!
Sunak correct on bbc, £15 increase is too much, £5 is about right imo. Medium term, it should be switched to general taxation, absolutely ridiculous to have tens of thousand of people a year prosecuted for non payment when our courts can't cope with non BBC workloads. In favour of a publicly funded BBC but lets simplify and detoxify the process.
£15 is an extra 29p a week, £1.20 a month. Regardless of the arguments about the licence fee, I'm not sure that hitting people for an extra 29p a week would constitute a significant contribution to cost of living pressures, as the government is claiming.
Though I recognise, of course, that many PBers may struggle to find an extra 29p per week.
Sometimes it is not just can people afford it, but also should we do it? The answer to £15 a week is clearly no because:
1. Fee itself is controversial, as is public funding. Therefore a £15 increase would significantly increase the threat to the BBCs long term future for very minor short term benefit, mostly to current staff rather than the institution.
2. BBC costs less impacted by inflation than most businesses. Low energy use and peoples desire to work in the industry can be used to control wage inflation in a way that wouldnt be possible in care homes or construction.
3. Public institutions should set an example where possible. Communcal money raised by law should be spent wisely and fairly, however raised.
Another common PB complaint is the British disease of doing everything on the cheap. So, yes, public institutions should set an example where possible, and communal money raised by law should be spent wisely and fairly, but we should also stop trying to do the same on less money, and instead be investing. However the BBC is funded, and I agree with the concerns around license fee non-payment prosecutions, let's put more £ in.
The problem I have with that is the BBCs mission to inform, educate and entertain can be done relatively on the cheap. There are loads of wannabee presenters who would be delighted to work for £50k to replace an outgoing presenter on £250k moving to Sky or ITV, and may be just as good. Indeed freshness of talent is just as important as familiarity of talent.
It is not at all comparable with hospitals being run on the cheap where we cant get the staff on current salaries and then decide we won't even keep those up with inflation resulting in more staff leaving, long queues and a load of people off work sick.
The pay issue is one thing but I get more annoyed by the incestuousness where you have a bbc presenter for one topic, Andrew Marr was a good example, who is then given lots of other programmes by the Beeb outside of their speciality to present and thus keep earning more from the bbc when maybe hiring someone who is an expert on the area being given the chance to make a programme. It happened too with Janina Ramirez who got a break with a doc series on her field of expertise, largely old English literature, and then starts cropping up presenting shows on other areas such as Leonardo da Vinci. I can’t believe the BBC couldn’t find someone presentable and engaging who is an expert on Da Vinci.
The other gripe is the cross promotion of either books by BBC presenters being hyped on BBC shows or podcasts by BBC presenters being pushed.
Blame Mrs Thatcher. Or Tony Blair. Most programmes are now made by production companies rather than the BBC (or ITV) itself. Imagine you are a production company and see that war has become unpopular since 7th October so decide to make a series celebrating 1930s appeasement. You could have an unknown academic present it, but realise your chances of selling it to the BBC increase several-fold if you have a star presenter, so you ring round Andrew Marr, Jeremy Paxman and Romesh Ranganathan, and that is why the same few presenters become ubiquitous.
Although I would much rather see the BBC slimmed down; there is an argument for keeping it as an incubator for talent and innovative programming. If the programming is successful then it and its talent can move to another platform and the BBC can retain some form of rights-based payment that they can then plug back into programming.
The problem the BBC often has is that it feels it needs to behave like a commercial station with the way it publicises itself and clings on to expensive talent.
The BBC is part of our cultural fabric. So is complaining about the BBC. If we lose the one we lose the other and we'd be all the poorer for it.
But that argument has basically given it immunity from any sort of quality control standards. If we say we're never going to get rid of the beeb under any circumstances, it just gets gradually worse and worse. For me, the point where the beeb became so shit it was no longer worth keeping was passed about four years ago. No one event, just a thousand drips of an ever shittier product.
If it was providing a decent product, complaints about the way it was funded would be much more muted. That's where I was a decade ago. It was a terrible way to produce content, but actually it turned out to be, on balance, worth the money. For me, that's no longer the case. For you, it might still be worth it. But it surely can't be the case that we have to keep it no matter how shit it gets because it is part of our cultural fabric? There must be a point at which everyone passes their threshold of 'this isn't worth it'. And the direction of travel is only one way.
I'd like a national broadcaster which was good and worth the money. But we haven't got one, and we're never going to get one again, and years of saying 'we need reform' have got nowhere; it just gets more and more mediocre.
BBC output looks shit to you? I can't relate to that at all. For what I pay (£3 a week) I rate it amazing value. I can't immediately think of anything in the same league in the media space on VFM. I mean, I pay about 10 times that for various subscription services for this and that, yet I'd say on hours watched I'm using the Beeb as much as all of those combined.
Are you sure it's the quality that's your main problem? Reason I ask is you once said something on this subject I found quite striking. You said you were losing patience with the BBC because you were fed up of watching tv made by people who didn't like you. It rang heartfelt and true to me. And of course if you feel like that you won't (to put it mildly) be a fan.
Well that is true. But every BBC product I might want to consume is, if not shit, considerably less good than it used to be. There is literally nothing in the drama/comedy bucket which I now find watchable - that certainly wasn't the case ten years ago; indeed, most of the jewels in our comedy crown are BBC produced. Radio, as I've mentioned, has got worse. Obviously I'm not a fan of BBC's news coverage, but that is rather less heavyweight than it was twenty years ago. Do they still do general interest science like Horizon? If so, I haven't seen it. They broadcast less and less sport and do so less and less well. They don't even do the classified football results any more (the occasion when - for no readily apparent reason - Mark E Smith reading out the classified football results was the BBC at its glorious peak. It's not as if they had a rolling roster of celebrity announcers; how MES was the only one to ever get the gig is a glorious mystery). I don't think there is a single thing they do better than ITV or Channel 5. Strictly Come Dancing doesn't hate me but it makes me want to punch myself in the face at the sheer inanity of it. How this can be considered the corporation's cultural peak is beyond me.
Have you perhaps considered that this is just a natural consequence of aging? Most TV is produced and performed by (relative) youngsters. Most viewers have nostalgia for the TV of their youth.
Hmm, so the Tories should tack left/liberal to recapture the 23% of their 2019 voters they've lost in that direction then? Surely not further right after the 15% they've lost to refuk?
I think @hyufd's argument is those lost to Lab/LD are lost for the time being no matter what they do, whereas those lost to Reform maybe recoverable. He may be correct.
Indeed. I've tangled with HYUFD on this before, hence the wink.
HYUFD's reply with 'until Labour muck up' (or similar) is relevant, though. The Tories are losing this one, but they need to be electable when Labour muck up or are seen to muck up. Going too far after Reform will make that more of a challenge, I think.
It is, of course, the hangover from 2019 - Johnson put together an astonishing coalition, but one that could only be held together by a need to do Brexit and a need to keep Corbyn out. It just didn't work otherwise.
There is though, the argument - with which I have some sympathy - that it might be better to stand and fail big from the right at this election and then tack left under a new leader, rather than lose this one from the centre(ish) and give credence to the 'being more right could have won it' idea. Much like Miliband was seen - by some - as too centrist/triangulating and it took Corbyn to put the idea of winning from the left to bed.
The very high probability for me is that the Tories will indulge themselves by selecting someone completely unelectable, just as Labour did with Corbyn, for the same delusional reasons. When they have received another hammering in 2028/9 they will start to focus on winning again and come back to the centre with a Cameron equivalent. Tories have much less of a taste for losing than Labour and seem unlikely to me to indulge themselves twice like Labour did.
Yes, that tack to 'the centre' is working awfully well isn't it? When is the Cameron bounce due, do you think?
The BBC is part of our cultural fabric. So is complaining about the BBC. If we lose the one we lose the other and we'd be all the poorer for it.
But that argument has basically given it immunity from any sort of quality control standards. If we say we're never going to get rid of the beeb under any circumstances, it just gets gradually worse and worse. For me, the point where the beeb became so shit it was no longer worth keeping was passed about four years ago. No one event, just a thousand drips of an ever shittier product.
If it was providing a decent product, complaints about the way it was funded would be much more muted. That's where I was a decade ago. It was a terrible way to produce content, but actually it turned out to be, on balance, worth the money. For me, that's no longer the case. For you, it might still be worth it. But it surely can't be the case that we have to keep it no matter how shit it gets because it is part of our cultural fabric? There must be a point at which everyone passes their threshold of 'this isn't worth it'. And the direction of travel is only one way.
I'd like a national broadcaster which was good and worth the money. But we haven't got one, and we're never going to get one again, and years of saying 'we need reform' have got nowhere; it just gets more and more mediocre.
