Gary Lineker and the Licence Fee.

The recent furore over Gary Lineker likening the Tory Government's language over migrants has highlighted the impossibility of the licence fee.

The BBC has an impartiality clause in contracts because it has to be seen to be above politics, to be impartial. That way, it is (in part) seen to be for everyone, and not favouring one person or another or one ideology or another.

The reason for that is everyone, regardless of political viewpoint, race or religion has to contribute towards the BBC in the form of the licence fee. 

I mean, if they stopped making programmes for a certain demographic, or started espousing political viewpoints against a certain demographic, then that demographic would quite rightly feel a bit hard done by to put it mildly. (I'm talking about old white working class men here of course).

They might wonder why they are contributing to an organisation that doesn't cater for them in the first instance and even worse, actively opposes them on screen. 

In that instance that demographic might wonder why the hell are they paying money to the BBC to be abused? I mean, some of us might be phycological masochists, but the majority aren't.

So impartiality has to be the bedrock of the BBC, in output, in opinion on and off the screen. 

If Gary Lineker likens the people paying his wages (The government following public opinion and therefore the public) to Nazis, then maybe he should rethink taking money from the public if they offend him so much? Or is it just the people that offend his virtuous sensibilities but he's quite happy to keep taking their money?

In that case, hypocrisy is very much at the fore.

It seems to me that either BBC presenters stay ideologically neutral in their public opinions, or we scrap the licence fee and then you can decide if you want to fund their opinion if it conflicts with yours.

Question time 08/03/2018 Worst Ever Episode.

Well, it happened: Question Time dredged the political landscape this week and came up with a panel that (except for Liam Fox) was incomprehensible, incoherent and unable to make any sort of valid point.

Let's start with Liam Fox: Conservative MP and one-time secretary of state for defence. Probably the most coherent on the whole panel. Certainly the only person able to make a coherent steament of fact and make a point.

After Dr Fox, it all spirals drastically downhill...

Laura Pidcock: Labour MP and token northern class warrior. Just the sort of died-in-the-wool Labour idiot that I left the North to avoid. Appointed by rota rather than ability.  Lots of leftist babble that makes no sense. Housing is a human right and insecurety of tenure supresses the ability to join in industrial action. Fuck me, she's stuck in the Seventies, even though  she probably wasn't born then. Most likely indoctrinated by parents.. Seems to want the North stuck in a stereyotypical time warp. Probably wants to bring Lowry back from the dead to paint it all.

Prue Leith: TV cook and cake-baker, old and seemingly a little bit senile. Tended to wander off the point, or try her hardest to get there without wandering off topic or her voice trailing off as she lost the plot.

Roma Agrawhal: Engineer, hopefully not structural. Out of her depth in poitical debate, but made up the numbers of females for IWD with the cachet of being an engineer and young and a minority. Boxes galore ticked for the BBC inclusivity department.

George the Poet: Described as a spoken word artist. It would be fine if he could actually get the words out. Seemed to errr and aaahhhh for longer than actual coherent words came out of his mouth. Can't say what his political views were. They appeared left of centre, but not sure.

Even David Dimbleby got in a dig when talking about the lack of time available for the programme, saying maybe they should just have the audience and remove the panel. The audience were certainly lucid and intelligent in the main.

Question Time was a waste of air time. I'm not sure what's going on at the BBC but bloody hell they need to up their game and it really won't take much. Anything was better than last night.

Maybe they wanted to steer away from Brexit, so had a non-Brexit loaded panel.

Next week is Keir Stamer, the Labour leadership stalking horse and the worst head of the CPS they've ever had.  I'm sure television suppliers are rubbing their hands with glee at the replacement sets they'll be selling next week. Why is it I always want to punch or thrown something at the smug git?

Post-Truth... Post-Expert??

There was an interesting debate on Radio 4 this morning between Michael Gove and Stephanie Flanders on the role of experts in determining policy, reporting on trends and generally advising on all things.

The problem with so-called "expert opinion" is it's just that: an opinion. However, if that opinion suits a media agenda is is jumped upon and reiterated as fact ad nauseum. Despite a mandate for fairness, the BBC are one of the worst culprits, offering no counter argument to whatever claim they are making.But they are no worse than Sky, Fox, CNN, RT or any other news channel.

Doing this is essentially biased reporting and at worst no better than propaganda.

I've watched TV news since I was a kid and the most startling change in my lifetime is the introduction of news processed as drama and the increase of biased viewpoints. Way back when, news was factual with very little overt bias. Any bias was easily identified by an opposing viewpoint and a reasoned brain filtering the outlandish claims from the facts.

I've already noted the issue with Brexit: because the BBC are biased against Brexit (and I suppose their fat subsidies from the EU) they report everything bad as "because of Brexit" and anything good as "despite Brexit". So much so I see Guido has started a #DespiteBrexit hashtag on his website. So called experts are wheeled in front of cameras and microphones to decry leave voters, to prophesy doom and gloom, to the exclusion of the opposing viewpoint. Well, only to expose people with an opposite viewpoint as loonies, cranks or people not to be taken seriously.

