I say again – dump the Liberals !

Nick Clegg’s interview today on the ‘Andrew Marr Show’ on BBC television laid bare both his agenda within the coalition and reinforced the desperate liberal, left wing bias of the BBC news department.

Marr feigned aggressive, pointed questioning but, in reality, he allowed Clegg to rant on about his muddled and confused ideas which stem from an agenda to undermine the Coalition at every opportunity to try and raise his own profile.  He is now laying claim to every initiative from the Coalition and sounding off with his barmy ideas secure in the knowledge that his party is all but destroyed in public support throughout the UK.

Marr carefully avoided asking Clegg what he would have done and instead concentrated on exposing the weaknesses of the coalition.  Presumably Clegg would have meekly signed up to the proposed Euro treaty and thereby would have bound Britain to submitting its budgets for EU approval; a transaction tax which would have financial institutions fleeing London like a sinking ship and a complete subversion to European bureaucrats ruling our country and imposing their freakish views of human rights, for example.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again now – Cameron should dump the Liberals and cut and run for a general election immediately. The country needs proper government, not the tail wagging the dog in this coalition as Clegg undermines all the Conservatives’ best initiatives, whilst posturing as the leader of the Government.  Balls and Milliband are unelectable in Labour.  Nobody in their right mind could possibly give any kind of power back to Balls who, almost single-handedly destroyed education in this country and egged on the idiot Brown in the Treasury to squander trillions of pounds – yes TRILLIONS – with his laughably-labelled ‘prudence.’

For prudence read desperate incompetence wedded to zealous left-wing idealism.  Men may be born equal but they sure as hell don’t remain equal as they take their opportunities in life.  The Labour Party’s big mistake – just like the Communists – is to try and force everyone to be equal.  Men with women, millionaires with paupers, intelligent people with un-intelligent people – squeeze them all through the same state sausage machine whilst ensuring that the ‘dear leaders’ like Brown, Blair, Balls and Harman’ are totally exempt from all laws and ethics while amassing personal fortunes and sending their children to private schools. It doesn’t work.

Eventually everyone works for the state, most are on benefits and there’s no-one left to lead and inspire and pay taxes to support the idle proletariat. And Ed Milliband has nothing to offer.  Think Nye Bevan, think Michael Foot, think Wilson and then look at Milliband – a shuffling, sniffling dullard with nothing to say for himself , a puppet of the unions with about as much charisma as a toilet brush.

This was a real low point for Andrew Marr’s journalism.  Just another grandstand for liberal, left-wing supporters inside and outside the BBC.  When will they start to listen and reflect views other than those of the piss-poor Guardian ?

Cut and run, David.  You will never fashion a strong, progressive Britain while Clegg keeps pulling your pants down round your ankles !

BBC News 24 hits new low

I have complained long and often before about the abysmal performance of BBC’s News 24 which is rather like a rudderless ship driven by endless loops of the same bits of film as its guiding force.

Today News 24 hit a new low demonstrating its complete lack of editorial judgement, its appalling left-wing neo-Liberal bias and a studied lack of concern for the viewer in preference to endless pointless interviews with its own correspondents and anyone else who would support the socialist agenda.

I am referring of course to the wall-to-wall coverage of the eviction of law-breaking gypsies who have defied laws that everyone else has to obey for more than ten years at Dale Farm in Essex.  The whole tone of the BBC coverage – unbroken for more than 40 minutes as if there was nothing else going on in the world – was to engender sympathy for the law-breakers and the yobs who poured in to ‘support’ them in the hope of having a jolly good punch-up with the police.

The pathetic questions of the two female presenters were all couched around ‘what is going to happen to these poor people whose lives have been disrupted by Essex Council ?’  Hardly a word about their cynical breach of the planning laws which are so hotly pursued for the rest of us.  No mention at all of their luxury cars and mansions in Southern Ireland.  No questioning of the likes of ‘Davie’ whose rantings were repeatedly shown as representative of the travellers who probably didn’t even know who he was.  Not one question was directed at him.  Who is he ?  Why is he there, interfering with the due process of law ?  Is he unemployed ?  If so, why was he not out looking for work ?  Why isn’t his benefit going to be cut for rioting against the police ?  No, no difficult questions like that.

Instead he was allowed to rant on uninterrupted – several times.

We don’t want wall-to-wall coverage of what is essentially a minor spat between incompetent council officials and determined law-breakers who want their own way regardless of the rest of us.

There were more than 50 OTHER stories on the BBC News website this morning.  NONE made it on to News 24 because countless camera crews and multiple correspondents were dramatically exploiting what was a very minor news story in Essex.

Of course, it was not a very minor story if you are a card-carrying Guardanista,which is compulsory before you get near a BBC Newsroom.

