Will the Tories attack the ‘bloated’ BBC?

Roy

It would seem there is little hope for any real criticisms of the BBC simply because everybody has the misguided opinion it is a truthful and impartial organisation. Which it definitely is not.

Ian

The thing is do we really want a fully privatised TV media? A full sky subscription is around £90 per month, private channel children's TV is 24 hour cartoons with toy adverts in between, in Italy they ended up with endless tacky quiz shows with topless young women. The Tories may hate the lefty BBC but the alternative is a drop in standards and quality.

Sheila

Scrap it. Forever.

Roy

A drop in standards and quality Ian, would be a small price to pay, if indeed it is the price, for truthfullness and an impartiality in world news and views, with no input from known propagandists.

Mr Grumpy

So Mr Thompson justifies his 800k because he doesn't enjoy 'complete job security', does he? Hmmm... Out in the real world a lot of us are meekly accepting pay freezes precisely because our jobs are insecure.

I use the news website more than any other BBC offering and I believe it is in principle a genuine and important public service. However the pervasive liberal bias drives me mad, and I'd really like to see Cameron tackle it. The connection the article fails to make is that the Tories' softly-softly approach is forced on them by their electoral need to buy into large swathes of precisely that liberal consensus that the Beeb has done so much to shape. I can only hope Cameron will show his teeth once he's in No. 10.

David Short

The BBC has very, very clever people in its employ, and the very, very, very cleverest were taken on from Oxbridge in the late 1970s. That's how they will keep the thing they work for that puts lots of people in jail - usually women - for the 'crime' of owning a TV set.

Adrian

I think the license fee is doomed anyway. The internet and micropayments are going to utterly transform the way we consume media of every kind. In five years time no one will be buying conventional television sets anymore.

pigfrottage

I hate all the adverts on the other channels. Worth paying the fee to keep them off the BBC ones.

Eric Hester

I think that I am old enough to decide which papers I read, and therefore pay for: THE SPECTATOR, THE TELEGRAPH, THE TLS, etc. I also think that I am old enough to decide which radio and television stations I listen to and watch: Radio 3, Sky news, Sky Sports, occasionally ITV etc. Unfortunately, I cannot choose for myself but have to pay for all the BBC services. Keep the BBC, I say, but let people pay for it directly if they want it. Is this not a Tory solution? There will be no reform in the BBC while every household in Britain has to pay a fine to it or go to prison.

JustMe

PigFrottage hates adverts on TV. So do I. I especially hate all the "adverts" on BBC, either unnecessarily frequent plugs for future programs, of advert-style fill-ins. It seems the BBC thinks it has to copy the "pattern" of distractions that adverts give. Why can't they just show the programs?

terence patrick hewett

The BBC have every reason to panic. My spies tell me that Beryl Bainbridge is in line for DG.

Robin Aitken

It is true that Cameron's Conservative party has had a pretty fair deal from the BBC however that should not fool anyone into believing that the BBC is in any sense 'impartial'.All it means is that the new Conservative Party is more to the BBC's liking than previous incarnations (Howard, IDS and Hague were all too 'right wing' for the Corporation which is why they were comprehensively trashed). How do I know this? Because I worked there for 25 years, latterly as a reporter on 'Today'. I wrote a book about it 'Can we Trust the BBC?' And the answer - in case you're wondering - is no - at least if you happen to be any sort of social conservative. Social liberalism is imprinted in the BBC's DNA; it is a repository of left wing idealism. Whether Mr Cameron sees fit to do anything about this will, in my view, be the litmus test of whether he intends to open a new, and much-needed front in our non-existent 'culture war. And - sadly - I confess I am not optimistic.

David Short

Thatcher's Peacock Commission was both a brave and a cowardly act. Brave because it took on, so long ago, the BBC. But also cowardly from the start because its mission was to look at (and yes it was illiterate) 'alternative ways of funding the Corporation'.

What happened was that lots of people contributed to the report, mostly saying there was not a big enough advertising cake to fund the BBC.

As if that mattered.

