IF EWE COMES HEAR YOUS MAST LARNE INGLUSH

When I heard that the Prime Minister, who cut money for English language learning a few years ago, decided to reinstate it (albeit for a limited number of people) I thought it was a step in the right direction. Of course restricting your funding to Muslim women is, to put it mildly, discriminatory, but it is a start. It could and should be opened up to anyone who wants to learn the language, and preferably some of the culture and customs... the real ones, not the "Great British values" crap that they churn out.

I've always been a firm believer that if you go to live in another place you learn their language and understand and respect, if not follow, their customs. (Clearly there are some customs that you MUST respect on pain of punishment!)

That's probably made a lot easier if the country you go to makes an effort to help you integrate by teaching the language and culture. To my knowledge Finland and Iceland run language and culture classes. I suspect many other countries do the same. It makes sense. That's probably why the Brits cut funding for the classes.

Even if you do not intend to work in your new country (maybe because you are a house person, or because you are past retirement age), learning the language not only makes sense for your personal enjoyment of what the country has to offer in respect of cinema, theatre, television, newspapers, etc, it is also a responsibility that you owe the country. Why should, for example, doctors, dentists, and other officials, learn your language in their own country.

I've long been a strong proponent of this (not least because I'm a trained language teacher, and there might be some lucrative work for me in it).

Of course when Cameron proposes anything, one is naturally suspicious. What is his motivation? Is it good? Highly unlikely.

So how, I wondered, would Mr Cameron deliver these lessons? Would it be done by a government education service or would it be farmed out to Capita, of court room translation farce fame; G4S of Olympics, or child detention renown, or Atos of the failed medicals and resultant disastrous deaths?

Would the people they employed actually have any great knowledge of English? Or would they be as out of their depth in language as Atos were in medicine; or as G4S are in security? And would they set targets and use them to repatriate people because the examiner didn't speak the language too well, just as some of the Atos examiners didn't recognise a dying man?

Would there be exceptions made for very elderly people, or people with hearing problems, learning difficulties, etc?

Would native Brits who can barely communicate sentiently be subjected to the same test?

All this is yet to be revealed and of course it may all work out nicely. Sometimes even a Tory government must get things right. Mustn't they? Hmmm...

But if the first steps are anything to go by, the Home office has lived down to all our expectations. As you can see, by their own very low standards, Theresa May should be sent back to wherever she came from. Well then, something good has come out of it...

This blog is the first to admit to the occasional spelling mistake, but this blog is not the British government, neither is it demanding English language proficiency in others... or as the Home Office would have it English "Langauge" proficiency!

Must do better! 

Dear Capita,

Thank you for your threatening letter suggesting that I am a criminal.

For the record, I am not.

Can I propose to you that in this day and age, when there are so many distractions, so much to do with one's time, the fact that a household does not use a television set should no longer be looked upon as so weird as to be probably untrue?

It is a fact that I had a television set for a brief period of time, after having not had one for many years. This was due to the fact that I had had surgery which had left me with severe nerve pain and restricted my ability to do the other things that I normally do to fill my life. 

I bought the tv set, paid for an aerial to be installed and took out a direct debit to pay my licence fee. 

I admit I found the whole idea of a licence fee to be ridiculous and anachronistic. It may have served well in the days of a BBC monopoly. It must have been less suitable once STV and Channels Four and Five arrived, but in the days of 100+ channels it is preposterous.

I found that I watched almost no BBC at all. In fact I watched tv very little, despite being indisposed, but when I did it was likely to be a channel that the BBC had no part in.

I didn't get my news from the BBC. That came far more conveniently and reliably on line where there was a choice of bias, instead of the British Establishment bias for which the BBC is now famed.

On a few occasions, I admit,  I would flick through channels in desperation looking for something that wasn't too unwatchable, almost invariably finding nothing.

Despite the fact that the tv sat largely redundant in the corner, it remained for a few years, attached to the aerial and I continued to allow you to take money from my account to fund your "activities". 