This was piss-poor journalism, a disgraceful waste of BBC resources and an insult to the licence-fee payer who tunes into News 24 to get balanced reports on the news – not a polemic on social injustice according to left-wing writers and broadcasters. Thank heaven for the Conservative MP who had to forcefully point out to the two presenters that the travellers were breaking the law which everyone else had to obey.

There was no sight of their Porsches, Bentleys and the like which they use to ride back to their mansions in Ireland at Christmas having robbed the Treasury blind in this country for benefits to which many of them are not entitled.

Director-General Mark Thompson, you should hang your head in shame at this charade of a news service. Balance, what balance ?

Tinker, Tailor BBC – the great cuts illusion

The so-called ‘BBC cuts’ announced today are a supreme example of the BBC’s shambolic, muddle-headed, committee-led consensus thinking and they amount to almost nothing other than tinkering round the edges and trying to make ‘laissez-faire’ look like a tsunami of change.

Two thousand jobs to go over six years !  Wow !  They might have to keep a few pensioners on, like Alan Yentob,  to keep the numbers retiring down to 300 a year !

The risibly-titled ‘Delivering Quality First’ (so BBC, so misleading, so stupid !) is a cover-up for a little tweak here and there to show willing without going back to first base and re-thinking the whole enterprise from the bottom up.

How about planning 10,000 job cuts in the next TWO years and getting rid of that great fat layer of middle managers who do nothing but hold meetings with each other ten times a day and have no impact on programme creation or delivery ? How about merging BBC Four into BBC Two and keeping the generally excellent Four programmes and getting rid of the endless cookery and housing development programmes of one sort or another on Two ?

How about cutting the garbage on BBC One like cop car chases and eternal treks around Britain and the world by star presenters that the BBC seeks to promote?  How about stopping endless other programmes by personalities who are successful with one series – e.g. the awful programmes that the Top Gear presenters work on (except, wisely, Jeremy Clarkson) and Fiona Bruce’s variety of dull presentations apart from her job as a newsreader.

How about hiving ‘Children in Need’ out to a third party to run and to present every OTHER year in rotation with ‘Comic Relief?’  The BBC is not a charity organisation and should not be spending many millions running Children in Need.

And, best of all, how about shutting down ALL of BBC production and studios? That would strike many, many millions from BBC expenditure.  These days the television production industry is huge and sophisticated.  the BBC should go back to being a broadcaster which commissions its programmes from independents and thus controls costs directly.

The BBC started as an organisation to supply programmes for the then relatively new wireless sets and the embryonic television manufacturing industry.  Lord Reith gave it status and gravitas and established it as a superb public service broadcaster. But over the decades the BBC has become self-important instead of important. It is grossly over-staffed in all departments and it has completely lost sight of what it is supposed to be – a public service broadcaster of quality programmes (NOT cop car chases) which inform, educate and entertain the great British public.

In these days of commercial television and subscription television the BBC would do well to go back to its core Reithian values and find its place in the market through exceptional, original programming which is not a copy of commercial television (what on earth is this new ‘Microphone’ programme on BBC One if it is not a lame copy of the execrable ‘X Factor ?’). The BBC does not necessarily have to actually MAKE the programmes, there are enough top quality professionals around to contribute ideas and productions. And it does not have to constantly REPEAT so many programmes if it has sufficient funds to make original programmes across BBC One, Two and Three, plus its public service remit for Parliament and World Service.

BBC One desperately needs good new comedies as it once produced – daring, ground-breaking ideas.  It needs good drama (less police and investigator crap) as it once did.  Where are today’s great writers and actors on our television screens ?  It does not need people falling into water with a voice-over from the Hamster of Top Gear.

BBC Two needs to get back to challenging, intellectual and idiosyncratic programming of the type featured on BBC Four, which should itself disappear.  Four has weakened Two by producing most of its best programme ideas.  Get rid of the endless cookery programmes and housing redevelopment/country mansion programmes and the endless personality tours. How many times do we have to go round The Coast ?

BBC Three I know nothing about but it serves its purpose if it has sufficient programmes for young people that would offend most of the rest of us if we were to catch sight of them.

The bloated, patronising left-wing News department is not touched apart from News 24 losing 6% of its budget.  Perhaps it will now cease to send up the BBC helicopter for hours on end while it describes 30 hooligans and 12 policemen as a riot in Hackney, for example.  So we will still see multiple correspondents covering the same story for different outlets.  There appears to be little editorial control of the news bulletins and absolutely none at News 24.  Why else would the news channel give Syrian president Assad more than 30 minutes of a propoganda interview ‘live’ in the Syrian language on a British news channel ?

BBC News has access to a huge news-gathering operation in the United Kingdom which is rarely given screen time in the national bulletins.  There are dozens of stories every day in the regions which could find a spot on News 24, if not one of the national bulletins. Why are there separate teams working on each news bulletin ?  Not much changes between six and ten o’clock to warrant entirely separate and competitive crews.   National newspapers survive on one team producing several editions and a website.