BBC output looks shit to you? I can't relate to that at all. For what I pay (£3 a week) I rate it amazing value. I can't immediately think of anything in the same league in the media space on VFM. I mean, I pay about 10 times that for various subscription services for this and that, yet I'd say on hours watched I'm using the Beeb as much as all of those combined.
Are you sure it's the quality that's your main problem? Reason I ask is you once said something on this subject I found quite striking. You said you were losing patience with the BBC because you were fed up of watching tv made by people who didn't like you. It rang heartfelt and true to me. And of course if you feel like that you won't (to put it mildly) be a fan.
Well that is true. But every BBC product I might want to consume is, if not shit, considerably less good than it used to be. There is literally nothing in the drama/comedy bucket which I now find watchable - that certainly wasn't the case ten years ago; indeed, most of the jewels in our comedy crown are BBC produced. Radio, as I've mentioned, has got worse. Obviously I'm not a fan of BBC's news coverage, but that is rather less heavyweight than it was twenty years ago. Do they still do general interest science like Horizon? If so, I haven't seen it. They broadcast less and less sport and do so less and less well. They don't even do the classified football results any more (the occasion when - for no readily apparent reason - Mark E Smith reading out the classified football results was the BBC at its glorious peak. It's not as if they had a rolling roster of celebrity announcers; how MES was the only one to ever get the gig is a glorious mystery). I don't think there is a single thing they do better than ITV or Channel 5. Strictly Come Dancing doesn't hate me but it makes me want to punch myself in the face at the sheer inanity of it. How this can be considered the corporation's cultural peak is beyond me.
Have you perhaps considered that this is just a natural consequence of aging? Most TV is produced and performed by (relative) youngsters. Most viewers have nostalgia for the TV of their youth.
My older daughter (17) in the UK watches Bake Off, or did, and that’s almost certainly it for her BBC TV consumption (and it’s not on BBC any more)
Everything else is streamed drama from Netflix and Prime and Apple, and an awful lot of YouTube
Yup, my lads, all in their 20s, never watch a second of broadcast TV. They'd never sit down at a certain time to watch the telly. They might stay up till stupid o'clock to watch a streamed MMA fight on the other side of the world but that's getting beyond them now they work for a living. They'll never buy a TV licence.
One amazing thing the BBC has done is Danny Robbin’s Uncanny
Started as a one off podcast, the Battersea Poltergeist, then become a very good podcast series. - Bloody Hell Ken!
And now they’ve turned it into a handful of TV shows
The first of these I watched last night. “Miss Howard”. It is genuinely one of the most inexplicable things I have ever encountered. I do not believe in ghosts, I tend to believe in credulity, drugs, infrasounds or mass hallucination/psychic contagion - but the details on that episode are so extraordinary you actually DO wonder
Did anybody else see it? If not, I highly recommend. It is really hard to explain what happened, rationally (unless major players are lying, and it is a hoax, which is possible, but it doesn’t feel like that)
Hmm, so the Tories should tack left/liberal to recapture the 23% of their 2019 voters they've lost in that direction then? Surely not further right after the 15% they've lost to refuk?
I think @hyufd's argument is those lost to Lab/LD are lost for the time being no matter what they do, whereas those lost to Reform maybe recoverable. He may be correct.
Indeed. I've tangled with HYUFD on this before, hence the wink.
HYUFD's reply with 'until Labour muck up' (or similar) is relevant, though. The Tories are losing this one, but they need to be electable when Labour muck up or are seen to muck up. Going too far after Reform will make that more of a challenge, I think.
It is, of course, the hangover from 2019 - Johnson put together an astonishing coalition, but one that could only be held together by a need to do Brexit and a need to keep Corbyn out. It just didn't work otherwise.
There is though, the argument - with which I have some sympathy - that it might be better to stand and fail big from the right at this election and then tack left under a new leader, rather than lose this one from the centre(ish) and give credence to the 'being more right could have won it' idea. Much like Miliband was seen - by some - as too centrist/triangulating and it took Corbyn to put the idea of winning from the left to bed.
Personally I think if and when the Tories lose they will go to the Right before coming back to a more centrist position when going to the Right fails. Interested to know what @HYUFD thinks.
Well, that is pretty much what happened post-1997, Failure with Hague then Howard then success with Cameron. Only Tory "rightists" and "centrists" are both to the right of where they used to be.
One amazing thing the BBC has done is Danny Robbin’s Uncanny
Started as a one off podcast, the Battersea Poltergeist, then become a very good podcast series. - Bloody Hell Ken!
And now they’ve turned it into a handful of TV shows
The first of these I watched last night. “Miss Howard”. It is genuinely one of the most inexplicable things I have ever encountered. I do not believe in ghosts, I tend to believe in credulity, drugs, infrasounds or mass hallucination/psychic contagion - but the details on that episode are so extraordinary you actually DO wonder
Did anybody else see it? If not, I highly recommend. It is really hard to explain what happened, rationally (unless major players are lying, and it is a hoax, which is possible, but it doesn’t feel like that)
Bunch of bollocks. Sadly. All in peoples' minds. Great podcasting though.
My "favourite" one (podcast) was when a couple of guys had to camp outside a chateau in the countryside in France in the (empty) moat under a wooden bridge. In the middle of the night they heard what sounded like a hooved monster crossing the bridge above them which, when they got out of their sleeping bags to check, had disappeared.
WHAT THE FUCK do we think it was - a a four-legged beast wondering around the French countryside in the middle of the night. Obviously Satan incarnate.
The BBC is part of our cultural fabric. So is complaining about the BBC. If we lose the one we lose the other and we'd be all the poorer for it.
But that argument has basically given it immunity from any sort of quality control standards. If we say we're never going to get rid of the beeb under any circumstances, it just gets gradually worse and worse. For me, the point where the beeb became so shit it was no longer worth keeping was passed about four years ago. No one event, just a thousand drips of an ever shittier product.
If it was providing a decent product, complaints about the way it was funded would be much more muted. That's where I was a decade ago. It was a terrible way to produce content, but actually it turned out to be, on balance, worth the money. For me, that's no longer the case. For you, it might still be worth it. But it surely can't be the case that we have to keep it no matter how shit it gets because it is part of our cultural fabric? There must be a point at which everyone passes their threshold of 'this isn't worth it'. And the direction of travel is only one way.
I'd like a national broadcaster which was good and worth the money. But we haven't got one, and we're never going to get one again, and years of saying 'we need reform' have got nowhere; it just gets more and more mediocre.
BBC output looks shit to you? I can't relate to that at all. For what I pay (£3 a week) I rate it amazing value. I can't immediately think of anything in the same league in the media space on VFM. I mean, I pay about 10 times that for various subscription services for this and that, yet I'd say on hours watched I'm using the Beeb as much as all of those combined.
Are you sure it's the quality that's your main problem? Reason I ask is you once said something on this subject I found quite striking. You said you were losing patience with the BBC because you were fed up of watching tv made by people who didn't like you. It rang heartfelt and true to me. And of course if you feel like that you won't (to put it mildly) be a fan.
Well that is true. But every BBC product I might want to consume is, if not shit, considerably less good than it used to be. There is literally nothing in the drama/comedy bucket which I now find watchable - that certainly wasn't the case ten years ago; indeed, most of the jewels in our comedy crown are BBC produced. Radio, as I've mentioned, has got worse. Obviously I'm not a fan of BBC's news coverage, but that is rather less heavyweight than it was twenty years ago. Do they still do general interest science like Horizon? If so, I haven't seen it. They broadcast less and less sport and do so less and less well. They don't even do the classified football results any more (the occasion when - for no readily apparent reason - Mark E Smith reading out the classified football results was the BBC at its glorious peak. It's not as if they had a rolling roster of celebrity announcers; how MES was the only one to ever get the gig is a glorious mystery). I don't think there is a single thing they do better than ITV or Channel 5. Strictly Come Dancing doesn't hate me but it makes me want to punch myself in the face at the sheer inanity of it. How this can be considered the corporation's cultural peak is beyond me.
Have you perhaps considered that this is just a natural consequence of aging? Most TV is produced and performed by (relative) youngsters. Most viewers have nostalgia for the TV of their youth.
My older daughter (17) in the UK watches Bake Off, or did, and that’s almost certainly it for her BBC TV consumption (and it’s not on BBC any more)
Everything else is streamed drama from Netflix and Prime and Apple, and an awful lot of YouTube
Our kids watch mostly American shows on Netflix and Disney+, so much show that their vocabulary is becoming worryingly transatlantic. My daughters do love Derry Girls though (terrestrial TV but not the BBC). They watch Strictly and a few other BBC shows like Ghosts and the Goes Wrong Show. My son just watches YouTube videos about football!
Hmm, so the Tories should tack left/liberal to recapture the 23% of their 2019 voters they've lost in that direction then? Surely not further right after the 15% they've lost to refuk?
