Harry’s Place

I wonder what Morgoth will have to say on this subject. I wait with bated breath.

I’m bit nervous posting here, I hope I’m not answering in an artsy way on the wrong bit or being too political in the bit normally left till last.

But when I’m abroad I really,really miss the BBC.Its one of the few things that people are jealous of me having at home ,as a Briton.
When I get home,turning on lots of bits of the BBC is a delight.

BUT I FUCKING HATE THAT FUCKING VICTORIA FUCKING DERBYSHIRE.

I’ve just been abroad and whenever I turned on the telly in the hotel room there was Wimbledon on both BBC channels.

To my great sorrow my admiration and affection for Mr Fry has been tarnished by his poor judgment in putting his signature to that advert condemning Israel as the worst human rights offender in the world.

This was Stephen Fry being eloquent about broadcasting, but he was never so eloquent as in the Fry & Laurie sketch about 1980s broadcasting policy: http://www.geocities.com/mmemym/bits2/fal0115.htm

Ami,

Artists can be forgiven for their over-empathic stupidities.

Having to buy a license to own a television is a fucking disgrace. it is a tax on the poor- those who defend the BBC are generally deluded about this issue. If they want to watch BBC programs let them pay for it like Sky.

Regardless of its benefits it is unacceptable in this day and age that you should have to pay money to watch a television. It is morally indefensible and we are the only country in the world which does so.

This is a social class issue.

I wonder what Morgoth will have to say on this subject. I wait with bated breath.

Special pleading from someone who, whilst admittedly a genius, is making a living off the backs of the license payer.

Mellifluous Neil D.? Surely not. More like pompous, smug, overweight, overexposed, self-reverential and hubristic. His acting, particularly in Gosford Park, is dull, while his famous flight from some west-end show he was in descended into bathos of his own making. As for his Qi TV panel game, towards the end of the last series he could not get two complete teams of celebrities to appear on it, doubtless because of invitees’ fear of having to appear interested in his unending sermons on trivia. Above all, he is not funny. Is he the best the BBC can drum up to speak in its defence? Bring back Jeremy Paxman with his huge pay packet and considered critique of male undergarments.

it is unacceptable in this day and age that you should have to pay money to watch a television. It is morally indefensible and we are the only country in the world which does so.

You should tell Sky Television and Virgin Media. Both charge for television.

This is a social class issue.

Which, in passing, reminds me of a possibly politically incorrect joke:

What do you call the box attached to a satellite dish?

A council house.

The BBC is not a class issue. It is a institution that cuts across classes and its loss would negatively affect all classes.

It is a institution that cuts across classes and its loss would negatively affect all classes.

*guffaw*

Anyway, in case you’ve missed it, if you’ll pardon the aside, Melanie Philips is giving the BNP both barrels here. The BNPBots in the comment thread don’t like it up ‘em, thats for sure.

Now back to your regularly funded (by threating people with jail if they don’t pay the BBC tax) programmes.

Roley, for someone who doesn’t like Fry very much, you appear to stalk his film and television output like a fan. Glutton for punishment?

Above all, he is not funny.

Thank you, Sheridan Morley.

My default position is that the BBC is a wonderful national institution, and to undermine is an act of horrendous cultural vandalism.

My childhood, and indeed much of my subsequent life, is steeped in memories of the BBC. Doctor Who. Python. Not The Nine O’Clock News, Dave Allen, Ask the Family, Week Ending, Just a Minute, Life on Earth, Life on Mars, the Shipping Forecast, Frank Muir Goes Into…

Can I justify a state enforced regressive tax to support a public broadcaster which competes unfairly with commercial television? I don’t know that I can.

I’d like to think that the best programmes can only be made by such a public corporation. But the shows I love the best are made by commercial US channels, now.

While I dislike its anti-American, anti-Israeli leftist bias, I suppose the BBC, which is the last and perhaps, greatest, accomplishment of the late British Empire, is far too much a part of Britain to really privatize and turn into a commercial tv network. After all, it is through the BBC that Britannia rules the airwaves! (Scene fades as the National Anthem plays quietly in the background.)

To my Fellow Yanks:
Happy Independence Day!

In other cultural news it has tragically been revealed tonight that Richard Seymours landmark epic “The Liberal Defense of Murder” has been delayed in it publishing date.

brendan - I’m not sure what problem is causing your browser to crash, although you can now update to a newer version of Mozilla, and that should sort out your issue. As for the book, it has been delayed by a few weeks due to printer problems. It’s a pity, but it should be out by August.
lenin | Homepage | 3 Jul, 12:45 | #

I have no idea whether “printer problems” refers to a union blockade or an easyjet malfunction, or indeed his accuracy problems with Iraqi death tolls in the year of the books release.
Perhaps best leave the release date until 2012 by when author Richard still confidently predicts all Iraqis will be dead.

kneel d u r a cnutt

kiss my mellifluous arse boyo.

rickhard u r a cnut aslo ,fkuc u two

davdi t{wat}gonnorhea syphylis? diseaesed motherfucker die!