There is an obsession in BBC News with the United States.  Far too much coverage of the trivialities of American politics – and many other countries – and far too little coverage of British life in our own country.  Most people in the UK don’t even know who that idiot woman ex-governor of Alaska is, so huge coverage of her deciding not to run for President is complete nonsense and an absence of real news sense.

And how much does the seriously-bloated John Simpson earn as ‘World News Editor?’  This lumbering great ego comes stumbling into view when much of the action is past and pontificates on nothing much and certainly nothing that other correspondents haven’t already aired.  What a waste of a licence-fee !

That’s just the News.

I would largely leave radio alone.  It serves a huge audience well and the local stations are much appreciated in remote rural areas like mine in Cornwall.

But dismantle the great regional empires.  Find ways of running things from a central point.  No listener or viewer cares where the hell the programmes come from.  Nobody cares about the diversity of accents.  A few care that television seems to over-emphasise minorities, thinking that what looks right in London or Birmingham represents the country as a whole. It does not.

The decision to spend nearly a billion pounds moving staff to Salford is a disgrace and a wanton and reckless use of licence-fee payers money.  It is all part of the woolly liberal, left-wing thinking of the oh-so-politically correct BBC which is increasingly divorcing itself from reality. Nobody cares that Radio Five comes from Salford while Radio One is in London.  It’s a complete nonsense brewed in the fevered minds of bureaucratic fools in the BBC middle and upper management.

Get rid of most of the Directors.  Does the BBC really need a Director of the North ?  A Director of the Archive ?  A Director of Vision ? Does it need a senior manager to organise memorials for deceased BBC personnel ? These are non-jobs costing millions of pounds a year.

Now that’s what I call ‘cuts at the BBC.’

Fifty Years of Why Not ?

For avid readers of this blog and its sometime tongue-in-cheek, more often intense right-wing rhetoric, there is good news.  Just published this week is my first book “Fifty Years of Why Not ?” which stitches together a number of passages from my Third Breath blog about pursuing work in the third age and wraps them up in an amusing memoir of my colourful career in music, fashion, media and sport.

It’s not just the woeful and deceitful Labour government that I feel passionate about – it is life itself and the ability of older people to continue to contribute to this one-shot opportunity called life.  The swing between young people financing older people’s pensions has now reversed and fewre and fewer young people are in place to underwrite more and more pensioners.

Simple.  Older people need to go back to work to supplement dwindling pensions, retain their reasonable lifestyle and keep their self-esteem at an appropriate high.  ’Fifty Years of Why Not ?’ offers encouragement and advice on how to do it and some glorious examples of how not to do it in what I hope you will find an amusing ‘divertissement.’

Here you will find my views on – surprise – the Labour government’s destruction of British society, the overmanning of the BBC; the tiresome meddling of civil servants and politicians in matters of which they have no knowledge, like the Commonwealth Games and the Olympics, and the mediocrity of at least one national charity of my acquaintance.

You can download ‘Fifty Years of Why Not?’ NOW on Amazon’s Kindle Shop (electronic downloads only).  It’s only a couple of quid for a fast, fun read.  Go on, spoil yourself.

More importantly my first novel “The Story of C” is also published this week on the same site.  You’ll need to pay a very little more to get a good bonkbuster story of hedonism and high living laced with a graphic mystery.  Perfect for that long journey.

Go now to Amazon’s Kindle shop and buy copies for everyone you know – please !

Murdoch rains (sic) on British politicians

Today’s news that The News of the World allegedly hacked into the mobile phone of murder victim Milly Dowler and that The Sun is to be investigated for possible contempt of court in its coverage of the Jo Yeates murder is surely enough evidence for the Government to take decisive action against Rupert Murdoch’s News International organisation.

Murdoch, the expedient American who sold out his nationality to gain more power in the United States, is trying to bulldoze his way to total ownership of Sky TV.  And the Government, craven as ever to a man whose power is mostly illusory, seems likely to allow him to do it, simply by hiving off Sky News – which he will still own – in order to satisfy us mere fools that he is significantly diluting his media holdings in this country.

This is the man who has brought trash and the gutter press to Britain; who has transformed the legendary Times from a world-famous paper of record to just another mid-market tabloid which promotes Rupert Murdoch’s businesses and carries out his editorial instructions – however dislocated they may be from direct orders.

This is the man who has brought lowest common denominator television to Britain.  Credit to him for investing heavily in satellite broadcasting and for battering his competitors into submission.  But, in building up a television business far larger than the BBC, what has he done for the quality of life in the UK ?   He’s great on sport (I take the sport channels only) and on movies but the rest of his offering has for years been the most gruseome rubbish.

He doesn’t even lift a finger towards public broadcasting accountability, which is the bane of the BBC’s life.  While the BBC is forced to provide a huge range of programming including local and national news, religion, coverage of Parliament and state affairs, multiple local and regional radio stations etc etc, Mr Murdoch ‘sits’ between London and Heathrow Airport churning out sport, movies and trash in equal measure whilst making billions of pounds in turnover from the British economy – far more than the licence fee income of the BBC.