I think @hyufd's argument is those lost to Lab/LD are lost for the time being no matter what they do, whereas those lost to Reform maybe recoverable. He may be correct.
Indeed. I've tangled with HYUFD on this before, hence the wink.
HYUFD's reply with 'until Labour muck up' (or similar) is relevant, though. The Tories are losing this one, but they need to be electable when Labour muck up or are seen to muck up. Going too far after Reform will make that more of a challenge, I think.
It is, of course, the hangover from 2019 - Johnson put together an astonishing coalition, but one that could only be held together by a need to do Brexit and a need to keep Corbyn out. It just didn't work otherwise.
There is though, the argument - with which I have some sympathy - that it might be better to stand and fail big from the right at this election and then tack left under a new leader, rather than lose this one from the centre(ish) and give credence to the 'being more right could have won it' idea. Much like Miliband was seen - by some - as too centrist/triangulating and it took Corbyn to put the idea of winning from the left to bed.
The very high probability for me is that the Tories will indulge themselves by selecting someone completely unelectable, just as Labour did with Corbyn, for the same delusional reasons. When they have received another hammering in 2028/9 they will start to focus on winning again and come back to the centre with a Cameron equivalent. Tories have much less of a taste for losing than Labour and seem unlikely to me to indulge themselves twice like Labour did.
Yes - I think you and kjh saying something similar are likely right. Sunak will never been seen as right enough, particularly after bringing Cameron back, so there's scope to try the 'real' right winger option and get a kicking again before picking someone electable. Labour did it, in reverse. The Conservatives did it with IDS.
One amazing thing the BBC has done is Danny Robbin’s Uncanny
Started as a one off podcast, the Battersea Poltergeist, then become a very good podcast series. - Bloody Hell Ken!
And now they’ve turned it into a handful of TV shows
The first of these I watched last night. “Miss Howard”. It is genuinely one of the most inexplicable things I have ever encountered. I do not believe in ghosts, I tend to believe in credulity, drugs, infrasounds or mass hallucination/psychic contagion - but the details on that episode are so extraordinary you actually DO wonder
Did anybody else see it? If not, I highly recommend. It is really hard to explain what happened, rationally (unless major players are lying, and it is a hoax, which is possible, but it doesn’t feel like that)
Bunch of bollocks. Sadly. All in peoples' minds. Great podcasting though.
My "favourite" one (podcast) was when a couple of guys had to camp outside a chateau in the countryside in France in the (empty) moat under a wooden bridge. In the middle of the night they heard what sounded like a hooved monster crossing the bridge above them which, when they got out of their sleeping bags to check, had disappeared.
WHAT THE FUCK do we think it was - a a four-legged beast wondering around the French countryside in the middle of the night. Obviously Satan incarnate.
Anyway it wasn't quite the Last Flight out of Saigon but despite cancellation of all the trains, abandoned cars and lots and lots and LOTS of snow, managed to charm a lovely man with 4WD to drive me to Lancaster.
So am now on the train to London and have even managed a seat!
Just drive home from Ambleside.
The main roads are now fine apart from the odd abandoned car to be skirted on the carriageway. Each oddly accompanied by its own surviving bit of snowdrift, which has otherwise disappeared.
One amazing thing the BBC has done is Danny Robbin’s Uncanny
Started as a one off podcast, the Battersea Poltergeist, then become a very good podcast series. - Bloody Hell Ken!
And now they’ve turned it into a handful of TV shows
The first of these I watched last night. “Miss Howard”. It is genuinely one of the most inexplicable things I have ever encountered. I do not believe in ghosts, I tend to believe in credulity, drugs, infrasounds or mass hallucination/psychic contagion - but the details on that episode are so extraordinary you actually DO wonder
Did anybody else see it? If not, I highly recommend. It is really hard to explain what happened, rationally (unless major players are lying, and it is a hoax, which is possible, but it doesn’t feel like that)
Bunch of bollocks. Sadly. All in peoples' minds. Great podcasting though.
My "favourite" one (podcast) was when a couple of guys had to camp outside a chateau in the countryside in France in the (empty) moat under a wooden bridge. In the middle of the night they heard what sounded like a hooved monster crossing the bridge above them which, when they got out of their sleeping bags to check, had disappeared.
WHAT THE FUCK do we think it was - a a four-legged beast wondering around the French countryside in the middle of the night. Obviously Satan incarnate.
Part of the BBC’s problem is that its output is so vast the good stuff can get missed
That's right. It's a challenge to home in on what you want and avoid what you don't want. A challenge you have to rise to, though, because life's too short to be sitting there for hour after hour watching the telly just hoping something good's going to come on at some point. I find the TV Guide in the Times on Saturday pretty useful. It lists out what's on in the coming week and makes recommendations.
If it's the case that they produce just as much good stuff as they ever did, just - because of the need to fill so much extra space - also a lot more dross (this isn't an argument I buy, but let's go with it) - there's a very simple solution: just go back to two channels and stop producing the dross.
Ah but different people have different views on what is the Good Stuff and what is the Dross. The BBC must try and cater for all.
To take an example from here. You and OLB are both middle class professionals and devoted family men in early middle age. Lots in common. Yet he loves Strictly and you hate it.
And that's nothing to do with him being left wing and you being right wing. It's just your respective tastes.
I think the BBC is best served by becoming some kind of mutual organisation, paying membership of which is only open to UK citizens. However, it would be free to get paying subscribers from anywhere else in the world and to go into the financial markets to raise capital. Crucially, it would have full copyright control over its back catalogue and, therefore, the ability to decide where its programmes appear and for how much. Put all that together and I think you get something that ensures the BBC's viability and full independence, while still being an important lever of UK soft power.
I am not sure the BBC fulfills it's public service function as admirably as it once did. Conservatives say it is too left wing, Socialists say it is too right wing.
I have listened to the World at One for over 50 years, and it has on the whole been well balanced. Today they used Sir John Hayes for a balanced commentary on immigration and most days either use Regev or Levy for an analysis of Bibi's policy in Gaza, as such, the BBC game is up.
One amazing thing the BBC has done is Danny Robbin’s Uncanny
Started as a one off podcast, the Battersea Poltergeist, then become a very good podcast series. - Bloody Hell Ken!
And now they’ve turned it into a handful of TV shows
The first of these I watched last night. “Miss Howard”. It is genuinely one of the most inexplicable things I have ever encountered. I do not believe in ghosts, I tend to believe in credulity, drugs, infrasounds or mass hallucination/psychic contagion - but the details on that episode are so extraordinary you actually DO wonder
Did anybody else see it? If not, I highly recommend. It is really hard to explain what happened, rationally (unless major players are lying, and it is a hoax, which is possible, but it doesn’t feel like that)
Bunch of bollocks. Sadly. All in peoples' minds. Great podcasting though.
My "favourite" one (podcast) was when a couple of guys had to camp outside a chateau in the countryside in France in the (empty) moat under a wooden bridge. In the middle of the night they heard what sounded like a hooved monster crossing the bridge above them which, when they got out of their sleeping bags to check, had disappeared.
WHAT THE FUCK do we think it was - a a four-legged beast wondering around the French countryside in the middle of the night. Obviously Satan incarnate.
Although I would much rather see the BBC slimmed down; there is an argument for keeping it as an incubator for talent and innovative programming. If the programming is successful then it and its talent can move to another platform and the BBC can retain some form of rights-based payment that they can then plug back into programming.
The problem the BBC often has is that it feels it needs to behave like a commercial station with the way it publicises itself and clings on to expensive talent.
It's an efficient incubator. People accept lower money working for the BBC because it IS the BBC. I know I would. Say I'm a stand-up and there's a bidding war for televising my latest show which has them rocking in the aisles. The Beeb would not need to top the bidding to secure the deal.
Hmm, so the Tories should tack left/liberal to recapture the 23% of their 2019 voters they've lost in that direction then? Surely not further right after the 15% they've lost to refuk?
I think @hyufd's argument is those lost to Lab/LD are lost for the time being no matter what they do, whereas those lost to Reform maybe recoverable. He may be correct.
Indeed. I've tangled with HYUFD on this before, hence the wink.
HYUFD's reply with 'until Labour muck up' (or similar) is relevant, though. The Tories are losing this one, but they need to be electable when Labour muck up or are seen to muck up. Going too far after Reform will make that more of a challenge, I think.
It is, of course, the hangover from 2019 - Johnson put together an astonishing coalition, but one that could only be held together by a need to do Brexit and a need to keep Corbyn out. It just didn't work otherwise.
There is though, the argument - with which I have some sympathy - that it might be better to stand and fail big from the right at this election and then tack left under a new leader, rather than lose this one from the centre(ish) and give credence to the 'being more right could have won it' idea. Much like Miliband was seen - by some - as too centrist/triangulating and it took Corbyn to put the idea of winning from the left to bed.