Mixed feelings really - I don’t watch the BBC’s miserable dramas and soaps, the What Will We Do About Celebrities Dancing On Ice Fame Schools, 2 Pints, My Man Boobs and Me, Pramface Mansions, 2 Pints etc etc are of no interest to me, publicly-funded millionaires like Graham Norton and Jonathon Ross are rather annoying in more ways than one, BBC news is simplistic drivel, sending 437 staff to Beijing for the Olympics is outrageous, and there’s no decent documentary strand (compare C4’s Despatches, and the current Truth About Weapons) and no regular series about science and technology either. I do like Heroes though, but it’s a US import.

On second thoughts, I don’t have mixed feelings at all - why am I paying for this rubbish?

why are you paying for that rubbish? you don’t get a choice.
contrast nathan barley{c4} with little britain.or the green wing with catherine tate.catherine tate and little britain are so bollocks they should never have been commisioned.

Sad as it is, the first thing I do in a hotel overseas is check that I can get BBC World. So I guess the BBC is somewhat ingrained in me as an institution. Yet it’s certainly a love-hate relationship. Above all, it is the nauseating pro-royalist bias that gets my goat.

Alex: Why would you/anyone want to watch BBC World? My Mum’s funeral was more fun.

We need to get rid of the licence fee and replace it with a tax no satellite dishes, digital subscriptions, freeview boxes, new TV sets etc.

A lot less painful and a lot easier to collect.

Jeff: it is unacceptable in this day and age that you should have to pay money to watch a television. It is morally indefensible and we are the only country in the world which does so.

Not true. Israel also collects a similar license tax for holders of TVs which funds the Israeli public television and Kol Yisrael radio service. I have to say we get a damn sight less for our money than you get with the BBC, at least as far as TV is concerned. With radio, I actually prefer the Kol Yisrael stations to the private ones, but I admit I don’t listen to the radio all that much, just in the car.

we are the only country in the world which does so. Isn’t it funny how people always say this about anything they dislike about their own country, wherever they live in the world? And it’s usually untrue. How much do you bet that there are other countries with this annoying tax, besides the UK and Israel?

It’d need to be a hell of a one-off tax on a new telly to get the equivalent of the current licence fee out of me cos I’ve had the same box since 97… And that was an ex-rental.

France has a TV tax, but has adverts too, Sarkozy is trying to axe the adverts and is trying to place the tax on Internet access, bloody fool.

The BBC has developed a Labour bias and an anti-Israeli agenda, there are a large number of people who feel that, the cultural vandalism is by the people who became so arrogant that they forgot that to be seen as being impartial they had to actually be impartial.

The honest reporting analysis of BBC headlines in regards to the Palestinian/Iraeli conflict was just incredible in exposing that agenda.

I think that the BBC has actually committed suicide… and of course the license is unfair to the poorer part of society. From what I can see the people on the right have got to the point that even though they liked the BBC and accepted the left wing bias it has gone too far, some in the BBC have seen it and are trying to change, but it might be a bit late for that. Pride cometh before teh fall and all that…

Yes - the BBC’s bias, hubris, extravagant waste (Ross’s £18m) and empire building (purchasing the Rough Guides business, endless expansion of its web content) suggests that it has now overreached itself.
Labour will never cut it down to size, though.
Would the Tories dare?
Somehow I doubt it, alas.

ChrisC - I need the soothing tones of Matthew Amroliwala or Philip Hayton to be able to fall asleep.

Now that something like 98% of the population has a colour television the license fee and TV Licensing authority is a hopelessly inefficient. Why keep the authority when to collect the license fee they need to spend over 5% of the license fee revenue? Better to just scrap it and them and fund the BBC from general tax revenue instead. If nothing else making all the TV Licensing bullies redundant would be a huge saving of money that could be spent elsewhere.

I can’t recommend them as an employer either.

What Stephen Fry said, but with a mouthful of croissant. Particularly “We have evolved extraordinarily, like our parliament and other institutions, such is the British way” - it might be difficult to make a case for the BBC on paper and in the abstract, but it works. So my answer to the question “Can I justify a state enforced regressive tax to support a public broadcaster which competes unfairly with commercial television?” would be “yes”, so long as the result is the best broadcasting organisation in the world.