The people who run the BBC are some of the cleverest bureaucrats in the world, as clever as Sir Humphrey in Yes, Minister. But also as pointless.

They can be as lefty as they want. No one with any influence will oppose them. They employ, through well-paid contract not full-time, anyone that
might do so.

That includes the chief executive of the Spectator, and the editor of Private Eye.

So people who simply cannot afford the license fee, but because they have children have a TV, will continue to be jailed.

But the adroitness and useless cleverness of the BBC-crats combine to ensure they, and their successors, will be in power until we're all dead.

Barry

"The Tories may hate the lefty BBC but the alternative is a drop in standards and quality."

No, Ian, the alternative is a BBC devoid of bias.

I am tired of being forced to pay for an organisation that treats me, my tastes, my opinions and my preferences, with contempt.

MAX

WELL I REMEMBER THE BBC OF THE EARLY SIXTIES - DAVID FROST - THAT WAS THE WEEK THAT WAS ETC I ENJOYED THE IRREVERENCE TO POLITICIANS OF COURSE BUT I DO REQUIRE THAT THIS IRREVERENCE IS EVEN AND APPLIED EQUALLY - WHICH IN THE LAST DECADE IT CERTAINLY HAS NOT BEEN - WELL I USED TO KNOW SOME BBC STAFF FROM THE OLD PEBBLE MILL IN BIRMINGHAM - IN FACT THEY CAME TO SOME PARTIES OF MINE IN MOSELEY BIRMINGHAM - I FOUND THE WOMEN IN PARTICULAR HAD AN 'INNER SNARL' WHICH MANIFESTED ITSELF IN S SORT OF CULTURAL SUPERIORITY WHICH SUSTAINED THEIR VACUOUS IDENTITIES (FRAGILE ON THE INNER - USING CULTURAL SHIELDS)MOST UNFORTUNATELY FOR ONE OF THEM WAS THE INTRODUCTION TO REALITY - HAVING THROWN A WHISKY DRINK IN THE FACE OF ONE OF THE JAZZ MUSICIANS (THINKING SHE WAS ON THE MOVIES AND INVULNERABLE)- HE PROMPTLY SLAPPED HER FACE AND SHE STUMBLED HURLING EXPLETIVES AND CONTINUED HER TIRADE - SO HE HIT HER AGAIN RATHER LIGHTLY THOUGH - SOMEONE ASKED WHY DID I NOT INTERVENE AND HELP HER - I TOLD HIM THAT IT WAS BECAUSE WHEN SHE HAD ENTERED I HAD OFFERED POLITELY TO TAKE HER COAT AND HANG IT UP - SHE REPLIED ' DON'T TOUCH WHAT YOU CAN'T AFFORD'! (SUCH WONDERFUL OXFORDIAN MANNERS) - YES THAT INNER SNARL THEY CARRY WITH THEM HIDES MUCH EMOTIONAL BAGGAGE THAT THEY GET THE CHANCE TO INFLICT UPON US FROM THEIR SOMEWHAT FLIMSY TOWERS OF BROADCASTING

David Short

Thank you very genuinely for that.

Almost everyone will think you are bonkers because you wrote in caps. Many people don't understand the sane reason why people do that.

The Spectator should come out strongly against the lefty BBC but the chief executive, who is right wing in a 1980s way, makes a bit of cash from that Corporation.

When will this ambivalence stop?

Brian Anderson

Now the BBC is going digital, there should no longer be any need for them to send out the threatening letters for not paying the licence fee. If you dont pay Sky TV their subscription they just switch you off, surely the Beeb could do the same.

Andy

For the moment I think Cameron is all mouth. If he wins the next election I will be taking a close look at whether he can actually walk the talk. I fear not, but who knows we may receive some pleasant surprises...

I am sick of the smug statist BBC and all that it stands for. I would love to see the back of it, but if anything I think it will be the internet that hastens its demise, not smooth talking politicians.