But, we must ask ourselves, does he pay taxes in the UK  ?  Of course not.  In common with most media owners Murdoch does not pay personal taxes in this country and very minimal corporate taxes making extensive use of every available corporate tax avoidance device that’s been thought of, and no doubt some that haven’t.

How can this man and his company, which has so destroyed any values of decency and morality in this country, be considered a ‘fit and proper person’ to take control of the whole of Sky Television ?  He has sanctioned what is clearly widespread corruption by his journalists in hacking personal telephones on a vast scale; he has sought wherever possible to reduce British values to trivia and smut and he has manipulated our craven politicians to do his bidding.  Is this a ‘fit and proper person’ to control a huge proportion of our British media ?

Despite the phone hacking being endemic within the News International organisation, no senior executive has yet been held responsible  and sacked, and the organisation  keeps bleating about how it has co-operated at every turn with the police.  That’s why the whole sordid mess has been kept largely under wraps for so many years, is it ?

If our Government had any spine at all it would not only bar Mr Murdoch from completing his takeover of Sky Television it would order him to sell off at least two of his newspapers – the News of the World and the Sun – for their totally reprehensible disregard for decency and moral standards in the execution of their journalism under his command.

But they won’t.

Before I get too carried away…….

I must admit to a scintilla of doubt creeping into my support of David Cameron and the Tories.  Whilst I still hold to my view that Cameron should cut the Lib Dems loose and go for an election, as described a couple of weeks ago, this latest fiasco over the NHS and the continuing series of U-turns on policy are beginning to make me wonder about his ‘resolute’ leadership.

Can anyone explain to me what the Coalition plans for the NHS are, exactly ?  Andrew Lansley seems to have made it his life’s work in seven years opposition and now front-line power as Secretary of State for Health to draft a framework for the total re-organisation of the NHS.  There seemed to be much to admire in his radical ideas – get rid of that vast, bloated middle layer of bureaucrats and return general control of the NHS to the clinical front-line.

But he reckoned without the simpering, snarling liberal lefties like Clegg who want their version of reality to prevail – where there is no competition, no striving for excellence and a vast morass of incompetence clogging up what is essentially a brilliant idea – free healthcare at the point of entry for all.

Now, after Cameron’s ‘re-think’ (read ‘taking on board liberal leftie propaganda’), we are left with an emasculated and discredited Health Minister; a dithering Prime Minister putting the best face on it; and a chortling and crowing Deputy Prime Minister who once again has damaged beyond repair sensible ideas which might have improved the NHS,  and left us with a monumental shambles which very many people, including me, now completely fail to understand.

I have two very contrasting experiences of the NHS.   Recently I was warned of an unusual ‘outbreak’ on my back by a masseuse who happened to be a nurse in her spare time.  I trotted off to my GP and he arranged a biopsy of the offending ‘spot.’  Within three weeks I had a report back; a referral to a hospital specialist and – within 48 hours – an operation to remove the apparently malignant melanoma.  Not much wrong with an NHS that can work at that speed for a hum-drum problem.

But equally I am aware of such blinding incompetence within the managerial staff (read ‘bureaucrats’) that one’s industry-trained mangement heart bleeds.  I heard from an acquaintance about an instance of anti-social behaviour by one member of staff in a hospital to colleagues.   I won’t go into detail because the situation is still ongoing and the point is not the fact of the poor behaviour but the NHS way of dealing with it.

This so-called ‘poor behaviour’ took place nearly ONE YEAR ago and the matter is still nowhere near being resolved.  The accused person immediately went on sick leave for ‘stress’ and has, mostly, been away on full pay ever since.  The whole emphasis of the NHS actions have been centred on offering the alleged perpetrator all kinds of inducements to go back to work before any proceedings are put in place.

This appears to be a simple disciplinary matter, which would have been dealt with in the real world by a sharp verbal warning followed by a written warning if repeated and then the sack – a process totalling a few weeks at most.

In the barmy world of the NHS this has cost the British taxpayer tens of thousands of pounds in salaries, meetings, hearings and time spent achieving – precisely nothing.  And they’re trying to save money !!

David Cameron needs to stand by his radical thinkers in the Conservative Party and support the often unpopular ideas which will return this country to some sanity and rid it of the crazy, box-ticking, opaque rhetoric of the loony Left, personified by Blair, Brown, Balls and Birt (Lord Birt, ex DG of the BBC).

The Conservatives were sounding excellent on the economy, welfare, crime, the NHS, immigration and human rights prior to the election.  But they are back-tracking furiously on all of them when they should have realised that they had the support of the vast majority of sensible people in this country.  These people  now, by turn, are desperately disappointed that their hopes for a sturdy return to real British values and standards are steadily disappearing into the all-pervasive liberal-left manipulation and mockery of everything that represents the traditions and genuine public opinion of this country.