NeilD:”Artists can be forgiven for their over-empathic stupidities:” Does that include the operatic Ms Fink?

For an alternative view of the BBC (and its enforced ‘multiculturalism’), suggest see Jeff Randall’s: “How to save the BBC from itself (and get its hands out of our pockets)”.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2008/07/04/ccjeff104.xml

Well, as others have pointed out, Stephen Fry would say that, wouldn’t he? He makes a large amount of money from the regressive tax levied on everyone who owns a TV.

Like most people on here, I like the BBC and benefit from it personally. Life without Radio 3 and 4? It strikes me as a bleak prospect. But then, those of us who consume the BBC, should be prepared to pay for it, shouldn’t we? Just like Sky TV viewers do. If we were forced by law to pay a levy to Sky TV in return for free broadcasts, there would be an outcry. But why should it be worse to force taxpayers to subsidise a millionaire like Murdoch rather than a millionaire like Stephen Fry? And the artistic or quality arguments for the licence fee get feebler every day, especially as far as the TV output is concerned. In drama and comedy the BBC is a thousand miles behind the best of commercial American TV now, its news service is good but by no means outstanding and very poor in some aspects. In investigative journalism and news comment it is practically a non-player. Programmes like newsnight are just vaudeville, at least when the risible Paxman is playing, and supply no serious news analysis. That isn’t to say, obviously, that there is nothing good on but I see less and less of it and certainly not enough to justify the absurd situation of having people jailed for owning a TV without a government permit. I mean, if that was an Iranian law, what would we say?

I think there is a lot of bad faith from liberals in this argument. A lot of people who won’t own up to the act that their support for the licence fee is really just based in self-interest, in socialising the cost of a personal preference.

““yes”, so long as the result is the best broadcasting organisation in the world.”

Judged by what standard? Why should those who do not believe it is the best in the world also have to subsidise it? And anyway, it is a non sequitur. An injustice is not mitigated because the perpetrator of the injustice does ‘good’ with the proceeds. Can I justify bank robberies? Yes so long as the result is the best party in the world!

I think there is a lot of bad faith from liberals in this argument. A lot of people who won’t own up to the act that their support for the licence fee is really just based in self-interest, in socialising the cost of a personal preference.

That notorious BBC booster Wardytron has admitted just that.

I’m happy to admit that my support for a health service free at the point of delivery is also based on self-interest, even though I’ve not visited a doctor for 6 years.

“I’m happy to admit that my support for a health service free at the point of delivery is also based on self-interest, even though I’ve not visited a doctor for 6 years.”

I am surprised that you think a broadcasting service is the same as a health service or the same kind of thing as one, at any rate. But they are not the same kind of thing and the health service is funded from general taxation, progressively. I can justify socialising the costs of health services because I benefit from you being healthier even if I pay for my own health provision privately. But I do not benefit from you watching Celebrity Masterchef while I pay to watch HBO, so why should I subsidize you?

Can I justify a state enforced regressive tax to support a public broadcaster which competes unfairly with commercial television? I don’t know that I can.

I’d like to think that the best programmes can only be made by such a public corporation. But the shows I love the best are made by commercial US channels, now.

While there is a genuine argument for ‘public service’ broadcasting, the fact is that a lot of the BBC output is now utter toss.

Programmes like ‘Snog, Marry, Avoid?’ are, I would contend, actually a public disservice. It is frankly outrageous that the British are compelled to pay for this shit.

If the BBC wants to compete as a commercial broadcaster with ITV, Sky - that is to say, engage in ratings chasing - let it do so under its own steam.

“While there is a genuine argument for ‘public service’ broadcasting”

I think there was, once, when opportunity costs for broadcasters were so high, but now that there is a torrent of TV and radio commercially or freely available at every level of quality, I can’t see what that is. I would be quite happy for there to be a subscription-only BBC on a not-for-profit basis, or a two-channel (say) BBC run from general taxation. The current worst-of-all worlds situation (a massive corporation making mostly second-rate programmes paid for with a regressive tax) is hard to justify.

Take pensions, I live in France, I pay into a system which is paying current liabilities, when I retire the system will collapse, I expect to receive nothing, or very little, so I am building up my own nest egg. I would prefer to opt out but cannot, there are people relying on the system, I accept that I will have to pay into it for them. Now in terms of a TV license, I do not see it in the same way.

David T hit the nail on the head, the programmes he likes best are produced by commercial US channels, and he is not alone in that. I don’t like paying for TV, but I will buy the DVD for series that I want to watch. I might watch the news, its a ritual almost, but I search out the real news on the Net.