Personally I think if and when the Tories lose they will go to the Right before coming back to a more centrist position when going to the Right fails. Interested to know what @HYUFD thinks.
Most likely, though it is not guaranteed going to the Right fails. Thatcher won power from the right in 1979 after all given the poor economic performance of Callaghan's centrist Labour government
Part of the BBC’s problem is that its output is so vast the good stuff can get missed
That's right. It's a challenge to home in on what you want and avoid what you don't want. A challenge you have to rise to, though, because life's too short to be sitting there for hour after hour watching the telly just hoping something good's going to come on at some point. I find the TV Guide in the Times on Saturday pretty useful. It lists out what's on in the coming week and makes recommendations.
If it's the case that they produce just as much good stuff as they ever did, just - because of the need to fill so much extra space - also a lot more dross (this isn't an argument I buy, but let's go with it) - there's a very simple solution: just go back to two channels and stop producing the dross.
Ah but different people have different views on what is the Good Stuff and what is the Dross. The BBC must try and cater for all.
To take an example from here. You and OLB are both middle class professionals and devoted family men in early middle age. Lots in common. Yet he loves Strictly and you hate it.
And that's nothing to do with him being left wing and you being right wing. It's just your respective tastes.
Just a north/south thing. We don't have any truck wi' t'prancing about when there's brass t'be made in t'mills or t'mines
Hmm, so the Tories should tack left/liberal to recapture the 23% of their 2019 voters they've lost in that direction then? Surely not further right after the 15% they've lost to refuk?
I think @hyufd's argument is those lost to Lab/LD are lost for the time being no matter what they do, whereas those lost to Reform maybe recoverable. He may be correct.
Indeed. I've tangled with HYUFD on this before, hence the wink.
HYUFD's reply with 'until Labour muck up' (or similar) is relevant, though. The Tories are losing this one, but they need to be electable when Labour muck up or are seen to muck up. Going too far after Reform will make that more of a challenge, I think.
It is, of course, the hangover from 2019 - Johnson put together an astonishing coalition, but one that could only be held together by a need to do Brexit and a need to keep Corbyn out. It just didn't work otherwise.
There is though, the argument - with which I have some sympathy - that it might be better to stand and fail big from the right at this election and then tack left under a new leader, rather than lose this one from the centre(ish) and give credence to the 'being more right could have won it' idea. Much like Miliband was seen - by some - as too centrist/triangulating and it took Corbyn to put the idea of winning from the left to bed.
Though even Corbyn got 40% of the vote and a hung parliament in 2017 despite his landslide defeat in 2019.
If a government is unpopular even leftwing or rightwing leaders can win (Ed Miliband was also the left of centre candidate in 2010, he beat his more centrist brother David for the leadership, Corbyn just went even further left than Ed had)
The BBC is part of our cultural fabric. So is complaining about the BBC. If we lose the one we lose the other and we'd be all the poorer for it.
But that argument has basically given it immunity from any sort of quality control standards. If we say we're never going to get rid of the beeb under any circumstances, it just gets gradually worse and worse. For me, the point where the beeb became so shit it was no longer worth keeping was passed about four years ago. No one event, just a thousand drips of an ever shittier product.
If it was providing a decent product, complaints about the way it was funded would be much more muted. That's where I was a decade ago. It was a terrible way to produce content, but actually it turned out to be, on balance, worth the money. For me, that's no longer the case. For you, it might still be worth it. But it surely can't be the case that we have to keep it no matter how shit it gets because it is part of our cultural fabric? There must be a point at which everyone passes their threshold of 'this isn't worth it'. And the direction of travel is only one way.
I'd like a national broadcaster which was good and worth the money. But we haven't got one, and we're never going to get one again, and years of saying 'we need reform' have got nowhere; it just gets more and more mediocre.
BBC output looks shit to you? I can't relate to that at all. For what I pay (£3 a week) I rate it amazing value. I can't immediately think of anything in the same league in the media space on VFM. I mean, I pay about 10 times that for various subscription services for this and that, yet I'd say on hours watched I'm using the Beeb as much as all of those combined.
Are you sure it's the quality that's your main problem? Reason I ask is you once said something on this subject I found quite striking. You said you were losing patience with the BBC because you were fed up of watching tv made by people who didn't like you. It rang heartfelt and true to me. And of course if you feel like that you won't (to put it mildly) be a fan.
Well that is true. But every BBC product I might want to consume is, if not shit, considerably less good than it used to be. There is literally nothing in the drama/comedy bucket which I now find watchable - that certainly wasn't the case ten years ago; indeed, most of the jewels in our comedy crown are BBC produced. Radio, as I've mentioned, has got worse. Obviously I'm not a fan of BBC's news coverage, but that is rather less heavyweight than it was twenty years ago. Do they still do general interest science like Horizon? If so, I haven't seen it. They broadcast less and less sport and do so less and less well. They don't even do the classified football results any more (the occasion when - for no readily apparent reason - Mark E Smith reading out the classified football results was the BBC at its glorious peak. It's not as if they had a rolling roster of celebrity announcers; how MES was the only one to ever get the gig is a glorious mystery). I don't think there is a single thing they do better than ITV or Channel 5. Strictly Come Dancing doesn't hate me but it makes me want to punch myself in the face at the sheer inanity of it. How this can be considered the corporation's cultural peak is beyond me.
Have you perhaps considered that this is just a natural consequence of aging? Most TV is produced and performed by (relative) youngsters. Most viewers have nostalgia for the TV of their youth.
This is without a doubt true. Eg I look back with real fondness on tv from long ago. In my memory it's great. But that memory often doesn't survive renewed exposure to it. Often when I seek out an old show I find it hasn't made the trip to today at all well. I don't mean 'attitudes' I mean quality; quality of acting, script, plot, jokes etc. I'd say that's usually what I find. Which is a slightly sad experience so I've pretty much stopped doing it now.
An issue that we given some attention to on pb and we do appear to be seeing some movement on and why I won't join the anti-Sunak bandwagon.
I'm currently looking into all the trade unions that remain affiliated to the Palestine Solidarity Campaign. It's a little unclear whether that applies to my own one PCS. If it does I'll be leaving. That seemed the view of quite a few people when the Union shared support for PSC (confusing isn't it) on facebook.
The latest Hail Mary Pass to appeal to Captain Mainwaring.
The Government having reached an agreement for the BBC to increase its licence fee by the rate of inflation for several years in return for savings delivered previously, Short-Term-Rishi is going back on the promise for pure attempted politics - which are likely to fail.
The BBC fulfilled it's side of the bargain - a 2 year freeze, and Rishi is welching on the deal. What a miserable, untrustworthy, Scrooge-like Government we have.
At least their reputation is consistent, if that's what they want to reinforce.
Is anyone surprised?
I wonder, is this potentially subject to legal action?
It’s our money not the governments. Sunak is hardly being Scrooge, which is a tired Xmas cliche.
Whether the politics will fail or not is irrelevant. It is the right thing to do in a cost of living crisis.
I doubt it would appeal,to Cpt Mainwaring either. He’d be proud of the institution.
And it's for us as a country to decide what we wish to tax, and invest in our public realm and our future.
Rishi attacking the BBC has nothing to do with a cost of living crisis; when a few billion is needed to lubricate the base, it appears instantly. The BBC move is political, for appearance.
Personally I think a Prime Minister unable to be trusted is more concerning.
Scrooge is precisely the right comparison - a short-termist Government salami-slicing everything including basic services, and wasting untold amounts of resource along the way by failure to think beyond the end of their noses.
What happened to fixing social care, for example? Or transport expenditure?
FFS in the midst of the greatest security crisis for a generation, this lot have *cut* defence expenditure.
Indeed, what happened to those issues. They need resolving too. Doesn’t make this move on the license fee wrong.
The funding of the BBC is anachronistic in the modern era. It is time they looked at how the BBC will be funded in future.
Fund true public service Tv and the distribution network from General taxation and let the BBC raise funds how it chooses in a commercial model outside of a license fee.
Part of the BBC’s problem is that its output is so vast the good stuff can get missed
That's right. It's a challenge to home in on what you want and avoid what you don't want. A challenge you have to rise to, though, because life's too short to be sitting there for hour after hour watching the telly just hoping something good's going to come on at some point. I find the TV Guide in the Times on Saturday pretty useful. It lists out what's on in the coming week and makes recommendations.
If it's the case that they produce just as much good stuff as they ever did, just - because of the need to fill so much extra space - also a lot more dross (this isn't an argument I buy, but let's go with it) - there's a very simple solution: just go back to two channels and stop producing the dross.
Ah but different people have different views on what is the Good Stuff and what is the Dross. The BBC must try and cater for all.