Sort the banks out and stop them acting like loan sharks; get a proper British Bill of Rights and expel the terrorists and illegal immigrants along with the lawyers who make a fat living defending them; cut the political umbilical cord to the NHS and set it free to be run as a business corporation by a competent chief executive freed of daily political interference; build more prisons and end the stupidity of sentences meaning only half or one-third of what judges pronounce; force immigrants to obtain a visa and permission to stay in this country in their country of origin and turn them away at the borders if they turn up without the right papers.  You don’t see the United States suffering the flood of illegal immigrants that the UK does (apart from along the Mexican border !).

Let’s get real.

Time for Cameron to cut loose

The time is fast approaching when David Cameron should consider cutting the Lib Dems loose from the coalition and running for a General Election.  The Conservatives are stronger than they have been in the public perception for many a long month and Cameron himself is garnering credits for being a tough, resolute leader.

The recent local election results were a resounding success for the Tories, actually gaining seats mid-term after their thrashing of Labour at the last set of polls, while Nick Clegg shrinks into oblivion taking his party with him.

No way should Cameron even consider offering yet more concessions to these half-arsed Socialists in canary costumes.  Their policies bend with the breeze and are veering further and further from what the British public wants and will accept.  Why else should their absurd demands on changing the polling system have received such an overwhelming rejection.

Only the dilettante academics and the hard left in the inner London constituencies supported a policy being forced on the electorate as so much was during the disastrous years of Blair and Brown.

We’ve had enough of these so-called liberal politically-correct fascists telling us how to live our lives.  They have shrouded the whole of British life in verbal tripe and smashed through the values of English tradition by opening the floodgates of immigration while denying it;  throwing money we hadn’t got at anyone who seemed likely to vote for them and making England the safest haven for terrorists with those leftie lawyers protecting them at every turn by crudely distorting the human rights laws of Europe.

Nick Clegg seems to be sucking his thumb and trying to find a way to cling on to power without a sensible policy to his name.

Labour, meanwhile, continue to employ the same thugs who smashed Britain apart in the last Government while trying to pretend it never happened.  That big bully boy Ed Balls hugs himself with satisfaction on the opposition front bench, smug in the knowledge that he was at Gordon Brown’s right elbow at the Treasury while the country’s finances were desecrated and that he meddled so much in English education that 40% of schoolchildren are now functionally illiterate and require remedial education by employers to make them fit to work; that examinations have now been proved – by Durham University – to have been significantly dumbed down in the past ten years to massage the ever more successfuk pass rates (shades of Communism here); and that he presided over Britain plunging from eight to 28th in world rankings for education.  And he managed to spend £70 BILLION in  the process.

This walking mass of total incompetence now has the effrontery to stand up in the House of Commons, without a hint of an apology, and make crass and puerile remarks about the Government’s sturdy moves to shore up the economy and start the recovery from Brown’s Balls-Up.  This demonstrates the effete weakness of Ed Milliband as leader of the opposition, who cannot open his mouth without permission of the big unions and who is utterly clueless about a political strategy.  Not to mention his appalling whining voice sunk deep in his adenoids.  Possibly the most unattractive politician after Bully Balls.

Clegg is vanquished as a political force; the Lib Dems are a laughing stock; the Labour Party is in thrall to the unions and failed ideology and showing no sign of recovering from its devastating attack on the British public in the guise of war criminal Blair’s shiny ‘new’ Labour – possibly the biggest con trick of the past 20 years – and Gordon Brown’s utter incompetence both in the Treasury and in Number Ten.

Politics is a shambles right now.  Even Cameron is weakened by his broken promises and his mighty words later watered down.  But at least he can blame that on the Lib Dems.  David Cameron should take a big grip on the Conservative Party; set out a truly radical Tory manifesto – and go to the country.

I have long pleaded with the Tory hierarchy to act in simple thrusts.  Their social reforms are right – Iain Duncan Smith has done a brilliant job there; their approach to crime needs a similar root and branch reform along the lines of life meaning life and long sentences for brutal crimes against defenceless people like the old, the sick and children.  And the simplest law of the lot ?  Make parents legally responsible for their children until the age of 18, no matter what the circumstances.  Force them to take responsibility for their own children.  No more automatic council homes for girls who deliberately get pregnant.  They, too, must be looked after by their families.

Make benefits limited to six months and unobtainable until at least a further 12 months has been spent in employment of any description.  People often need help when they lose their job but they must always be under pressure to get another.  Disability benefit should be limited to the very few who will never be able to work.  Everyone else should be subject to stringent checks to get them off the benefit at the earliest opportunity.

Sack all the ‘plastic policemen’ – the Community Support Officers – who serve no useful purpose whatsoever except to allow Gordon Brown to claim he had hired more policemen – another of his flood of lies.  Then there would be money to finance and train more proper policemen and get them out on foot on the streets preventing crime.