The very same argument is happening in France, but the most watched channel in my house is M6 which are those US programmes, which my kids love, its the only channel that is not paid for by the state and is free, advertising revenues are key to it.

In terms of personel entertainment I do not believe that there should be a tax to pay for it. If the BBC was making cultural British programmes then I could agree to it. Personally I would ring-fence the license fee around that only and agree with John Meredith. If the BBC want to compete with light entertainment then have a channel that pays for it out of advertising revenue. Of course it gets more complicated in terms of shared assets, but it should be easy enough to do in accounting terms. If I was the incoming Tory government that is what I would do (don’t hit me for that.)

In terms of the news and current affairs, something has to be done about the political slant of the BBC, its got to the point where it is perceived as a major issue, I do not know how to deal with it in the sense of getting back a significant number of people on the right who no longer watch the BBC news because of it. You might in your own political supremacy turn around and say tough, but lets be honest I am a centre right person coming her to learn from the centre left and exchanging my views, it hurts us all to close our ears to what the other has to say, the BBC has done that and that is the most annoying thing about the BBC current affairs programming, the slant has turned people away, the BBC should collectively hold their heads in shame over this, they may think they are clever, but it is gross stupidity.

I think the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and the BBC is still far more popular in terms of %age viewing share than any other channels, despite over 60% of households now having some form of digital TV. It is also very popular when people are asked to compare it with other channels or assess its value in surveys.

As for the license fee, I think the main argument for it is that helps maintain a degree of independence from the Government. Also, it does mean that the BBC receives as much funding from a sheep farmer in the highlands as it does from a banker in Islington, so both should be catered for equally.

Whether this is enough to outweigh the regressive nature of the license fee is another matter, although it can be noted that people who complain about regressive tax and the BBC are often less willing to complain about regressive taxes like sales taxes or “flat” income taxes.

“to complain about regressive taxes like sales taxes or “flat” income taxes”

Sales tax is not, supposedly, regressive in that it is optional and the more you consume the more you pay. I can see that the ideal is not always achieved, though.

Wardy wrote: it might be difficult to make a case for the BBC on paper and in the abstract, but it works.
No, it’s difficult to make a case on paper, because that case is pretty thin. If there was a sound case, it wouldn’t be that difficult to make at all.

Morgoth’s right, Stephen Fry is special pleading; and his - Fry’s - diatribe, is ecclesiastically thin on substantive argument.

And as for the argument that it ‘works’ ….well so did the Trabant and BOAC!

Rather take the burden off the telly tax payer; break it up, and transfer it to the private sector, like the General Post office, Bristish Leyland, British Steel etcetra. It’s an anachronism.

The talent will still be out there - technicians, writers, directors, producers, actors; but no longer parasites on the public purse.

On top of that is the rather blatant fact, that in terms of mores, outlook, the BBC is as broadcast Guardian.

I think the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and the BBC is still far more popular in terms of %age viewing share than any other channels, despite over 60% of households now having some form of digital TV. It is also very popular when people are asked to compare it with other channels or assess its value in surveys.

But you still have to pay the BBC for the pleasure of watching other channels, digital or otherwise. The BBC inhibits and de facto outlaws choice. If the Beeb is really as good as it tells us it is, then why doesn’t it have the confidence to maintain its putative audience share without the imposed taxation? I suppose it will be claimed that it would ‘never be the same’ if it didn’t have the safety net of the licence fee. It’s catch-22.

There is a whole load of cooing sentimentalist, apologistic drivel about the ‘institution’ of the Beeb; even to comparing it to the NHS. LOL! Well, I suppose the Beeb is ‘essential’, in the latte-drinking Islingtonian hyperbolical idiom. The fact is, the BBC has become an institution (like the royal family) we could all do without - without losing any part of our authentic identity. There will still be honey for tea.

Fry is right in one sense: it has ‘evolved’ (mutated would be a better word). But it is into something which bears no resemblance to what people saguinely think it still is. When the Beeb is defended or eulogized, it’s usually with retrospective sentiments. But the BBC of its prime is long dead. It is not the same Beeb that existed even 20 years ago -however much they rerun Alastair Cooke clips- with much low quality dRoss (what is the point of BBC3? - apart from the excellent imported ‘Family Guy’). But worst of all perhaps, is the self-confessed loss of its renowned, rigid impartiality with subtle and not-so-subtle campaigning of a political agenda. That ‘Spooks’ episode was an outrage, and was a signal of a trend which is rather sinister and discomfiting. The inverse of the reassuring Auntie of repute, it now invites a different interpretation of the word ‘programming’.