Stewart

There is no place in society now for a television tax. That said, it would require more political capital than their majority will probably allow for after the GE for the Conservatives to entirely scrap the BBC as a taxpayer funded entity. What Cameron should do is implement an immediate 'recession review' of all taxation and expenditure and include the license fee in this. Cut it to a hundred pounds per annum immediately and force the BBC to trim its fat accordingly. Threaten the executives with their jobs to implement measures to try and mitigate the huge left wing bias that exists. Some ideas might include advertising BBC jobs in conservative media, forcing publication of that report which highlighted many aspects of left wing bias in the corporation, making fewer Yoof culture based programmes. Further to this the BBC must stop using Eastenders, casualty, holby city, and other drama programmes as test beds for Labour's social/health policies. The organisation must be tarred with the "Institutionally Leftist" brush. Such a hallmark should be as unacceptable in a taxpayer funded body and "Institutionally racist" is. Eventually News International should be granted a terrestrial broadcast license and the TV tax abolished. Standards on terrestrial TV are quite low as they are so I don't think there is much to lose on that front. Having watched US cable TV for the last year it isn't that bad an alternative to pay for that which you want. Many companies will roll their phone service, cable and internet deals together to offer a pretty attractive deal. A future BBC could still do this and compete with the rest of the market through subscription. They could still run a terrestrial channel or two and pay for it through advertising. As one comment said, they practically run adverts already, only with their own product.

David Short

How funny it would be if Ian Hislop and Paul Merton had to wear a Dame Edna badge stating how much they get for every episode of Have I Got News for You.

Translated also into numbers of license fees....

I challenge them to do it.

Minnie Ovens

I fail to see the need for the BBC.
But then I have spent the last thirty years of my life (except for the last two) in the US.
The only benefit I can see in having the BBC is to pander to MP's egos in allowing them time on badly monitored programmes such as Question Time (or rather Politics Light a la Dimbleby).
The US informs, entertains and educates on a far higher level than the BBC.
Oh, by the way, I subscribe to the Reithian principles for the BBC since no one has ever come close to any others of any quality.
Take politics for example. Do you want indeterminate or indifferent?
The US has it all from Rush Limbaugh and Fox to CNN, C-Span and a huge variety of network and affiliate news.
Then again you have talk shows. No one, but no one in Britain even approaches Charlie Rose in the breadth and quality of interviewees and the broad spectrum of subjects.
The quality of Late Night shows, and I am not necessarily talking about the Networks is so far above the "Thing" you have on saturday evenings that it is best ignored.
You want drama? Well what about HBO, without doubt the home of high quality drama.
The Sopranos, Band of Brothers, Six Feet Under, and the best police show ever made, The Wire.
And we have not got to Showtime or TMC yet.
There is then PBS and PRI both of which are free and rely on private donations. While they do have a lot of BBC and ITV shows which they buy, they also have Frontline which is a superb investigative programme.
Ok, you say that it is the USA and because of its sise, both in population and extent, it can generate the investment needed for good programming.
Fait enough but then, in fairness, The US pay nothing for all this except that programming they want (through Cable).
The British pay through the nose for a bloated and overpaid bureaucracy which, now and then, manages to free up some money for one or two good programmes amongst the Dross. That, of course, also takes second place to mediocre websites and other media diversions outside its remit.
Media is narrow enough in the UK because of its size and population. Everything is centalised leaving little room for diversity.
And I objest to being lectured, by a biased medium, as to what I must do and think.
No Britain, if you get rid of the BBC you open up all spectrums of the media to diversity but also to low, medium or high quality programming as you wish to select.
It has not been, in the last 40 years, in the best interests of the people to maintain this corpulent Albatross.
Get rid of it.

Ben

Who are these 'clever' people? They must be behind the scenes because they certainly don't appear on our TV screens.

I long for programmes that are witty, enlightening, un-biased, un-filthy, well-made and yes - clever.

The BBC has a treasure-chest of such historical gems but don't seem to be able to make them any more.

Biased? Yes certainly. But also rubbish nowadays !

They're just not very good at making programmes any more. The ultimate condemnation.