To take an example from here. You and OLB are both middle class professionals and devoted family men in early middle age. Lots in common. Yet he loves Strictly and you hate it.
And that's nothing to do with him being left wing and you being right wing. It's just your respective tastes.
Just a north/south thing. We don't have any truck wi' t'prancing about when there's brass t'be made in t'mills or t'mines
There was a worrying absence of thees and thous in that. Are you going a bit metropolitan?
Hmm, so the Tories should tack left/liberal to recapture the 23% of their 2019 voters they've lost in that direction then? Surely not further right after the 15% they've lost to refuk?
I think @hyufd's argument is those lost to Lab/LD are lost for the time being no matter what they do, whereas those lost to Reform maybe recoverable. He may be correct.
Indeed. I've tangled with HYUFD on this before, hence the wink.
HYUFD's reply with 'until Labour muck up' (or similar) is relevant, though. The Tories are losing this one, but they need to be electable when Labour muck up or are seen to muck up. Going too far after Reform will make that more of a challenge, I think.
It is, of course, the hangover from 2019 - Johnson put together an astonishing coalition, but one that could only be held together by a need to do Brexit and a need to keep Corbyn out. It just didn't work otherwise.
There is though, the argument - with which I have some sympathy - that it might be better to stand and fail big from the right at this election and then tack left under a new leader, rather than lose this one from the centre(ish) and give credence to the 'being more right could have won it' idea. Much like Miliband was seen - by some - as too centrist/triangulating and it took Corbyn to put the idea of winning from the left to bed.
Personally I think if and when the Tories lose they will go to the Right before coming back to a more centrist position when going to the Right fails. Interested to know what @HYUFD thinks.
Most likely, though it is not guaranteed going to the Right fails. Thatcher won from the right in 1979 after all given the poor economic performance of Callaghan's centrist Labour government
Thatcher's 'right' was in very much relative terms.
By 1983, her Britain had a top rate of income tax of 60% and had gas, water, electricity, rail, telecoms and oil in public ownership. While she was socially of the right too, the whole country (including Labour) was also way to the right of where our current consensus is.
FWIW, I don't think that it'll be 'being populist/radical right' which does for the Tories in 2028 - there are enough counter-examples round the world to prove it possible, and Britain is no exception - it'll be that they'll be a dysfunctional shambles and Labour, while still uninspiring, will look capable in comparison (and office always grants a sheen of respectability).
The BBC is part of our cultural fabric. So is complaining about the BBC. If we lose the one we lose the other and we'd be all the poorer for it.
But that argument has basically given it immunity from any sort of quality control standards. If we say we're never going to get rid of the beeb under any circumstances, it just gets gradually worse and worse. For me, the point where the beeb became so shit it was no longer worth keeping was passed about four years ago. No one event, just a thousand drips of an ever shittier product.
If it was providing a decent product, complaints about the way it was funded would be much more muted. That's where I was a decade ago. It was a terrible way to produce content, but actually it turned out to be, on balance, worth the money. For me, that's no longer the case. For you, it might still be worth it. But it surely can't be the case that we have to keep it no matter how shit it gets because it is part of our cultural fabric? There must be a point at which everyone passes their threshold of 'this isn't worth it'. And the direction of travel is only one way.
I'd like a national broadcaster which was good and worth the money. But we haven't got one, and we're never going to get one again, and years of saying 'we need reform' have got nowhere; it just gets more and more mediocre.
BBC output looks shit to you? I can't relate to that at all. For what I pay (£3 a week) I rate it amazing value. I can't immediately think of anything in the same league in the media space on VFM. I mean, I pay about 10 times that for various subscription services for this and that, yet I'd say on hours watched I'm using the Beeb as much as all of those combined.
Are you sure it's the quality that's your main problem? Reason I ask is you once said something on this subject I found quite striking. You said you were losing patience with the BBC because you were fed up of watching tv made by people who didn't like you. It rang heartfelt and true to me. And of course if you feel like that you won't (to put it mildly) be a fan.
Well that is true. But every BBC product I might want to consume is, if not shit, considerably less good than it used to be. There is literally nothing in the drama/comedy bucket which I now find watchable - that certainly wasn't the case ten years ago; indeed, most of the jewels in our comedy crown are BBC produced. Radio, as I've mentioned, has got worse. Obviously I'm not a fan of BBC's news coverage, but that is rather less heavyweight than it was twenty years ago. Do they still do general interest science like Horizon? If so, I haven't seen it. They broadcast less and less sport and do so less and less well. They don't even do the classified football results any more (the occasion when - for no readily apparent reason - Mark E Smith reading out the classified football results was the BBC at its glorious peak. It's not as if they had a rolling roster of celebrity announcers; how MES was the only one to ever get the gig is a glorious mystery). I don't think there is a single thing they do better than ITV or Channel 5. Strictly Come Dancing doesn't hate me but it makes me want to punch myself in the face at the sheer inanity of it. How this can be considered the corporation's cultural peak is beyond me.
Have you perhaps considered that this is just a natural consequence of aging? Most TV is produced and performed by (relative) youngsters. Most viewers have nostalgia for the TV of their youth.
This is without a doubt true. Eg I look back with real fondness on tv from long ago. In my memory it's great. But that memory often doesn't survive renewed exposure to it. Often when I seek out an old show I find it hasn't made the trip to today at all well. I don't mean 'attitudes' I mean quality; quality of acting, script, plot, jokes etc. I'd say that's usually what I find. Which is a slightly sad experience so I've pretty much stopped doing it now.
Colin Murray does this on Monday evenings on 5live. Takes a tv series from the 20th century each week and it is judged against if it is watchable today, rather than was it good back then. Quite interesting way to get a fix of nostalgia, as a lot that might be remembered fondly does clearly fail that test.
Part of the BBC’s problem is that its output is so vast the good stuff can get missed
That's right. It's a challenge to home in on what you want and avoid what you don't want. A challenge you have to rise to, though, because life's too short to be sitting there for hour after hour watching the telly just hoping something good's going to come on at some point. I find the TV Guide in the Times on Saturday pretty useful. It lists out what's on in the coming week and makes recommendations.
If it's the case that they produce just as much good stuff as they ever did, just - because of the need to fill so much extra space - also a lot more dross (this isn't an argument I buy, but let's go with it) - there's a very simple solution: just go back to two channels and stop producing the dross.
Ah but different people have different views on what is the Good Stuff and what is the Dross. The BBC must try and cater for all.
To take an example from here. You and OLB are both middle class professionals and devoted family men in early middle age. Lots in common. Yet he loves Strictly and you hate it.
And that's nothing to do with him being left wing and you being right wing. It's just your respective tastes.
Callum Hunter at J L Partners has published some interesting research into the past 12-18 months of public polling data from 9 different polling companies.
The latest Hail Mary Pass to appeal to Captain Mainwaring.
The Government having reached an agreement for the BBC to increase its licence fee by the rate of inflation for several years in return for savings delivered previously, Short-Term-Rishi is going back on the promise for pure attempted politics - which are likely to fail.
The BBC fulfilled it's side of the bargain - a 2 year freeze, and Rishi is welching on the deal. What a miserable, untrustworthy, Scrooge-like Government we have.
At least their reputation is consistent, if that's what they want to reinforce.
Is anyone surprised?
I wonder, is this potentially subject to legal action?
It’s our money not the governments. Sunak is hardly being Scrooge, which is a tired Xmas cliche.
Whether the politics will fail or not is irrelevant. It is the right thing to do in a cost of living crisis.
I doubt it would appeal,to Cpt Mainwaring either. He’d be proud of the institution.
And it's for us as a country to decide what we wish to tax, and invest in our public realm and our future.
Rishi attacking the BBC has nothing to do with a cost of living crisis; when a few billion is needed to lubricate the base, it appears instantly. The BBC move is political, for appearance.
Personally I think a Prime Minister unable to be trusted is more concerning.
Scrooge is precisely the right comparison - a short-termist Government salami-slicing everything including basic services, and wasting untold amounts of resource along the way by failure to think beyond the end of their noses.
What happened to fixing social care, for example? Or transport expenditure?
FFS in the midst of the greatest security crisis for a generation, this lot have *cut* defence expenditure.
Indeed, what happened to those issues. They need resolving too. Doesn’t make this move on the license fee wrong.
The funding of the BBC is anachronistic in the modern era. It is time they looked at how the BBC will be funded in future.
Fund true public service Tv and the distribution network from General taxation and let the BBC raise funds how it chooses in a commercial model outside of a license fee.
Part of the BBC’s problem is that its output is so vast the good stuff can get missed
That's right. It's a challenge to home in on what you want and avoid what you don't want. A challenge you have to rise to, though, because life's too short to be sitting there for hour after hour watching the telly just hoping something good's going to come on at some point. I find the TV Guide in the Times on Saturday pretty useful. It lists out what's on in the coming week and makes recommendations.