I am, after all, by and large, a law abiding Scottish citizen.

The crunch came for me during the Scottish Referendum campaign, where the BBC, predictably, took the side of the British Establishment against the Yes Campaign.

It didn't take academic studies to show that the BBC, the station I was paying for but not watching, was biased to a preposterous degree, although there were such studies. 

I decided at some point in July or August that I could no longer pay for a service that was, in my opinion, working against my best interests.

I emailed your organisation at that time and told you that I wished my licence fee to be discontinued and I explained why.

I received a polite reply telling me that my direct debit would be stopped and any monies due to me would be repaid, which they were. On that day I detached the tv set from the aerial and removed the coaxial cable from the room in which the tv set stands. (I still have a collection of DVDs which I occasionally watch.)

I was somewhat surprised then in December to have a letter from you telling me that my licence was due for renewal. Do you have no internal communications systems?

Since then I have been sent various "red" letters telling me that I can expect a visit for one of your enforcement people. 

This is my response to your threatening letters.

I hereby withdraw any implied right of access that you have to my property.

You are welcome to send one of your representatives, without any forewarning, but I warn you in advance that, given that you are a private profit making joint stock company and have no authority , you will NOT be allowed access to my house unless you provide me with the appropriate Scottish Court Order, and/or are accompanied by a member of Police Scotland with proper authority to search my premises. 

At that point, and only in these circumstances, will I offer you the opportunity to look at my television set, my computer, laptop and phone. 

I repeat that I expect no pre warning of your arrival, but remind you that you will require a search warrant granted and signed by (in Scotland) a Sheriff, which is only granted when you make a representation to the court, under oath, stating that you have real evidence that a television is being used. 

I am not the criminal you clearly take me for, and I will comply immediately to any action sanctioned by the Scottish legal system.

Other than than, please do not waste my time or your own with any further communications on this subject.

Yours sincerely

Munguin

BIASED BROADCASTING CORPORATION DOES IT AGAIN

According to the Herald, the new BBC late night politics show for the referendum, billed as “cheeky and fun”, has so far been a bit of a disaster. It seems that Scots may have been a bit insulted by its lack of gravitas. 

Did the BBC think that a London presenter, and daughter of much loved
Labour leader, the late John Smith, would encourage unionist loyalty?

The show was first broadcast on Tuesday night with a not unreasonable viewing figure of 89,000, which they reckon to be 8% of the Scottish audience. (I’ve no idea how they work that figure out, because if 89,000 = 8%, then on rough calculations 1% would be 11,100 and the total potential audience 1,110,000. So, given a Scottish population of around 5.3 million, I am guessing that there must be a standard calculation for working out potential viewers at different times of the day, or for different styles of programming, or that they count one television = one viewer.) 

However it is calculated (any explanations of the system used would be appreciated), it remains a fact that the audience on Wednesday had dropped to 53,000, and on Thursday a mere 22,000 (or 2%) watched the programme.

To be fair STV’s late night political programme viewership decreased as the week went on. Tuesday 166,000, Wednesday 107,000 and Thursday 89,000, so we might conclude that as the week moves on people have other things to do with their late evenings, or perhaps that there was better, more exciting programming on one of the many other channels that even Freeview provides.

Nonetheless, the BBC lost 75% of its viewers over three days, whereas STV lost only around 50%... and by the end of the week had the number of viewers that the BBC had started with.

Not being a watcher of television as a rule, I saw none of the shows on either channel, so I can’t make a personal comment, but the Herald’s own commentators seem to feel that the show was dumbed down ( someone compared it to “The One Show”); that it was biased (they invited the most senior UK politician in Scotland (his own description), one Daniel Alexander, to give a case for NO, and there was no similar representative from YES), and it didn't go without notice that the presenter  had been imported from London, and was the daughter of one time UK Labour, John Smith, the memory of whom David Cameron has been trotting out in his efforts to stop independence. 