The other problem for "experts" is their dire warnings of doom don't occur. Which is what happens with opinions and theories. They are a viewpoint, they are extrapolations of what MAY happen in the future.

Their opinions and theories have no more weight than any other but are touted as absolute truth..

The same goes for any other. Global warming is gospel according to the BBC, the science is settled, with absolutely no physical evidence. It's all heresay, statistical, with no proven mechanism, no proof that increased CO2 drives global warming, let alone man made CO2 is the main influence. It could be that the globe warming is a totally natural process and the increase of CO2 is driven by the warming rather than the other way round. But no science is being done to prove that hypothesis, there's no money in it. Science is very much made to fit the model. You'll never hear that viewpoint taken seriously on any mainstream media.

The phrase post-truth has emerged this year to describe the rise of populism, the rejection of the elitist version of reality reported to us as absolute truth. It's supposed to be an unhealthy thing. But it's plain that the media and elites are just as bad at offering lies as truth.

Getting back to the point, the problem isn't "experts" per se, it's the media's attempt to process opinion as fact, theories as proof, without opposition. Telling us what we should believe, rather than reporting both sides of the story and allowing us to weigh either side of the argument and divine the truth for ourselves.

BBC to invite BNP onto Question Time.

The Story is here.

Maybe the BBC see the writing on the wall and are now attempting act a bit more like a public service broadcaster and less like the propaganda arm of the Labour party.

The report says the BBC is talking to other parties about appearing on a programme with BNP representatives, but why? Why not invite people to the show and just empty chair those not willing to debate their policies against those of the BNP?

One can only hope that their political news output will start to lessen its reliance on reporting Labour press releases verbatim and actually add some independant comment.

Murdoch Attack on BBC News

This latest attck on the BBC from News Corporation and the Murdoch family in general is no suprise.

News Corp is already charging for news as they've found (as the dead tree press has) that there is no profit to be had in free news. The BBC are now a target because they provide news paid for by licence fees.

Ordinarily, I'd say there's no case to answer: thats the way we fund public broadcasting in this country and thats that. For drama, entertainment, documentaries and the like, the BBC should be beyond criticism. But for news, there's a fly in the ointment: the supposedly impartial BBC are far from impartial. Everyone knows over the past decade or more, the BBC has become more and more the propaganda wing of the Labour party, reiterating downing street press releases without any balancing commentary. A far cry from the days of Thatchers's and Major's governments.

I just wonder if Murdoch has found the chink in the BBC's armour, the weak spot that will eventually lead to the breal up of the BBC. Given News Corp's determination to make people pay for their news and the Murdoch clan's past record at sweeping competition aside, its a possibility.

Dan Hannan Video goes Global.

The stats are unbelievable: Dan Hannan's video is set to excede a million views by the end of the week. Its already over 660,000 views and gone global.

Its now been picked up by the stateside media, with Dan giving an interview on TV over there. I'm sure he'll be asked for more.

But the remarkable thing is its not been picked up at all by the UK mainstream media. The popularity of the video nor the speech in the EU Parliament itself. Nothing, not a ripple. Its either as if what happens in the EU parliament doesn't count, or there's some deliberate attempt to supress dissenting voices against the government.

Dan's speech, the youtube video, their online popularity and the lack of UK media exposure is a great example why people are turning in greater numbers to the online blogger network. The mainstream media can't be relied upon to provide balanced and evenly weighted comment. The BBC was nobbled after the resignation of Greg Dyke and continues to peddle a pro-government agenda. Time and again I've criticised Nick Robinson on his blog for pushing a pro-Labour line (even at one point provoking a terse reply in one of his blogs), which shouldn't be happening given the BBCs remit to be balanced and impartial.
If you notice an increased and more balanced output than normal from Nick over the next few days, hopefully its because I and hopefully a few others have made a complaint about his bias.

The main point is that we are now roughly 12 months from a general election and our mainstream media are pumping out a biased viewpoint, which the majority of the population aren't aware of.

I just wonder how long free and unbiased output from blog sites will be tolerated before some sort of "anti-terror" legislation is proposed in order to control them. The new legislation aimed at social networking sites amongst others needs or any proposed amendments to it will require careful scrutiny I think.

Yet ANOTHER Labour Snout in the Trough

Seems yet another London-based Labour MP has a second home and is claiming support for it.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article5963145.ece

I really am staggered by the depths these people go to. Do they not understand they're our servants?

This really, really, needs clearing up NOW. We don't need a year-long enquiry to tell us. Harriet Harman's court of public opinion has spoken. Lets see some action.

Related to this is the fact the BBC hasn't reported this story anywhere on their news website. You'd think it would be up there on the political home page, but no. We're 12 months away from a general election (much sooner than that if my predictions come true) and the BBC should be bending over backwards to be unbiased and even handed in their political reporting. It seems they aren't even close at the moment.

Update:

Here's the only mention on the BBC website, a video:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7962504.stm

24 minutes to get from either house to Westminster, so absolutely no reason to have a second home, except to have a nice little nest-egg she can sell when she leaves Parliament financed by the taxpayer.

IT HAS TO STOP!