BBC

Forums New posts
I wasn't paying the license over the BBC's coverage of Palestine.I got the black and white letters, then the red and white letters but then my wee sister gave me a wee payment and I thought 'fuck it I'll pay' which I did ;but they don't seem to have noticed ;because the red letters still arrive .So on top of everything else 'fuck em'.
 
moathibby said:
I wasn't paying the license over the BBC's coverage of Palestine.I got the black and white letters, then the red and white letters but then my wee sister gave me a wee payment and I thought 'fuck it I'll pay' which I did ;but they don't seem to have noticed ;because the red letters still arrive .So on top of everything else 'fuck em'.
Click to expand...
They really are the pits, I for one wouldn’t miss any of their programmes except one mibby 🤪
 
The BBC has overall been fantastic. It's now just an outdated model. My eldest son aged 19 wouldn't know what the BBC is if I asked him. He has Netflix, Disney & Spotify accounts. Good luck getting that generation to pay a license...

Using sex scandals though to put down the BBC is desperate stuff.
 
moathibby said:
I wasn't paying the license over the BBC's coverage of Palestine.I got the black and white letters, then the red and white letters but then my wee sister gave me a wee payment and I thought 'fuck it I'll pay' which I did ;but they don't seem to have noticed ;because the red letters still arrive .So on top of everything else 'fuck em'.
Click to expand...
Were you still watching? Did you boycott the channel, or just the paying?
 
I am a left wing nationalist and I pay my licence. Whilst much of the UK and Scottish news and shite like Question Time boils my pish, as it should, its unionist propaganda and lies. I watch the excellent documentaries, dramas, comedy and sport they provide, for what I pay its worth it.

@Smurf is right though, the next generation do not live by TV schedules, the fee will die a death.
 
1875 said:
I am a left wing nationalist and I pay my licence. Whilst much of the UK and Scottish news and shite like Question Time boils my pish, as it should, its unionist propaganda and lies. I watch the excellent documentaries, dramas, comedy and sport they provide, for what I pay its worth it.

@Smurf is right though, the next generation do not live by TV schedules, the fee will die a death.
Click to expand...
They may need to get with the times and have a subscription model.
Not sure how they have gotten away with it all these years tbh.
 
HaarlemShuffler said:
And there was me lookin forward to a whole cryptic string of posts within previous posts all together cumulatively forming a stunning joke aboot advertising aversion in Kirkaldy.

Feel robbed 😨


😀😀🤪
Click to expand...
You sure 'aversion' is the word you typed ???????
It is Kirkcaldy after all.
 
BBC used to be great.
Programmes like Panorama etc where there was proper investigative journalism at work.
And obviously all the brilliant Attenborough nature documentaries over the years.
Don't like it much now...far too slanted politically.....and I agree with those that say the upcoming generation will see the end of the license fee.
 
Archie said:
I assume because it would be free at point of use? The alternative would be that the availability of programming to people who couldn’t pay subscriptions would be extremely limited.
Click to expand...
but it wouldn’t be free at the point of use, it would be a subscription like any other. I mean it already is, just one that people don’t have a choice over, so it’s actually less free than the others in terms of the second meaning of free.

At the minute the increasingly tattered rationale for the license connects it to broadcast infrastructure - I mean it’s positioned as a ‘tv license’ not a ‘bbc license’. If the bbc becomes just another streamer, how does this stand up? At that point you are nakedly coercing people to pay for one, ahem, ‘content provider’ with no remaining fig leaves to hide behind. I guess the next question would be, as many young people increasingly view via computer, phone, iPad, will one need a ‘bbc license’ to own one of these. It’s just not tenable.
 
If today the license fee was scrapped and you had to sign up for a tenner a month subscription to get all BBC content I think they'd lose 90%+ of their audience.

Their best way forward would be to get it within existing subscription to SKY/Virgin. And look for commercial partnerships with Netflix/Amazon/Disney etc.

