The BBC: A scandal and a disgrace (From The Northern Echo)
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The BBC: A scandal and a disgrace
2:11pm Tuesday 2nd August 2011 in Peter Mullen
VARIETIES of dog poo in Priestgate. The cleanliness of the corridors in the local hospital. The fortunes of our football team. The persistent east wind which has rather taken the shine off the summer.
That’s what I love about the Echo.
I have been privileged to write a column for this paper since . . . well, before some of you were born. And I hope to keep on writing for it for at least another 100 years.
The truly miraculous aspect is the friends I have made. I’m talking about readers who really hate what I write. So what? This is what happens: you get to know them and, before you know where you are, people who started out looking like implacable enemies send you pictures of their family holidays, invite you round to tea and post bottles of wine to you at Christmas.
The best definition is that our newspaper is like a village. There is the village parson, the village publican, the village whore and the village idiot. And somehow we all get on together. I think it’s called something like live-and-let-live. I would find it very hard to do without it. It’s a sort of common – or rather uncommon – network of kindness How different this truly democratic, chatty little world of friendships is from the BBC.
I’m coming to loathe the BBC.
I’m getting to the stage where I switch on the Today programme and nearly chuck the bloody wireless out into the street. They are all so self-righteous. They all think of themselves as a lot cleverer than they actually are.
And, most importantly, they all think alike.
They all share the same prejudices – except they do not think these are prejudices but only what any right thinking (of course I mean left-thinking) person regards as the bleeding obvious And they lie. Not an admirable trait in an institution which is meant to inform truthfully.
For example, they are obsessed with “government cuts”. There are no government cuts. The government is borrowing and spending more this year than it did last year.
And when – roll on – this incompetent and mendacious coalition finally falls off its plaster plinth, state spending will be even higher than it is today.
They have tasteless obsessions. For instance, they are besotted with pop music.
There is barely a half hour in the Radio Four schedule without a blast of this muck.
They despise all the good things about the US, such as its vast contribution to international aid, famine and disaster relief.
But they adore all the cheap and tawdry things about the US such as the Oscars and the sickening sub-culture of celebrity.
They uncritically accept and promote the lunatic dogma of global warming. They propagandise the corrupt and inefficient – and frequently murderous – NHS as “the envy of the world”.
They despise private wealth but worship state provision: except of course that so many of these overpaid producers and presenters send their own kids to private schools and pay for private health care.
The worst of all this is that we have what Marxists call “hegemony” – that is no choice masquerading as multiplicity and freedom.
And we have to pay for it – no choice again – through the universal tax of the licence fee.
It’s a form of Stalinism, sovietisation.
The BBC is a national scandal and a moral disgrace, a whole bag of worms and hypocrites.
Can’t we just get rid of it or at least stop paying for it? Then we could get some decent people back, like that nice Rupert Murdoch.
Comments(2)
RockBadger
says...
6:39pm Tue 2 Aug 11
The BBC is far more regulated and open to account than other media, hence the scrutiny of Parliament and the Viewer Panels.
You claim that they lie. Lets look at your two example - Global warming (yes, it is real, which you’d see if you took your head out the sand and listened to the experts), Government cuts (how many examples do you want or real cuts with job losses and closure of services?), and these things are real. There is plenty of debate, and there are plenty of issues I get cross with as they have people on who have views I disagree with, but that is the nature of what they should be doing and I’d be worried if they just repeated the views I already have. All parties feel the BBC is anti them, Labour pointing out pro-Tory/anti-Labour stories, some linked to Nick Robinson, former chair of Oxford Uni’s Conservative association. The fact they are all unhappy I take to be a good sign.
You don’t like pop music? Well, it is popular so. The BBC plays a big role in encouraging up and coming bands as well as established artists. And they support live classical music too beyond just having the radio stations – ever heard of the BBC Proms?
Local radio is a key lesson. Until c1990 commercial radio had to have local content, but then that went. Now almost all local commercial stations have next to no local element apart from a few local adverts, as they exist purely to make money. Contrast with BBC local radio stations with local news and featuring local stories. Our local station has had key political and public service figures such as head of the local NHS and ambulance services on in the past few weeks and being grilled, and having people phone in with questions. Where else would people be able to hear them or be able to questions them?
However with your final comment about nice Rupert Murdoch I realise that this could be all ironic. There is a campaign by other broadcasters to discredit the BBC so it is broken up and they can gain commercially. Just a shame they don’t do that by raising their own standards.
David Lacey says...
4:52pm Tue 2 Aug 11
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As for the so called cuts - our very own Echo leader described them as too soon and too deep the other day, confirming if needed the underlying left wing bias of its writers. Perhaps your words need to resonate in the editor's ears?
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Best wishes.