If it's the case that they produce just as much good stuff as they ever did, just - because of the need to fill so much extra space - also a lot more dross (this isn't an argument I buy, but let's go with it) - there's a very simple solution: just go back to two channels and stop producing the dross.
Ah but different people have different views on what is the Good Stuff and what is the Dross. The BBC must try and cater for all.
To take an example from here. You and OLB are both middle class professionals and devoted family men in early middle age. Lots in common. Yet he loves Strictly and you hate it.
And that's nothing to do with him being left wing and you being right wing. It's just your respective tastes.
Just a north/south thing. We don't have any truck wi' t'prancing about when there's brass t'be made in t'mills or t'mines
There was a worrying absence of thees and thous in that. Are you going a bit metropolitan?
Nah, just lacking authenticity - I'm a southern prancing interloper, innit?
Hmm, so the Tories should tack left/liberal to recapture the 23% of their 2019 voters they've lost in that direction then? Surely not further right after the 15% they've lost to refuk?
I think @hyufd's argument is those lost to Lab/LD are lost for the time being no matter what they do, whereas those lost to Reform maybe recoverable. He may be correct.
Indeed. I've tangled with HYUFD on this before, hence the wink.
HYUFD's reply with 'until Labour muck up' (or similar) is relevant, though. The Tories are losing this one, but they need to be electable when Labour muck up or are seen to muck up. Going too far after Reform will make that more of a challenge, I think.
It is, of course, the hangover from 2019 - Johnson put together an astonishing coalition, but one that could only be held together by a need to do Brexit and a need to keep Corbyn out. It just didn't work otherwise.
There is though, the argument - with which I have some sympathy - that it might be better to stand and fail big from the right at this election and then tack left under a new leader, rather than lose this one from the centre(ish) and give credence to the 'being more right could have won it' idea. Much like Miliband was seen - by some - as too centrist/triangulating and it took Corbyn to put the idea of winning from the left to bed.
Though even Corbyn got 40% of the vote and a hung parliament in 2017 despite his landslide defeat in 2019.
If a government is unpopular even leftwing or rightwing leaders can win (Ed Miliband was also the left of centre candidate in 2010, he beat his more centrist brother David for the leadership, Corbyn just went even further left than Ed had)
Yeah, if your opponents are crap then it matters less. Interesting question of how Corbyn would do now. Or Miliband. But parties, particularly those given a good hiding, do seem to pick someone ideologically comforting rather than someone good.
Hmm, so the Tories should tack left/liberal to recapture the 23% of their 2019 voters they've lost in that direction then? Surely not further right after the 15% they've lost to refuk?
I think @hyufd's argument is those lost to Lab/LD are lost for the time being no matter what they do, whereas those lost to Reform maybe recoverable. He may be correct.
Indeed. I've tangled with HYUFD on this before, hence the wink.
HYUFD's reply with 'until Labour muck up' (or similar) is relevant, though. The Tories are losing this one, but they need to be electable when Labour muck up or are seen to muck up. Going too far after Reform will make that more of a challenge, I think.
It is, of course, the hangover from 2019 - Johnson put together an astonishing coalition, but one that could only be held together by a need to do Brexit and a need to keep Corbyn out. It just didn't work otherwise.
There is though, the argument - with which I have some sympathy - that it might be better to stand and fail big from the right at this election and then tack left under a new leader, rather than lose this one from the centre(ish) and give credence to the 'being more right could have won it' idea. Much like Miliband was seen - by some - as too centrist/triangulating and it took Corbyn to put the idea of winning from the left to bed.
Personally I think if and when the Tories lose they will go to the Right before coming back to a more centrist position when going to the Right fails. Interested to know what @HYUFD thinks.
Most likely, though it is not guaranteed going to the Right fails. Thatcher won from the right in 1979 after all given the poor economic performance of Callaghan's centrist Labour government
Thatcher's 'right' was in very much relative terms.
By 1983, her Britain had a top rate of income tax of 60% and had gas, water, electricity, rail, telecoms and oil in public ownership. While she was socially of the right too, the whole country (including Labour) was also way to the right of where our current consensus is.
FWIW, I don't think that it'll be 'being populist/radical right' which does for the Tories in 2028 - there are enough counter-examples round the world to prove it possible, and Britain is no exception - it'll be that they'll be a dysfunctional shambles and Labour, while still uninspiring, will look capable in comparison (and office always grants a sheen of respectability).
Currently right of centre oppositions are ahead of centre left governments in polls in Canada, Spain, Germany and the US and level in polls in Australia. Many of those right of centre leaders are hard right not centrist.
The right have also won power in NZ and the hard right Meloni won power in Italy last year and Wilders just topped the poll in the Netherlands.
The economic situation now with cost of living etc is far less rosy than 1997 and whoever the Tory leader is assuming they go into opposition will likely fair much better in polls than Hague did from 1997 to 2001
Part of the BBC’s problem is that its output is so vast the good stuff can get missed
That's right. It's a challenge to home in on what you want and avoid what you don't want. A challenge you have to rise to, though, because life's too short to be sitting there for hour after hour watching the telly just hoping something good's going to come on at some point. I find the TV Guide in the Times on Saturday pretty useful. It lists out what's on in the coming week and makes recommendations.
If it's the case that they produce just as much good stuff as they ever did, just - because of the need to fill so much extra space - also a lot more dross (this isn't an argument I buy, but let's go with it) - there's a very simple solution: just go back to two channels and stop producing the dross.
Ah but different people have different views on what is the Good Stuff and what is the Dross. The BBC must try and cater for all.
To take an example from here. You and OLB are both middle class professionals and devoted family men in early middle age. Lots in common. Yet he loves Strictly and you hate it.
And that's nothing to do with him being left wing and you being right wing. It's just your respective tastes.
Hmm, so the Tories should tack left/liberal to recapture the 23% of their 2019 voters they've lost in that direction then? Surely not further right after the 15% they've lost to refuk?
I think @hyufd's argument is those lost to Lab/LD are lost for the time being no matter what they do, whereas those lost to Reform maybe recoverable. He may be correct.
Indeed. I've tangled with HYUFD on this before, hence the wink.
HYUFD's reply with 'until Labour muck up' (or similar) is relevant, though. The Tories are losing this one, but they need to be electable when Labour muck up or are seen to muck up. Going too far after Reform will make that more of a challenge, I think.
It is, of course, the hangover from 2019 - Johnson put together an astonishing coalition, but one that could only be held together by a need to do Brexit and a need to keep Corbyn out. It just didn't work otherwise.
There is though, the argument - with which I have some sympathy - that it might be better to stand and fail big from the right at this election and then tack left under a new leader, rather than lose this one from the centre(ish) and give credence to the 'being more right could have won it' idea. Much like Miliband was seen - by some - as too centrist/triangulating and it took Corbyn to put the idea of winning from the left to bed.
Personally I think if and when the Tories lose they will go to the Right before coming back to a more centrist position when going to the Right fails. Interested to know what @HYUFD thinks.
Most likely, though it is not guaranteed going to the Right fails. Thatcher won from the right in 1979 after all given the poor economic performance of Callaghan's centrist Labour government
Thatcher's 'right' was in very much relative terms.
By 1983, her Britain had a top rate of income tax of 60% and had gas, water, electricity, rail, telecoms and oil in public ownership. While she was socially of the right too, the whole country (including Labour) was also way to the right of where our current consensus is.
FWIW, I don't think that it'll be 'being populist/radical right' which does for the Tories in 2028 - there are enough counter-examples round the world to prove it possible, and Britain is no exception - it'll be that they'll be a dysfunctional shambles and Labour, while still uninspiring, will look capable in comparison (and office always grants a sheen of respectability).
Currently right of centre oppositions are ahead of centre left governments in polls in Canada, Spain, Germany and the US and level in polls in Australia. Many of those right of centre leaders are hard right not centrist.
The right have also won power in NZ and the hard right Meloni won power in Italy last year and Wilders just topped the poll in the Netherlands.
The economic situation now with cost of living etc is far less rosy than 1997 and whoever the Tory leader is assuming they go into opposition will likely fair much better in polls than Hague did from 1997 to 2001
None of which addresses my point about the Tories specifically.
Anyway, the Tories don't (just) need to poll better than Hague in 2001. They'd need to poll better than Cameron in 2010.
One amazing thing the BBC has done is Danny Robbin’s Uncanny
Started as a one off podcast, the Battersea Poltergeist, then become a very good podcast series. - Bloody Hell Ken!