If Labour was forward thinking they'd privatise it in such a way giving shares to all current BBC license payers. Maybe if they owned it they'd more likely subscribe....
 
Here's a question from someone who doesn't watch it. If you turned on your telly tomorrow and it had gone, just disappeared, after a while would you really miss it? Isn't there enough out there to pick up the slack?
 
What is the purpose of the BBC? I don’t think it is to produce entertainment as that is covered by truly free to use services like ITV as well as a plethora of others. Why should I be forced to fund strictly, or a strictly fan forced to fund… well I can’t think of any bbc programme particularly directed at me, but in any case….

I don’t think it is to educate socially within a national mission of some kind, as the nation is no longer coherent and so this becomes about pushing one agenda among many. The BBC have been instrumental in undermining themselves on this one.

I think a purely educational channel, i.e. non politicised content about the natural world, how stuff is made, science etc, could just about be justified - becoming something like an informal open university. But the BBC has shown itself to be incapable of fulfilling this brief and its getting impossible anyway as things like science itself is increasingly compromised in the face of ideology.
 
egb_hibs said:
but it wouldn’t be free at the point of use, it would be a subscription like any other. I mean it already is, just one that people don’t have a choice over, so it’s actually less free than the others in terms of the second meaning of free.

At the minute the increasingly tattered rationale for the license connects it to broadcast infrastructure - I mean it’s positioned as a ‘tv license’ not a ‘bbc license’. If the bbc becomes just another streamer, how does this stand up? At that point you are nakedly coercing people to pay for one, ahem, ‘content provider’ with no remaining fig leaves to hide behind. I guess the next question would be, as many young people increasingly view via computer, phone, iPad, will one need a ‘bbc license’ to own one of these. It’s just not tenable.
Click to expand...
The ‘TV’ license covers these devices already. If the BBC disappeared tomorrow you would still be legally required to pay a licence. It’s really just another government taxation but the terms are that it technically covers your ability to access media content by whatever means. For example, if you didn’t have a house but lived in a motorhome that had no telly but is fitted with a radio, you would need a license to access the transmitted signals.
 
egb_hibs said:
What is the purpose of the BBC? I don’t think it is to produce entertainment as that is covered by truly free to use services like ITV as well as a plethora of others. Why should I be forced to fund strictly, or a strictly fan forced to fund… well I can’t think of any bbc programme particularly directed at me, but in any case….

I don’t think it is to educate socially within a national mission of some kind, as the nation is no longer coherent and so this becomes about pushing one agenda among many. The BBC have been instrumental in undermining themselves on this one.

I think a purely educational channel, i.e. non politicised content about the natural world, how stuff is made, science etc, could just about be justified - becoming something like an informal open university. But the BBC has shown itself to be incapable of fulfilling this brief and its getting impossible anyway as things like science itself is increasingly compromised in the face of ideology.
Click to expand...
Well the BBC has a number of 'purposes'. Producing a wide range of programming, particularly where the commercial sector won't or can't. Radio, for example, is one where the BBC produces content that is different, especially local programming. For all the moans about BBC Radio Scotland, there is no parallel local broadcaster with the range of content. Gealic language broadcasting - who picks that up? Radio Three is a thing of beauty, with no compare in Scala and Classic FM. And I think the BBC still produces high quality programming over all platforms. Do I like it all? No - but it's not all about me.

Is the nation no longer coherent? What does that even mean? Is it a pop at the constitutional issue? Social atttudes surveys actually show a high degree of coherence across the UK. If it is the constitutional issue, it divides Scotland. I really don't want to both sides it, but you get complaints about unwillingness to press the Scottish Government vs tory bias. Which is right?

Full marks for hyperbole on broadcasters and ideology. 'An informal Open University'. Thank god you aren't in charge of programming! And just what is 'non-politicised' content? Anything on climate change can be considered 'politicised' because it is contested. So what do you actually mean?

