Thursday 5 March 2020

War with the corporation

I daresay we’ll be hearing more about Oliver Dowden’s “opening salvo in a Tory war with the corporation” today.  

Is Dowden’s intervention the beginning of a revolution or a damp squib? The responses (tweets) indicate that the divide between left and right is deeper and more entrenched than ever. 

Not that it would be an improvement if the BBC’s ultra-woke, left-wing activism were ‘balanced out’ with the equivalent opposite, which is exactly what left-wing fanatics assume “the Tories want”, such as equal quotas of Neo-Nazi and white supremacist spokespersons to counterbalance Ash Sarkar and, say, Kerry-Anne Mendoza each time they're on air.

Several tweeters believe that without its right-on, woke, left-wing activism the BBC would suddenly turn into a racist cesspit. Someone’s nightmare of a future Tory-led BBC included wall-to-wall reruns of  ‘Till Death Us Do Part” as if Alf Garnett was presented as a role model.  

It was a comedy. Remember them?


7 comments:

  1. It was comedy written by a left wing Tory-hating socialist back in the days when they could still be funny! :)

    Dowden's squib would seem a little on the damp side!

    The Conservatives should come out and tell it like it is. They should mention all the times the cat has been let out of the bag (champagne celebrations for Tony Blair's victory, for instance), not a single Brexit-supporting presenter at the BBC, not a single pro-Brexit programme, Ash Sarkar - a literal communist - invited on the BBC time after time.They should tot up how many times BBC presenters have gone on to careers in the Labour Party compared with the Conservative Party (or come into the media from the Labour Party).

    Sadly, there's not much prospect of them doing any of that. I don't know why. The BBC could hardly be more anti-Conservative without actually declaring it. I think the Quaking Conservatives are fearful of Mrs Jones taking agin 'em because Labour will say the Tories want to abolish the BBC and it will mean the end of Strictly, Eastenders and Dad's Army repeats.

    That's nonsense. It doesn't work like that. Even if the Conservatives wanted to abolish the BBC, they could find ways to preserve the most popular programming (the Great British Bake Off didn't disappear from our screens just because it left the BBC).



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    1. Oddly, Dad’s Army was one of the dreaded programmes someone cited as “What the Tories would make us watch.”

      I question the ‘much loved’ tag, especially wrt ‘Strictly’ and Eastenders. These ‘much loved’ programmes are terminally tired. I bet even your proverbial Mrs Jones would welcome something fresh were such a thing on offer. The formulaic treatment of practically every programme. The ‘person going home today is pause’ gets on everyone’s nerves.

      Most of the drama is predictable and ‘reverse-racist’.

      Who wants to see ‘personality led’ documentaries and history programmes? Especially when they feature the ‘personality’ having a ham-fisted go at an obviously skilled craft or procedure.

      Everything has to be ‘interpreted’ by BBC experts. I can’t remember exactly when that became a necessity.

      A plethora of harsh-voiced, hair-flicking, hand-waving women with Labour-Party accents have appeared on our screens airing their obnoxious opinions and humour has been surgically removed from comedy and replaced by edgy, observational monologues stuffed full of ’too much information’.

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  2. Dowden's 'squib' is simply a few empty words which are the political equivalent of 'move along there, nothing to see'. He also risibly claims the BBC World Service output is good. No, it is not. It is a constant stream of globalist, anti-capitalist, climate alarmist bilge.

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    1. It's definitely declined rapidly. Many of its reporters are pretty incomprehensible to a native English speaker from the UK. I have genuine difficulty, not just mild irritation, trying to follow what they are saying.

      I think many people (mostly non-British) around the world used to listen to it for its reliably RP presenters. But an African tuning in now who is studying English must find it absolutely impossible to understand a reporter with a heavily Indian accent. It must be a million miles away from their understanding of how to pronounce English.

      As for the content, yes increasingly it has gone down the PC route, so has become increasingly irrelevant.

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    2. I've noticed a sort of Brixtonian accent creeping in at the BBC where the announcers are probabably being encouraged to speak that way as well as dropping their T's. I guess it's all part of the BBC's ridiculous diversity agenda.

      But how is it that the BBC still has a Comedy Department when their not actually making any new comedies.
      Remember the BBC comedy hour where they would slip in two comedy sitcoms between 8.00pm and 9.00pm.

      I keep looking online for the answer to 'Why aren't they making tv comedy anymore. Clearly all the other channels are following the BBC. If they've stopped producing comedy then all the other channels follow like blind sheep.

      I wonder what young people are laughing at these days. Probably physical mishaps on Youtube and Tik-Tok.

      John.... North London.

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    3. THEY'RE NOT. NOT THEIR NOT....Whoops!

      John.....North London.

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    4. I think the linguists call that accent "London Jamaican". You hear it everywhere now. "The" becomes "Duh". Vowels are elongated so "life" becomes "lee-ife". Consonants get dumped: "people" becomes "peep-oh" or even sometimes "pee-oh".

      I was thinking about it today as it is used a lot on Sky. They seem to like it because the accent is very much associated with the modern professional footballer is my guess.

      In the old days the classic RP accent based on the upper class Southern English accent used to p off people up North, but I suspect that the new London Jamaican accent beloved of promos and ads has the same effect north of Watford!

      Accents change of course over time but for mutual comprehension, we need as a nation some reasonably standard pronunciation which doesn't miss out or distort phonemes too much. For such a small island, Britain has an amazing array of accents. In some ways, that adds to the rich tapestry of life, but it's no good if one person at one end of the country can't understand what's being said by someone at the other end of the country.

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