And talking of Gordon Brown – when is Mr Speaker going to haul him in for an explanation for his prolonged absence from Parliament while still drawing the salary and expenses which he is not earning?  Never was there a clearer example of the Socialist contempt for democracy, apart possibly from Tony Blair walking out the day he resigned.

It’s time for the real centre-right to rise again, led by David Cameron, and take to the polls to give him a thumping majority to govern this country back to prosperity – and to hell with the politically correct brigade.

The fall of the BBC empire

So the first of the beaureaucratic apparatchiks has fallen at the BBC.  Deputy Director General Mark Byford is to be made redundant and his post abolished.  Well, it has taken a long time to come to the realisation that he represents all that is so wrong with the BBC. A non-event in a non-job, second-guessed at every turn and costing licence-fee payers hundreds of thousands of pounds a year – plus the costs of his little empire.

It was said in the announcement today that he headed up BBC journalism, despite there being a Director of News and heads of every genre within the division.  If that is the case then he has much to answer for, as has been alluded to in recent blogs.  A vast news organisation (25 in Chile to see the miners out of entrapment compared to five or six for other news organisations) which sits smugly on natural tragedies, political propoganda and press releases for much of its output.  The courts and emergency services make up the rest.

Just now BBC News is engaged in an appalling exercise, no doubt supported by the government given Mark Thompson’s visit to Downing Street to discuss it, wasting great swathes of airtime speculating on what the effect of  POSSIBLE but UNKNOWN cuts in Government spending might be.  Hardly any mention of the fact that the cuts will be factored in over four or five years.  No, the BBC goes for dramatic effect every time, filling the populace with crushing alarm over something that might never happen.

This is shoddy journalism of the worst kind.  If it were Rupert Murdoch and the News of the World one might understand the agenda, but this is the BBC, world renowned public broadcaster.  The BBC knows nothing of what the government might decide yet it spends large parts of every bulletin – national and regional – on spurious conjecture on what might never be.  They might as well be running programmes on the impact on the British population of a nuclear strike by Russia.  It’s just the same speculation, based on no facts.  THIS IS NOT NEWS – it hasn’t happened.

Twenty-four hour news has wiped out journalistic integrity in  its desperation to fill the time between natural disasters and terrorist bombings.  Now it’s all about what might or what is going to happen.  The Prime Minister is going to open his mouth at 10am – WE’LL BE THERE LIVE !   The problem is that the channel will then endlessly speculate on what the PM is going to say and why he is saying it, before he has even shuffled his papers to speak.

News, by definition, is something that has happened and is worth reporting.  Not much of that on the BBC these days.  Just endless re-runs of snippets of films from events interspersed with conjecture about future events.  The subjects – and their PR people – have taken over news.

Quite apart from dumping Mark Byford, whose departure should cause not the slightest ripple, the BBC needs to profoundly re-evaluate its news division and get some journalists in there, managed by people who can effectively co-ordinate the vast resources of the Corporation, so that it leads the broadcasting of news instead of lamely following the PR paper trail and making truly gross forecasts about future possibilities.

The public spending review will be announced next week, although you could be forgiven for thinking it has already taken place if you watch BBC News.

BBC – a busted flush ?

Unlike the harping, carping Daily Mail, I am a big supporter of pubic service broadcasting in particular; the BBC in general; and Mark Thompson as Director General – most of the time.  But I do believe that the mighty Corporation, started and developed by the uncompromising Lord Reith, is at its lowest ebb in its 90-year history, creatively and structurally.

Recently we had The Daily Mail spotlighting Peter Salmon, so-called Director of the North, and his decision to keep his main home in London after persuading hundreds of staff to up sticks and move to the less than delightful Salford -oddly home to Manchester United.  Well, why shouldn’t he ?  His children are at critical points in their education and need continuity at this moment.

It’s worth noting that the multi-millionaire editor-in-chief of the Daily Mail, who earns about twice as much as the BBC’s Director General, lives on a vast estate in Scotland, about as far from his empire as possible. And, of course, the owner of the Daily Mail lives on a vast estate in England while claiming to non-domiciled for the purposes of tax – quite legally I’m sure.  Isn’t it odd how many newspaper proprietors avoid taxation in the UK and yet bleat away about ‘tax dodgers’ in their publications ?

Hypocrisy reigns as usual in ‘Fleet Street.’

But Peter Salmon is an interesting case, representative of the weakness of the BBC, for quite a different reason than his living preference.  Mr Salmon is a former uninspired Controller of BBC I when it went through a creatively arid period.  Then he became a mediocre Director of Sport who trod water rater than drove the department to greater glory.  (I declare an interest here – I worked in BBC Sport at the time). All the time his remuneration was rocketing as though he was indispensable to the BBC’s progress.  A vague period followed when he dabbled in diversity and married an ITV actress before becoming the man in charge of ‘The Great Shift North’ on a reported salary in excess of £400,000 !  Justify that one !