It's clear that the BBC is the punchbag for politicos. Right wingers seem to hate it. Nationalists seem to hate it, as do elements of Labour. But it's such an easy target. All for £3 a week to throw the baby out with the bathwater. And the licence fee or proxies isn't that unusual in Europe.

ITV doesn't want rid of the BBC because they don't want a rival for ad revenue. But are you really holding up ITV as a model of watchable telly? And they will also have to face the linear telly shift. If I was going for a target it would be Channel Four. When it was proposed that it be privatised I couldn't think of a single reason to oppose it. No doubt someone will pop up and say Channel Four news - but for me that's just a shadow of what it was.

As an aside, it's not that long ago that the then head of SKY TV argued that the BBC should be obliged to give successful shows to the commercial sector - backhanded vote of confidence then.

I suppose the bottom line is that when public service broadcasting goes - it's gone. I'm sure many on here would cheer that, but I won't be one of them.
 
Beagle said:
The ‘TV’ license covers these devices already. If the BBC disappeared tomorrow you would still be legally required to pay a licence. It’s really just another government taxation but the terms are that it technically covers your ability to access media content by whatever means. For example, if you didn’t have a house but lived in a motorhome that had no telly but is fitted with a radio, you would need a license to access the transmitted signals.
Click to expand...
Isn't it better that goes to broadcasting rather than just general taxation? I think it's legitimate to look at taxation in relation to ability to pay, but beyond that?
 
@Archie

By the nation being no longer coherent I mean the country is not bound together by a common set of values, traditions etc. Thus the BBC is no longer a mirror to the nation, it is representative of a narrow set of metropolitan liberal values which the rest of the country are forced to pay to have drummed into them.

The BBC is slanted as hell from news to drama and even inserted into apparently innocuous documentaries. If you cant see that it must be because liberal fish don’t have to give much thought to what water is.

It would be completely unacceptable if people were compelled to pay for GBNews and it’s no different here. I suggest the open university type remit as it is both a social good not obviously served by commercial operators, and it’s a remit where it may be possible to keep a lid on their partiality.

I can’t stress enough that there is a perfectly legitimate place for ‘Guardian TV’ so to speak, but that place is funded by willing subscriptions, not twisting the arms of Scottish nationalists, conservatives, Muslims, Marxists, Christians, libertarians, patriots, anarchists and every one else who doesn’t want a north London viewpoint rammed into them everyday and to be forced to pay for the privilege.

I can’t speak to radio as I don’t listen to it much at all, but it’s not expensive to run radio these days. If there is an audience for radio 3 I’m sure it could survive as a commercial entity.

Finally, the BBC is not entirely to blame here - returning to the start, it is probably no longer possible to reflect Britain as it is through a public broadcaster. To your question on politicisation, as a thought experiment can you imagine any of the following being presented as ‘a goodie’ in a BBC drama without the storyline having them come to see the north London light eventually ;

- someone who supports the death penalty
- someone who supports sharia law governing the UK
- a conservative mp
- someone who believes immigration should be substantially reduced
- someone who oppose abortion
- someone who believes in the Indian caste system
- someone who insists that possession of penis denotes a man
- someone who is a convinced brexiteer
- a supporter of Donald Trump
- someone who vocally believes sharia law or the caste system have no place in Britain

…I have been trying to come up with a left wing thing which would be impossible to imagine and I’m stumped. Even a Marxist might be depicted as principled in some way. And thats kinda the point. The above are views or people, held or supported by significant chunks of the country or the absolute majority. You’ll never hear them from a bbc character that isn’t a baddie.