And now they’ve turned it into a handful of TV shows
The first of these I watched last night. “Miss Howard”. It is genuinely one of the most inexplicable things I have ever encountered. I do not believe in ghosts, I tend to believe in credulity, drugs, infrasounds or mass hallucination/psychic contagion - but the details on that episode are so extraordinary you actually DO wonder
Did anybody else see it? If not, I highly recommend. It is really hard to explain what happened, rationally (unless major players are lying, and it is a hoax, which is possible, but it doesn’t feel like that)
Bunch of bollocks. Sadly. All in peoples' minds. Great podcasting though.
My "favourite" one (podcast) was when a couple of guys had to camp outside a chateau in the countryside in France in the (empty) moat under a wooden bridge. In the middle of the night they heard what sounded like a hooved monster crossing the bridge above them which, when they got out of their sleeping bags to check, had disappeared.
WHAT THE FUCK do we think it was - a a four-legged beast wondering around the French countryside in the middle of the night. Obviously Satan incarnate.
Hmm, so the Tories should tack left/liberal to recapture the 23% of their 2019 voters they've lost in that direction then? Surely not further right after the 15% they've lost to refuk?
I think @hyufd's argument is those lost to Lab/LD are lost for the time being no matter what they do, whereas those lost to Reform maybe recoverable. He may be correct.
Indeed. I've tangled with HYUFD on this before, hence the wink.
HYUFD's reply with 'until Labour muck up' (or similar) is relevant, though. The Tories are losing this one, but they need to be electable when Labour muck up or are seen to muck up. Going too far after Reform will make that more of a challenge, I think.
It is, of course, the hangover from 2019 - Johnson put together an astonishing coalition, but one that could only be held together by a need to do Brexit and a need to keep Corbyn out. It just didn't work otherwise.
There is though, the argument - with which I have some sympathy - that it might be better to stand and fail big from the right at this election and then tack left under a new leader, rather than lose this one from the centre(ish) and give credence to the 'being more right could have won it' idea. Much like Miliband was seen - by some - as too centrist/triangulating and it took Corbyn to put the idea of winning from the left to bed.
Personally I think if and when the Tories lose they will go to the Right before coming back to a more centrist position when going to the Right fails. Interested to know what @HYUFD thinks.
Most likely, though it is not guaranteed going to the Right fails. Thatcher won from the right in 1979 after all given the poor economic performance of Callaghan's centrist Labour government
Thatcher's 'right' was in very much relative terms.
By 1983, her Britain had a top rate of income tax of 60% and had gas, water, electricity, rail, telecoms and oil in public ownership. While she was socially of the right too, the whole country (including Labour) was also way to the right of where our current consensus is.
FWIW, I don't think that it'll be 'being populist/radical right' which does for the Tories in 2028 - there are enough counter-examples round the world to prove it possible, and Britain is no exception - it'll be that they'll be a dysfunctional shambles and Labour, while still uninspiring, will look capable in comparison (and office always grants a sheen of respectability).
Currently right of centre oppositions are ahead of centre left governments in polls in Canada, Spain, Germany and the US and level in polls in Australia. Many of those right of centre leaders are hard right not centrist.
The right have also won power in NZ and the hard right Meloni won power in Italy last year and Wilders just topped the poll in the Netherlands.
The economic situation now with cost of living etc is far less rosy than 1997 and whoever the Tory leader is assuming they go into opposition will likely fair much better in polls than Hague did from 1997 to 2001
None of which addresses my point about the Tories specifically.
Anyway, the Tories don't (just) need to poll better than Hague in 2001. They'd need to poll better than Cameron in 2010.
Not if a Labour government is unpopular, the economy is poor and there is big swingback (the post 2008 poor economy helped Cameron more than his 'centrism', Brown had a clear lead over him in mid 2007)
Hmm, so the Tories should tack left/liberal to recapture the 23% of their 2019 voters they've lost in that direction then? Surely not further right after the 15% they've lost to refuk?
I think @hyufd's argument is those lost to Lab/LD are lost for the time being no matter what they do, whereas those lost to Reform maybe recoverable. He may be correct.
Indeed. I've tangled with HYUFD on this before, hence the wink.
HYUFD's reply with 'until Labour muck up' (or similar) is relevant, though. The Tories are losing this one, but they need to be electable when Labour muck up or are seen to muck up. Going too far after Reform will make that more of a challenge, I think.
It is, of course, the hangover from 2019 - Johnson put together an astonishing coalition, but one that could only be held together by a need to do Brexit and a need to keep Corbyn out. It just didn't work otherwise.
There is though, the argument - with which I have some sympathy - that it might be better to stand and fail big from the right at this election and then tack left under a new leader, rather than lose this one from the centre(ish) and give credence to the 'being more right could have won it' idea. Much like Miliband was seen - by some - as too centrist/triangulating and it took Corbyn to put the idea of winning from the left to bed.
Though even Corbyn got 40% of the vote and a hung parliament in 2017 despite his landslide defeat in 2019.
If a government is unpopular even leftwing or rightwing leaders can win (Ed Miliband was also the left of centre candidate in 2010, he beat his more centrist brother David for the leadership, Corbyn just went even further left than Ed had)
Yeah, if your opponents are crap then it matters less. Interesting question of how Corbyn would do now. Or Miliband. But parties, particularly those given a good hiding, do seem to pick someone ideologically comforting rather than someone good.
The logic such parties tend to convince themselves is correct is that all their problems are caused by the compromises inherent in governing and, freed from those shackles, they can develop an exciting, radical agenda in opposition. This, it is said, will mobilise the base who failed to turn out last time.
It's rarely true and, as you say, the reasoning is really just a cover that avoids saying what they really think, which is, "F*** the electorate - what do they know?" It takes time to move back to electability. And, in fairness, it's often a mistake but not always - maybe Heath or a chosen heir would've won in 1979, but it's pretty clear the Conservatives were sensible (electorally at least) to shift right with Thatcher in 1975.
Every other non-UK alternative (Netflix, CNN, YouTube) cannot replace it because of its parochial nature
So although I am comfortable with discussions of alternate funding models and its scope, I would regret the departure of the BBC. In fact, given their recent gutting of its news programmes and journalist staff, its news/current affairs/documentaries funding should be expanded not contracted.
Having now definitively settled the matter, you can now speak of something else. You're welcome.
Hmm, so the Tories should tack left/liberal to recapture the 23% of their 2019 voters they've lost in that direction then? Surely not further right after the 15% they've lost to refuk?
I think @hyufd's argument is those lost to Lab/LD are lost for the time being no matter what they do, whereas those lost to Reform maybe recoverable. He may be correct.
Indeed. I've tangled with HYUFD on this before, hence the wink.
HYUFD's reply with 'until Labour muck up' (or similar) is relevant, though. The Tories are losing this one, but they need to be electable when Labour muck up or are seen to muck up. Going too far after Reform will make that more of a challenge, I think.
It is, of course, the hangover from 2019 - Johnson put together an astonishing coalition, but one that could only be held together by a need to do Brexit and a need to keep Corbyn out. It just didn't work otherwise.
There is though, the argument - with which I have some sympathy - that it might be better to stand and fail big from the right at this election and then tack left under a new leader, rather than lose this one from the centre(ish) and give credence to the 'being more right could have won it' idea. Much like Miliband was seen - by some - as too centrist/triangulating and it took Corbyn to put the idea of winning from the left to bed.
The very high probability for me is that the Tories will indulge themselves by selecting someone completely unelectable, just as Labour did with Corbyn, for the same delusional reasons. When they have received another hammering in 2028/9 they will start to focus on winning again and come back to the centre with a Cameron equivalent. Tories have much less of a taste for losing than Labour and seem unlikely to me to indulge themselves twice like Labour did.
Yes - I think you and kjh saying something similar are likely right. Sunak will never been seen as right enough, particularly after bringing Cameron back, so there's scope to try the 'real' right winger option and get a kicking again before picking someone electable. Labour did it, in reverse. The Conservatives did it with IDS.
Yes @DavidL has the misfortune of having similar opinions to myself often.
Anyway it wasn't quite the Last Flight out of Saigon but despite cancellation of all the trains, abandoned cars and lots and lots and LOTS of snow, managed to charm a lovely man with 4WD to drive me to Lancaster.
So am now on the train to London and have even managed a seat!
Just drive home from Ambleside.
The main roads are now fine apart from the odd abandoned car to be skirted on the carriageway. Each oddly accompanied by its own surviving bit of snowdrift, which has otherwise disappeared.
The snow is still v heavy in the Duddon. But the real problem now is if the roads get icy. You really do not want to be caught on high isolated fell roads in this sort of weather. It is the downside of living in a remote place.
Anyway it wasn't quite the Last Flight out of Saigon but despite cancellation of all the trains, abandoned cars and lots and lots and LOTS of snow, managed to charm a lovely man with 4WD to drive me to Lancaster.
So am now on the train to London and have even managed a seat!