That’s your opinion - most people in the country disagree, both by what they watch and when they are asked.

… so long as the result is the best broadcasting organisation in the world.

And therein lies the problem. To be fair, the BBC is pulled politically in two different directions: producing quality, public service content, and producing lowest common denominator ratings-chasing dross, both to theoretically “justify” the license fee.

But the other side of the BBC is the empire building, the feather-bedding and “jacuzzi of cash” wastefulness:

Mark Thompson, as the Director General, made a comment in May when he announced his reform programme that he had one interview request from ITN, one interview request from Sky and 35 requests from within the BBC.
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200506/ldselect/ldbbc/50/5070605.htm

Brownie - For someone who doesn’t like the ubiquitous Mr. Fry very much I am forced to watch him all too regularly by his patron and loyalty speech extractor the BBC. One has been given a regular dose of him by Auntie more than once a week for the past ten years or more, be it in cod drama form, pretendy comedy and instant investigative journalism into the scourge of AIDs replete with sickly sugary opinion piece to camera at the end. Then there is his guise as ghastly quiz show host, including multifarious reruns of his dim- witted performance as part of the Queens’ College Cambridge losing team on University Challenge in the 1960s and multifarious repeats of his performances in just about everything else, notably as part of the inane Fry and Laurie duo, which also helped to detract from the perfection of Rowan Atkinson’s Blackadder series. He is unavoidable if you are a licence payer and do not find Big Bro or the Alan Sugar Show more instructive, as I do. I even watched somewhat less than the first four hours of Gosford Park on the box. And the final insult, the ultimate calumny, is that the likes of Wardytron quote him as though he was some part of The Great Tradition of our literary heritage instead of… (continued in my previous comment.) At least I can refuse to pay for or read the scribblings of Sheridan Morley; I thought he was no longer with us anyway.

Brownie - BTW, if you are about to tell me that the off/channel/mute switch is free, there is only so much exposure to repetitive strain injury that the human hand can endure, while trying to learn TV’s new interactive mode from a person primarily responsible for the decline in TV viewing figures/standards/content of recent times.

I’m glad I’ve got in a final insult and an ultimate calumny. Anyway, the answer to the question that’s been posed so frequently on this thread, along the lines of “why should we whining Thatcherite privatising ideologues continue subsidising the BBC when according to some weird abstract argument of ours its abolition would somehow be a good thing and not an act of hideous cultural vandalism?” is because if you don’t you’ll go to prison.

“…an act of hideous cultural vandalism”

Somehow, I doubt most people would see the end of the Graham Norton show, Eastenders, 30st Teenager Revisited, Me and My Man Breasts, F*** Off I’m Fat, etc as such an act. You could almost see it as a mercy killing.

I can’t speak for any other whining, Thatcherite, privatising, ideologues but I would happily fund a BBC that produced consistently high quality programming, including objective in-depth news reporting. We’re giving them £3.243Billion a year ffs. It’s not too much to ask, is it?

And anyway, everyone knows the only people who end up in prison for licence fee evasion are usually single mothers on income support. Still at least they can watch publicly-funded millionaires like Jonathon Ross and Stephen Fry on the TV in their cell. You know, to make them see the error of their ways.

Wardytron - sadly you did not get in the final insult or ultimate calumny; La Fry did, with a rerun of some Qi episode or other late last night on some repeats channel or other, which I flicked through at the speed of light, thus exposing myself again to the ravages of RSI (repetitive stain injury).

Oh that’s fine. I’m just happy to be referred to as “the likes of wardytron”. Anyway I’ve just been watching episode 3 of Ken Burn’s 12 hour documentary, “Jazz”, a BBC co-production. It’s marvellous. As much as I love Italy, you’d never, ever, get something like that from an Italian TV station. Good old the Licence Fee, I say.

Sorry to harp on about this Wardytron and Brownie, but one had to be truly quick on the draw with the remote control this weekend to avoid a Fry-up. He is even taking to devious forms of subterfuge to attract viewers now, with repeats of something I had managed to miss before called “Kingdom.” I had erroneously prepared myself for the pleasures of an endearing Exmoor naturalist photographer called Johnny Kingdom when, all at once, I was confronted by a tweedy Steve posing as a country solicitor patrolling his estates in the company of an adoring granny, as he wafted weightily past his vintage white Rolls Royce. Luckily I had the mute switch on at the time, but it was a full five seconds before I was able (champion switch slinger as I am) to change channels. Even then, the empty feeling of despair and grief at missing the aforementioned Johnny remained with me for the next twenty seconds.

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