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.

JUST FOR A LAUGH...

After a barrage of threatening letters accusing her of watching TV without a licence, even after she'd rung them to confirm there was no TV in the property, a country-girl snapped and wrote this hilarious response. They promised not to send her any more letters for 2 years.

Dear TV Licensing Company,

Further to our telephone conversation, in which I stated several times that I do not own a f*****g telly, here is further confirmation of my non-TV-owning status, as clearly a telephone call in which I say “Here is my address. I don’t own a TV,” and “I don’t watch TV at my house,” and “I don’t watch TV on any devices, like an Ipad or mobile telephone,” isn’t sufficient. 

Short of asking me the question again, this time with my thumbs tied to my toes, with a view to seeing if I float in water like a medieval witch, I fail to see how sending me further sinister letters will encourage me to pay a licence fee, for a TV set that I do not own.

I DO NOT OWN A TV. 

I do not watch TV on any device that I personally own (although I might have picked up Downton Abbey once on my crystal ball, but that was an accident). This means that you don’t have the right to harass me, send me nasty letters or threaten to have people turn up on my doorstep, with the implication that they can not only hang around my property in vans, watching for when I enter the property for my illicit TV-watching sessions, but can legally barge into my house to search for this none-existent piece of equipment. As a lone female living in the countryside, I resent the f*** out of this. How dare you threaten me with being followed and watched. You don’t have the right to enter my property, and you don’t have the right to drive up the private road where I live to hang around listening for a TV signal, so stop sending me letters implying that you do.

I am not answering any more letters about the TV that I do not own. I am not calling you again, and I am not answering the door to anybody from your company. You do not have my permission to call me or visit me regarding the illegal, BBC2-watching orgies that do not take place on my property. If you send anybody round to enquire about the TV set that I do not own, I will consider this harassment, and set the dogs on them. They’ll probably get licked to death and forced to throw a slobbery ball a hundred times, but it’s the principle of the thing.

  

And finally, the latest letter that arrived was addressed to ‘Mr. Occupier’ as I stated I did not want to give you my name, despite your telephone operator’s insistence that I must. I’d like to clarify that not only do I not have a TV, but neither do I have a penis. If you’re going to pull the ‘We know where you live and we’re coming to get you!’ nonsense, you could at least issue your threats to the correct gender. ‘Mr. Occupier,’ – was your letter written by Manuel from Fawlty towers? Honestly, you’re ridiculous.

This letter is going to circulate on the Internet, probably via Facebook. There is a serious point to this letter (besides STOP HARASSING INNOCENT PEOPLE WITH NASTY LETTERS). Your company uses threats, lies and harassment techniques. They don’t bother me particularly, but they are very unpleasant and sinister, and I can’t believe they are legal. 

There are plenty of people that do not own a TV, and some of them are vulnerable, because they’re old, or because they have mental health issues, or because they are physically frail or live alone. How dare you harass people with made-up threats, and then tell them that you don’t believe them.

Feel free to share this.

Yours grumpily

Layla Randle-Conde