TV licence detection is now run by Capita
(or CRAPIA, as Private Eye would have them).
Never, regardless of your licence situation, let these people
over your doorstep. Unless accompanied by police,
they have no right of entry.

Once again it begs some questions:

In the days of multichannel possibilities, is the licence fee a reasonable way to fund the BBC?

Is it necessary to have a state broadcaster at all?

If it is, is it necessary to have such a massive organisation with so many tv channels, radio stations and such a high internet presence?

Should it not be drastically slimmed down so that people who don’t watch it, or watch it very rarely, don’t have to pay £145 a year for the privilege of having a tv set in their homes?

Could not modern technology find a way of turning off the BBC signal to televisions in homes of people who do not wish to receive it?

And, if we must have a state broadcaster, if it must be bigger than any other organisation, if it must cost so much to run, and if technology can’t block BBC signals, couldn't we demand that the organisation be forced (by law and under strict observation by a regulator) to be absolutely apolitical and unbiased?

Commercial organs of the press have the right to print any kind of material, be it biased, dumbed down, moronic, or whatever. You and I have the right not to buy the paper version or read the content online. In other words we have don’t have to pay for it.

With the BBC, if we find it biased and not to our taste for any reason, we can refuse to watch it or listen to it, but we are still obliged by law, under pain of imprisonment, to pay an annual £145, (or whatever sum the English Cabinet Secretary for Culture decides) to have a tv set capable of receiving it in the house.

That’s plain wrong.

Appropriate time to remind you of this event which Cynical Highlander highlighted yesterday. You might like to go along if you are in Glasgow.

AUNTIE'S HAVING HER PICTURE DONE...

The BBC has admitted to paying out £100,000 to people who have been bullied and harassed for not having a tv licence, when in fact either they did have one, or indeed they didn't need one.

I can sympathise with these folk. For years I didn't have a tv. I never watch programmes and I decided that there was no point in cluttering the corner of the living room with something I didn't use. But of course the BBC licencing people didn't believe me and I got letter after letter telling me that they were coming to get me. To begin with of course, I thought it was a genuine mistake and so I wrote back to them telling them I didn't have a set.

They ignored that and sent me another letter, a bit more threatening, so I wrote back explaining that I'd already explained myself in a previous letter, but in case they didn't speak any English I had written the same letter again but this time in French.

And you guessed it. It didn't work either. They sent me a very stiff letter pointing out that they were now going to send someone to see me (scary stuff). 

So this time I wrote in Latin. 

I mean you can never tell in these days of high unemployment when you're going to run into a classicist ... even in a pit of a company like the outsourcing giant, Crapita.  But alas and alack, it appears that there was no one there who spoke a world of the ancient tongue, for the letters went on and on... ad infinitum, as it were.

In the end they seemed to have given up and I thought that the relationship was over. But then I got sick and had to have an operation. And when I got home I was a bit useless for a while and was persuaded to purchase a tv set to help fill the long days. Along with the television set, I took out a direct debit to pay the licence fee.

And you'll never guess what happened. OK, I underestimated you. You will.

Despite the fact that Crapita started to take £12 a month from my bank account and provided me with a piece of paper to say that they were doing so (I believe it is called a television licence) they had obviously missed our poly-glottal correspondence for started it up again, just like we'd never fallen out... and it continues to this day, bless them. We're on to Thai now.

Frankly, I'd not mind a few pounds out of their compensation fund for my own troubles. Writing letters in dead languages isn't altogether easy.

But they appear to have other, more deserving causes for our hard-earned cash in the form of their late and very much overpaid director general, Mark Thomson. They have, it appears, allocated the princely sum of £20,000 from licence payers' money to pay for a portrait of the man to be hung in Broadcasting House.

I'm not entirely sure how that is going to benefit the viewers or listeners in any way at all. Are you? On the other hand it would seem about the right level of compensation for all my troubles.