Thursday 19 January 2017

BBCexit: Should the BBC leave the UK?

Let me tell you that not everyone who appears to be vacantly staring into space is ‘doing nothing’. 
Some of us are merely lost in thought. Not all such thoughts amount to zero; some are fruitful and multiply.

While idly browsing Brexit-related blogs the other day I came across one by John Redwood where the btl comments were so hostile to the BBC that it suddenly occurred to me that the BBC would be better off if it joined the Bremoaners and the SNPs and unilaterally divested itself from the UK. 

Bye now!

This inner rant was distinctly Philomena Cunkbut when (if) you read on, don’t let the comedy Northern accent get in the way. It goes something like this: 

I understood that a referendum - our referendum - was a yes / no kind of thing. In or out. We were given a chance to gen up on the ins and outs of the In and the Out, then we were entrusted with the vote.

It wasn’t supposed to be a general election, with constituencies and elected MPs. In the referendum the majority rules OK, end of. Like it or lump it.

Whoever decided that it was a good idea to broadcast the results ‘constituency by constituency’ made a big mistake. It gave entirely unwarranted and unintended cohesion to pockets of dissenters, who could band together in groups and moan that not only did they dislike the outcome, but they jolly well weren’t going to accept it. 

Identifying clusters of Bremainers and legitimising them as a demographic illustrates the value of the secret ballot. 

Nicola Sturgeon, who had just about learnt to accept the result of her own In-Out referendum, now had an excuse to reignite the issue all over again. 
I don’t think the idea of Scottish independence makes much sense at a time when their natural resources are drying up, but the other day she mentioned that she didn’t like the thought of “London” making laws for the Scots. You’d think, in that case, she’d understand why the British don’t want Brussels to make our laws, but even more to the point, why on earth does she think the Scots wish Brussels to make their laws for them? 

Nicola Sturgeon certainly has the gift of the gab. She’d make a cracking barrister, but she’s wasting her talents on a bad cause. 

However, by treating the referendum like a general election and presenting the result 'constituency by constituency,' therefore facilitating a 'divide and rule' tactic that enables the dissenters and refuseniks to self-identify as a movement, the BBC (as a demographic) might as well go the whole hog and voluntarily leave the UK.


What do you think?

6 comments:

  1. One would think that the BBC having lost the General Election, Scottish Referendum, EU Referendum and US Presidential Election would at least have some humility and keep quiet for a while. It could also reconsider the value of its pack of 'correspondents', i.e. Agenda Desk Officers, that pretend to give a degree of separation between the 'impartial' news and the 'partial' Comedy, Drama and Current Affairs that fill the rest of their output.
    It does need to be said loud and hard that the EU Referendum was NOT an election and the result is NOT up for debate and our politicians and media need to accept that.
    If only we had a leader like Doreen Tipton!

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  2. If they left the UK, they could well compete effectively with CNN being more consistently soggy left and PC than any other broadcaster. But they would have to leave the "Single Market" of licence fee payer subsidy behind.

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  3. I find it rather ironic that just as the Head of News announces the BBC is going into the fact checking business, BBC news on twitter makes a claim based on an impression they had of what someone alluded to in their view.

    It was of course twitter, so 'views BBC News' own' I suppose, but as truthiness and mind reading is not a great basis for a trusted broadcaster to operate upon, I look forward to their explanation.

    In about 6 months.

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  4. I certainly take the point about the problems with dividing the country up regionally on the Brexit vote. I've said before that it's BS for Wee Jimmy Krankie to claim 'Scotland' voted against, as they were voting as British citizens, not as Scotland. It also provides an opportunity for lazy politics journalists to stereotype and dismiss.

    But how else are they supposed to count and report the votes? That's the infrastructure already in place - both in the polling station sense and news coverage sense - and it would be very difficult to completely redo the entire system just for a one-off.

    Plus, it gave us the amusing spectacle of Beeboids insulting entire regions of the country, and sad Laura K. openly cheering on her side when reporting rumors that London boroughs were going to come through in the clutch and save the day.

    What else were they going to do: sit there for six hours and simply report bulk numbers coming in? It would be dull, and no reason to cut to some regional polling station to relieve the monotony of the same handful of Beeboids in London droning on about how stupid Brexit voters were (Andrew Neil excepted).

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  5. Should the BBC leave the UK? Gets my vote, but perhaps we should hold a referendum to ascertain how the majority feels...

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  6. Rather than reporting how Britain had voted in almost identical percentages whatever the area, differing by only a few percent, and how this shows that people had major concerns with Europe across the board, the fact that the slight differences sat on different sides of the 50:50 mark, and how different and opposed the various parts of the UK were. This is finding a negative story to fill the news and has een the bitter, toxic direction since. 3 Ministers were told off the other day for not having a negative view by a reeporter about Boris's comments which amazed me. And of course, if I voted leave, I must be stupid, and racist and we all wanted to leave for the same reason, the one that made them feel morally superior, which must be a first for a reporter. Arggghhhh....they drive me crazy atm

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