Unfortunately Peter Salmon is becoming a metaphor for the failings of the BBC.  Why on earth is the Corporation spending millions and millions of licence-fee pounds to move a few thousand reluctant staff and countless programmes to Salford?  It is the political correctness of the organisation gone stark, staring mad !  Who cares where the programmes come from ?  Certainly not the audience.  You’d be hard-pressed to guess which region is credited for programmes like ‘Dr Who’, ‘Casualty’ and ‘Newsnight’.

The current Controller of BBC I has been likened by a member of BBC staff to ‘a shallow pond.’  One glance at the schedules is enough to set one nodding in agreement.  The other night a whole hour of prime time was devoted to ‘cop car chases’ using cheap film from the police themselves.  This sort of trash is on every other commercial channel – where it belongs.  What the hell is the BBC doing transmitting such tosh – and in prime time ?

Turn to BBC2.  The other night I counted SEVENTEEN repeats out of 20 programmes on the channel.  What do we pay a licence-fee for ?  ’Top Gear’ and ‘University Challenge’ are repeated the following day, for God’s sake.  BBC 3 is a nod to ‘yooth’ and, having not moved beyond glancing occasionally at a programme guide, I’ll refrain from comment, other than to say that, in general terms, it is good to have a separate channel for the bizarre and colourful desires of the younger generation.  Then there’s BBC 4 beavering away in the background, putting out a lot of the programmes that should be on BBC 2 and even BBC 1.  Get rid of Four and get decent programme commissioners and schedulers for One and Two.

Jana Bennett, the quaintly titled Director of Vision, has declared in the past few days that she wants more diverse accents throughout the BBC.  Has she watched and listened recently ?  There’s every accent under the sun featured from opaque Scottish (like the unintelligible Lorraine Kelly on ITV) to Welsh, Geordie, Brummy, and Irish – except plain, correctly spoken English, unless you accept the excellent George Alagiah reading the news in his engaging, friendly yet authoritative voice (far better than that brittle Welshman Huw Edwards, who spouts tension like a rabbit in the headlights).  Every character in the Archers has a different accent.  I thought it was supposed to be an everyday story of ‘countryfolk.’ !

The BBC is obsessed with minority representation.  Gay and non-white British people are over-represented on the BBC.  There are vast stretches of the United Kingdom that have almost no black or Asian people living in them (while some cities have a high concentration) yet the ratio on BBC does not represent the average, especially in children’s television.  I am not a racist before some of you start screaming.  I welcome the diversity in England and Great Britain as a whole but the BBC is there to reflect our society – not to positively discriminate for certain minorities.  Look at Saturday night on BBC I.  It’s almost compulsory to be homosexual to get a programme on there.  Nothing against the individuals – I enjoy Dale Winton on the Lottery show immensely. Graham Norton I can live without, although he was good on Channel Four.  The BBC simply doesn’t know what to do with him.

Andrew Pierce wrote a good piece in – heavens ! – The Daily Mail the other day berating television for forcing gay presenters to be so archly camp and thus stereotyping them worse than any other medium.  I agree with him.

But the really good programmes on the BBC are now few and far between.  There are some evenings when it is not worth switching the set on.  Thank goodness for hard-disc recording which enables one to catch up on worthwhile programmes on other channels which have been missed for one reason or another – like going out and having a life.

The BBC’s craven PR department, always on full defensive alert and never attempting to build an appropriate image for the Corporation, will immediately trot out ‘Ashes to Ashes’ or ‘The Silence’ as (very sporadic) examples of their great work. Ashes was a great idea, well produced over just a few series, rather than being drummed to death, which is the BBC’s preference (‘All in the Family still running after nine years ?).  But where are the contemporary dramas written by playwrights of today and starring actors of note ?  Absent – too expensive.   Bring on another cop chase documentary.

Where are the new comedies?  Hoorah, here comes ‘Rev’ – the first good meaningful comedy in years.

The BBC moves swiftly to respond to political criticism to guard its precious licence fee.  But it is clumsy, articulate and totally missing the point.  Get rid of 10,000 staff; cancel the ludicrous move to Salford; cut down the regional empires – and put the huge savings into original, creative programmes like ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’ one of the very few original ideas the BBC has had in years.   What happened to the staff cut of 5,000 promised by Mark Thompson ?  I’d lay good money that the staff numbers have risen rather than fallen.

There’s a whole swathe of middle management at the BBC that exists solely to have meetings among itself and has nothing whatsoever to do with making or broadcasting programmes.  I know, I saw them in action when I worked there.  It’s absurd how many non-jobs there are in the Corporation and Mark Thompson needs to have the courage to slash and burn through the overhead.  Cut the bloated News department that seems to need a separate crew and presenter for every news bulletin, nationally and regionally.   BBC News is poor – relying almost entirely on Government propoganda and natural disasters that provide good pictures.  BBC News 24 is flabby and lacks journalistic integrity, running film clips over and over again during a report because they’ve got nothing else.  What’s wrong with watching a person talking ?   BBC Breakfast is excruciating and so twinset and pearls.  And let’s not get into the blatant left-wing bias……….