Just drive home from Ambleside.
The main roads are now fine apart from the odd abandoned car to be skirted on the carriageway. Each oddly accompanied by its own surviving bit of snowdrift, which has otherwise disappeared.
The snow is still v heavy in the Duddon. But the real problem now is if the roads get icy. You really do not want to be caught on high isolated fell roads in this sort of weather. It is the downside of living in a remote place.
Anyway London Euston in 10 mins .....
I would not have dared venture on any smaller roads into the hills.
I had a Polo back in the 80s, which with skinny winter tyres would happily cope with fell roads and four to five inches of snow.
Rishi Sunak has fallen to his lowest opinion rating among Conservative activists and James Cleverly’s popularity has collapsed since he became home secretary.
The prime minister is now bottom of the monthly cabinet league table compiled by the Conservative Home website based on a survey of Tory activists. His net rating of minus 25 percentage points is the lowest he has recorded as prime minister and represents a dramatic fall from a position of 26 points two months ago, when his retreat on climate policies was welcomed by Conservative members.
However, this fell to 7 points last month after a party conference speech that was widely seen as disappointing. He has plummeted even further after a difficult month of disputes with the Tory right in which and the Rwanda asylum policy was blocked by the Supreme Court.
Even the Boris denialists will have to admit getting rid of him was a mistake soon at this rate
Wednesday will mark exactly two years since the last Tory poll lead*, when Boris was in charge. The Tories were still behind when he resigned.
* Redfield.
That could sort of be shrugged off as mid term blues. That might not have been accurate (my hunch is that the Conservatives would be doing even worse if BoJo had somehow stayed on.)
Daddy's not coming back because of the very bad things he did. Could he have cut Paterson loose, fessed up to Partygate and not promoted Pincher? Then it would be game on. But he didn't do those things, because he's Boris. And that's why he had to go.
Comments
But also, not everybody wants that output. The trouble with the licence fee is that the wording is so ambiguous, bordering on the threatening.
Witness the confusion on here about "live" streaming.
The BBC as a mutual organisation would become a BBC for part of the nation. Those, like Cookie, who don't like the BBC's current output, would become irrelevant, whereas now the BBC is required to listen to everyone. The BBC would be less representative of the country, and thus less appropriate as a level of soft power.
Also, such a BBC would end up with much less money. It wouldn't be the BBC we know today.
Aside from (rare) programmes on BBC4 I don't think I've watched anything but the news on the BBC for years.
So am now on the train to London and have even managed a seat!
Sunak Now Polling Worse Than Truss With Key UK Voters
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-12-04/sunak-polling-worse-than-truss-with-key-uk-voters-study-finds (£££)
The problem the BBC often has is that it feels it needs to behave like a commercial station with the way it publicises itself and clings on to expensive talent.
My older daughter (17) in the UK watches Bake Off, or did, and that’s almost certainly it for her BBC TV consumption (and it’s not on BBC any more)
Everything else is streamed drama from Netflix and Prime and Apple, and an awful lot of YouTube
They'll never buy a TV licence.
Started as a one off podcast, the Battersea Poltergeist, then become a very good podcast series. - Bloody Hell Ken!
And now they’ve turned it into a handful of TV shows
The first of these I watched last night. “Miss Howard”. It is genuinely one of the most inexplicable things I have ever encountered. I do not believe in ghosts, I tend to believe in credulity, drugs, infrasounds or mass hallucination/psychic contagion - but the details on that episode are so extraordinary you actually DO wonder
Did anybody else see it? If not, I highly recommend. It is really hard to explain what happened, rationally (unless major players are lying, and it is a hoax, which is possible, but it doesn’t feel like that)
Only Tory "rightists" and "centrists" are both to the right of where they used to be.
My "favourite" one (podcast) was when a couple of guys had to camp outside a chateau in the countryside in France in the (empty) moat under a wooden bridge. In the middle of the night they heard what sounded like a hooved monster crossing the bridge above them which, when they got out of their sleeping bags to check, had disappeared.
WHAT THE FUCK do we think it was - a a four-legged beast wondering around the French countryside in the middle of the night. Obviously Satan incarnate.
ETA: here it is https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001ml5k
The main roads are now fine apart from the odd abandoned car to be skirted on the carriageway. Each oddly accompanied by its own surviving bit of snowdrift, which has otherwise disappeared.
I am aware of your slightly neurotic hyper-rationalism, which can be a little wearying, nonetheless I’d be interested in your take on “Miss Howard”
What is the rational explanation? Hoax? It is probably the most rationally confounding episode he has done yet
To take an example from here. You and OLB are both middle class professionals and devoted family men in early middle age. Lots in common. Yet he loves Strictly and you hate it.
And that's nothing to do with him being left wing and you being right wing. It's just your respective tastes.
I have listened to the World at One for over 50 years, and it has on the whole been well balanced. Today they used Sir John Hayes for a balanced commentary on immigration and most days either use Regev or Levy for an analysis of Bibi's policy in Gaza, as such, the BBC game is up.
https://www.theguardian.com/food/2023/dec/02/the-weird-secretive-world-of-crisp-flavours
If a government is unpopular even leftwing or rightwing leaders can win (Ed Miliband was also the left of centre candidate in 2010, he beat his more centrist brother David for the leadership, Corbyn just went even further left than Ed had)
I'm currently looking into all the trade unions that remain affiliated to the Palestine Solidarity Campaign. It's a little unclear whether that applies to my own one PCS. If it does I'll be leaving. That seemed the view of quite a few people when the Union shared support for PSC (confusing isn't it) on facebook.
By 1983, her Britain had a top rate of income tax of 60% and had gas, water, electricity, rail, telecoms and oil in public ownership. While she was socially of the right too, the whole country (including Labour) was also way to the right of where our current consensus is.
FWIW, I don't think that it'll be 'being populist/radical right' which does for the Tories in 2028 - there are enough counter-examples round the world to prove it possible, and Britain is no exception - it'll be that they'll be a dysfunctional shambles and Labour, while still uninspiring, will look capable in comparison (and office always grants a sheen of respectability).
https://jlpartners.com/s/Implosion-in-Blue-Report.pdf
It shows the adverse impact for the Conservatives on their 2019 voters.
This appears to be the report that the Bloomberg article linked previously refers.
(I am, originally, from Essex)
The right have also won power in NZ and the hard right Meloni won power in Italy last year and Wilders just topped the poll in the Netherlands.
The economic situation now with cost of living etc is far less rosy than 1997 and whoever the Tory leader is assuming they go into opposition will likely fair much better in polls than Hague did from 1997 to 2001
Anyway, the Tories don't (just) need to poll better than Hague in 2001. They'd need to poll better than Cameron in 2010.
NEW THREAD
It's rarely true and, as you say, the reasoning is really just a cover that avoids saying what they really think, which is, "F*** the electorate - what do they know?" It takes time to move back to electability. And, in fairness, it's often a mistake but not always - maybe Heath or a chosen heir would've won in 1979, but it's pretty clear the Conservatives were sensible (electorally at least) to shift right with Thatcher in 1975.
- We need something to unite us as a nation
- Given the change in the way we watch, a drop in its viewing figures is inevitable
- If we were still forced to watch television in the way we used to - one set, three/four/five channels - we would think it was a golden age on the BBC
- PB is dependent on the BBC's political coverage, and we would really miss programmes like Laura Kuenssberg: State of Chaos
- Every other non-UK alternative (Netflix, CNN, YouTube) cannot replace it because of its parochial nature
So although I am comfortable with discussions of alternate funding models and its scope, I would regret the departure of the BBC. In fact, given their recent gutting of its news programmes and journalist staff, its news/current affairs/documentaries funding should be expanded not contracted.Having now definitively settled the matter, you can now speak of something else. You're welcome.
See also
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/genres/factual/politics
Anyway London Euston in 10 mins .....
I had a Polo back in the 80s, which with skinny winter tyres would happily cope with fell roads and four to five inches of snow.
The prime minister is now bottom of the monthly cabinet league table compiled by the Conservative Home website based on a survey of Tory activists. His net rating of minus 25 percentage points is the lowest he has recorded as prime minister and represents a dramatic fall from a position of 26 points two months ago, when his retreat on climate policies was welcomed by Conservative members.
However, this fell to 7 points last month after a party conference speech that was widely seen as disappointing. He has plummeted even further after a difficult month of disputes with the Tory right in which and the Rwanda asylum policy was blocked by the Supreme Court.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/rishi-sunak-approval-rating-tory-members-worst-ever-ffhwkwkqn
* Redfield.
Daddy's not coming back because of the very bad things he did. Could he have cut Paterson loose, fessed up to Partygate and not promoted Pincher? Then it would be game on. But he didn't do those things, because he's Boris. And that's why he had to go.