Can we imagine for one second the bbc featuring storylines depicting the real causes of the disadvantages faced by black people or poor people generally; of non white racism; of a little old lady in a northern town whose world has been turned upside down and who laments it without being a racist in the way Gordon Brown might have it; of the empirical facts behind gender stramashes; of the actual pre colonial nature of countries colonised by Britain; where supranational bodies are depicted as bad thing; where Scottish independence is depicted as a good thing; where a minimal government is depicted as a good thing; where the NHS is depicted as dysfunctional; where polygamy as practised by some immigrant communities is depicted positively etc.

Now there is no reason the BBC should do any of these things - if it was a private operation. If it was representing the country it would be obliged to, or if not, obliged to avoid depicting the opposite. It’s probably not possible but they certainly don’t try; feck their dramas are usually completely lacking in suspense because you know who potentially dunnit and who is unlikely to have dunnit, by their identities.

It’s completely skewed and I can only conclude that if it is not obvious to you, it’s either because of its sheer pervasiveness or because your own views are reflected back at you and you assume them to be some kind of objective norm. It is in fact what the BBC might call ‘cultural imperialism’.
 
Last edited:
egb_hibs said:
@Archie

By the nation being no longer coherent I mean the country is not bound together by a common set of values, traditions etc. Thus the BBC is no longer a mirror to the nation it is representative of a narrow set of metropolitan liberal values which the rest of the country are forced to pay to have drummed into them.

The BBC is slanted as hell from news to drama and even inserted into apparently innocuous documentaries. If you can see that it must be because liberal fish don’t have to give much thought to what water is.

It would be completely unacceptable if people were compelled to pay for GBNews and it’s no different here. I suggest the open university type remit as it is both a social good not obviously served by commercial operators, and it’s a remit where it may be possible to keep a lid on their partiality.

I can’t stress enough that there is a perfectly legitimate place for ‘Guardian TV’ so to speak, but that place is funded by willing subscriptions, not twisting the arms of Scottish nationalists, conservatives, Muslims, Marxists, Christians, libertarians, patriots, anarchists and every one else who doesn’t want a north London viewpoint rammed into them everyday and to be forced to pay for the privilege.

I can’t speak to radio as I don’t listen to it much at all, but it’s not expensive to run radio these days. If there is an audience for radio 3 I’m sure it could survive as a commercial entity.
Click to expand...
And they continually turn a blind eye to a lot of the shit that goes on under their watch 😡
 
egb_hibs said:
@Archie

By the nation being no longer coherent I mean the country is not bound together by a common set of values, traditions etc. Thus the BBC is no longer a mirror to the nation, it is representative of a narrow set of metropolitan liberal values which the rest of the country are forced to pay to have drummed into them.

The BBC is slanted as hell from news to drama and even inserted into apparently innocuous documentaries. If you cant see that it must be because liberal fish don’t have to give much thought to what water is.

It would be completely unacceptable if people were compelled to pay for GBNews and it’s no different here. I suggest the open university type remit as it is both a social good not obviously served by commercial operators, and it’s a remit where it may be possible to keep a lid on their partiality.

I can’t stress enough that there is a perfectly legitimate place for ‘Guardian TV’ so to speak, but that place is funded by willing subscriptions, not twisting the arms of Scottish nationalists, conservatives, Muslims, Marxists, Christians, libertarians, patriots, anarchists and every one else who doesn’t want a north London viewpoint rammed into them everyday and to be forced to pay for the privilege.

I can’t speak to radio as I don’t listen to it much at all, but it’s not expensive to run radio these days. If there is an audience for radio 3 I’m sure it could survive as a commercial entity.

Finally, the BBC is not entirely to blame here - returning to the start, it is probably no longer possible to reflect Britain as it is through a public broadcaster. To your question on politicisation, as a thought experiment can you imagine any of the following being presented as ‘a goodie’ in a BBC drama without the storyline having them come to see the north London light eventually ;

- someone who supports the death penalty
- someone who supports sharia law governing the UK
- a conservative mp
- someone who believes immigration should be substantially reduced
- someone who oppose abortion
- someone who believes in the Indian caste system
- someone who insists that possession of penis denotes a man
- someone who is a convinced brexiteer
- a supporter of Donald Trump
- someone who vocally believes sharia law or the caste system have no place in Britain

…I have been trying to come up with a left wing thing which would be impossible to imagine and I’m stumped. Even a Marxist might be depicted as principled in some way. And thats kinda the point. The above are views or people, held or supported by significant chunks of the country or the absolute majority. You’ll never hear them from a bbc character that isn’t a baddie.