The BBC has a vast news-gathering organisation but, instead of being one centralised, newspaper-style operation it is a myriad number of kingdoms.  The BBC gathers a huge amount of news throughout the country.  Here’s where it could reflect the United Kingdom properly by selecting the best stories from around the country and making up a news bulletin from that instead lamely relying on handouts and propoganda.  Life is out there and sometimes it is covered by BBC regions but the national news operation would rather be off-air than incorporate the many good stories to which it has access.

What do people like John Simpson do for their vast salaries ?  He pops up every few months to pontificate from some country or other with his view on some situation which has already been covered by a dozen other BBC representatives, and he adds nothing to our knowledge and understanding.  Get rid of him and the many others like him.

Get rid of the channel controllers and the old arts supremo himself Alan Yentob.  He’s been there too long and too few of his ‘Imagine’ programmes include imagination in them.  And he’s well past the BBC retirement age which seems to have escaped the notice of Thompson and HR.

A BBC slimmed down to about 15,000 people, focussed on making new and original programmes instead of vehicles for over-exposing existing talent (Hammond and May of ‘Top Gear’ take note), and putting out repeats in day-time for people to either watch or record, could win over its political opponents – and even the Daily Mail.

Stop apologising; stop repeating; stop pandering to pressure groups and minorities; be ambitious and creative with new programmes and serve the public up some wonderful, stimulating, programming – instead of cop car chases on BBC I.

The Metropolitan Police – lawbreakers or guardians of our safety ?

Police Constable Simon Harwood is in hiding today, having avoided being charged for assaulting an innocent bystander watching the G20 demonstration in London nearly two years ago – a bystander who later died after being struck by PC Harwood’s baton and being thrown to the ground by PC Harwood.

PC Harwood was subject to disciplinary proceedings six years ago for excessive force against an individual and he dodged another disciplinary charge for road rage by retiring from the Met Police. He then joined Surrey Police before being transferred back to the Met.

It has taken the Met 18 months to investigate an incident that was filmed from beginning to end. In the process the Met obstructed an IPCC proposed investigation by refusing to allow its representative to attend a post mortem on the victim, conducted alone by a doctor who is under investigation for poor practice in conducting four post mortems. A second independent post mortem established that the victim did not die from natural causes ( a heart attack), but from internal bleeding caused by a blow or by a fall.

I am quite certain that if I had hit this victim with a weapon and then thrown him to the ground in front of countless policemen, that I would have been charged, tried, imprisoned and released by now. Why does the Met seek so blatantly to protect its own policemen ? PC Harwood has three incidents on his record. He was allowed to retire and then rejoin the Met without the second being brought to investigation. Clearly there is something about this man’s attitude and behaviour that needs looking into.

Policemen do a difficult job at the best of times faced with often drunk and aggressive people. But the attitude of the police as a whole towards the G20 demonstrators was recklessly savage and accusatory. People are allowed to demonstrate in this country and it is difficult to understand why a massive force of police in riot gear, including a special force of men and women trained to deal with seriously criminal mobs, was deployed in this instance.

More often than not, in my experience, the police create the atmosphere and conditions for a confrontation by their very presence and display of riot gear at the slightest opportunity. Perhaps it is a game for them – lots of overtime and a chance to have a bit of a punch-up.

You see it at most football matches. How is it that I can go a YEAR or more without seeing a policeman or woman walking the beat in my home town (I’ve seen three in four years), yet when I go to a football match in London there are dozens of them in riot gear with horses and armoured vehicles. It’s a football match for goodness sake, not a war of insurgents ! The answer is, of course, that the police charge huge amounts of money, by force, to unnecessarily police many football matches – sure helps the Police Authority coffers, even after overtime payments. But their presence at these events ups the ante enormously. The tension rockets when lively, often amusing, football fans come together to enjoy a match – to be confronted by riot police galloping on the pitch at the slightest provocation. There’s always a policeman available to escort the winner of the Grand National. Is this reasonable and sensible use of resources?

Someone is breaking into your house and threatening your family. You call the police and they tell you they will call back with an appointment time – if they bother to turn out at all. But go to a football match or go to peacefully demonstrate against the government (especially Labour) and there will be thousands of officers immediately on hand ready to batter your head for the slightest movement.

Guardian of the law – or lawbreakers ? You decide.

Saturday July 24th:  How interesting that the Federation of Football Supporters has come out today with a report denouncing the ‘over-policing’ of football matches and the treatment of football fans by police solely as ‘hooligans’ when many are parents with children.