Now there is no reason the BBC should do any of these things - if it was a private operation. If it was representing the country it would be obliged to, or if not, obliged to avoid depicting the opposite. It’s probably not possible but they certainly don’t try; feck their dramas are usually completely lacking in suspense because you know who potentially dunnit and who is unlikely to have dunnit, by their identities.

It’s completely skewed and I can only conclude that if it is not obvious to you, it’s either because of its sheer pervasiveness or because your own views are reflected back at you and you assume them to be some kind of objective norm. It is in fact what the BBC might call ‘cultural imperialism’.
Click to expand...
Or it might not be clear to me because I don't share your blinkered obsession with North London. It seems you want a BBC to reflect you. Well we are much more multi-faceted than that.

Can we imagine for one second the bbc featuring storylines depicting the real causes of the disadvantages faced by black people or poor people generally; of non white racism; of a little old lady in a northern town whose world has been turned upside down and who laments it without being a racist in the way Gordon Brown might have it; of the empirical facts behind gender stramashes; of the actual pre colonial nature of countries colonised by Britain; where supranational bodies are depicted as bad thing; where Scottish independence is depicted as a good thing; where a minimal government is depicted as a good thing; where the NHS is depicted as dysfunctional; where polygamy as practised by some immigrant communities is depicted positively etc.
Click to expand...

What a melange of right wing talking points. You seem to want pro-colonialist, anti-EU,WHO and UN, pro -nationalist, anti NHS and pro poligamy telly drama? Wow. Are you absolutely sure this is your battleground? And what about news output - is it really as slanted as you make out? It gets lots of complaints from right, left and nationalists. I'm not saying that means it's right, but maybe, just maybe you're a bit seeing what you want to see?

But it is legitimate to critique a public service broadcaster. It's also legitimate to critique the motives of those doing so.

And as an aside, do you really see yourself as the arbiter of the real causes of disadvantages faced by black and poor people?
 
@Archie do you really not get it?

I didn't list my views - I share some, disagree with others and am indifferent to yet others. I listed views that are not represented.

Your post implies I'm imagining the BBC having a left liberal bias, and in your next breath you express disbelief that other views might be represented. Incredibly, you describe this as you preferring multi facetted views. I can't believe you actually wrote that without noticing.

i also can't believe in the context of this conversation you could construe things like an honest portrayal of pre colonial countries as being pro colonial. Have we really got to the point where accuracy versus invented and idealised mythmaking is 'right wing'?

i put it to you that this is the problem with the liberal echo chamber on nutshell; devotees come to assume the establishment view is a default. It's not, its a minority view albeit that minority includes the rich and powerful. Its also not a 'good' worldview either - its not wholly benign at all. And moreover I think it is so pervasive it is causing devotees to lose their purchase on what truth is and what is real.

As I say no objection to that being available to you of course, but let's keep it simple; why should other people be forced to fund the promotion of a specific worldview just because you happen to share it? Seriously.
 
Last edited:
Ps no I don't see myself as arbiter of the disadvantages of black people; I see myself as someone who places more value on facts and reality than on mendacious narratives which damage the disadvantaged.

Let's not get forked on off on that though it's been retread on 2 or 3 threads over the last few weeks already; the point here is even if it's uncomfortable and you choose to reject it, the BBC won't give you the full picture. It lies by omission, at best.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
  • Menu
  • Home
  • Hibs Chat
  • New Posts
  • Just Back
  • Chatroom