The BBC

Britain on the Fiddle.
1/3. New series. The world of benefits cheats, who effectively steal millions of pounds in taxpayers' money every year. Reporter Richard Bilton goes on the frontline with investigators chasing a woman who won £95,000 on a game show but carried on claiming her `allowance'.

There seems to be a strategy in the BBC now to attempt to appease/appeal to the Tory/Daily Mail/UKIP lot.

dunno if any of you are young enough to still have dreams, but perhaps you know someone who really wants to be a journalist for the bbc.

if so: http://www.bbc.co.uk/careers/trainee-schemes/jts

this is how i got in - and now i am saving to do a totally different career but it definitely got the whole news thing out of my system.

seriously though it's a really good opportunity for your little brother or sister or whatever.

never too late: There is no age limit and the scheme welcomes career-changers who have ambitions to work in broadcast news but have been pursuing a career in other industries.

Would never work for that bunch of self-protecting creeps.

As a 23 year old with a BA in creative writing, an MA in American Literature and five years worth of writing experience, is it worth me applying?

Depends whether or not you're "fit."

never too late

hmm, i take that back

As a 23 year old with a BA in creative writing, an MA in American Literature and five years worth of writing experience, is it worth me applying?

Yeah I'd say so. I was 25 when I got in.

There is no age limit and the scheme welcomes career-changers who have ambitions to work in broadcast news but have been pursuing a career in other industries.

The year I did it there was an Irish solicitor who must have been mid or late 30s. As well as some people in early 20s. I reckon it's a lot more competitive now, I got in cos they didn't know what the internet was at this time and they needed people who could harness its dark magic. Little has changed I guess.

what are they looking for? not sure how you'd go about getting the right boxes ticked

As a 23 year old with a BA in creative writing, an MA in American Literature and five years worth of writing experience, is it worth me applying?

― the Shearer of simulated snowsex etc. (Dwight Yorke), Thursday, 28 November 2013 11:17 (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The fact you can claim all that and have the gall to elide the possessive apostrophe from "years'" indicates to me that your lying on you're CV

your lying on you're CV

clearly intentional dude

The fact you can claim all that and have the gall to elide the possessive apostrophe from "years'" indicates to me that your lying on you're CV

^^^^^ sentence clearly the work of a savage who uses "whilst" without shame

my novel is currently 92794 words long and heavens! one of those words is whilst. better nuke the lot. how many words is your novel stevie? :)

Novels! What a quaint caprice.

nothing on the BBC

^^^trenchant social commentary

meanwhilst elsewhere...

elsetwhere

int counter = 5;
int factorial = 1;
do {
  factorial *= counter--; /* Multiply, then decrement. */
} whilst (counter > 0);
printf("factorial of 5 is %d\n", factorial);

my novel is currently 92794 words long and heavens! one of those words is whilst. better nuke the lot. how many words is your novel stevie? :)

i'm all about the non-fiction, louis

> whilst (counter > 0);

you could stop at 1 given that that is the multiplicative identity...

Thought u guys would be arguing the relative merits of "is it worth me applying" vs "is it worth my applying" by now

[in all seriousness, and i just felt i should make this clear, you are all welcome to use 'whilst' wherever and whenever you like, it's just my own personal bugbear, and one which has arisen from subbing/rewriting too much copy where 'whilst' has been used to imply a certain level of 'cleverness' that is painfully absent in the rest of the copy]

you could stop at 1 given that that is the multiplicative identity...

― koogs, Thursday, November 28, 2013 3:43 PM (5 hours ago)

Well that's what I get for C&Ping code from Wikipedia without checking it. Oh hang on, someone's edited it...

Five years worth, btw, works either way afaic

No wait, I was looking at the 'while' page just now, which has the 'stop at 1' condition, but the code fragment I copied earlier was from the 'do while' page. Curses to you, Wikipedia! Is it too late to work in some kind of BBC++ joek?

xp C and C++ jockeys love to prematurely optimise code almost as much as assembler programmers

i don't get why the php example is so shonky.

i also missed the 'whilst' change in that original snippet and, therefore, the entire point.

anyway, back on topic. the 'an adventure in space and time' thing to celebrate dr who was good, lots of bbc tvc footage.

BBC News editor/former Times editor James Harding says that BBC News "can't be a free-form jazz band." Why not?

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/dec/09/bbc-news-nelson-mandela-complaints-coverage

(actually I agree with him on his central point; see also the people who complained that live coverage of NM's release back in 1990 meant postponement of Antiques Roadshow. They may even have been the same people)

850 complaints. log 'em and move on.

The BBC received about 850 complaints about the extent of its Mandela coverage, including its decision on Thursday evening to interrupt a repeat of sitcom Mrs Brown's Boys on BBC1 to bring viewers news of his death.
kind of lol but mostly sad

is BBC allowed to have product placements on their shows?

newsnight, for example, gave "flappy bird" or whatever it was quite a boost no doubt last night

hopefully nobody was paid for it

there's also restaurant man. featuring some hotel in mhor scotland this week, and the pullman restaurant train last week. both times their web server went down straight after it was shown

i know because the other member of the household went straight on the website.. (same member who also downloaded that flappy bird game)

BBC things have facebook pages and twitter accounts and they talk about x-factor etc so I suppose anything goes.

BBC3 looks certain to get the chop.

Good

lol @ crass populism that isn't very popular

Say what you really feel Tom. I'm slightly saddened cos it'll mean a loss of diversity to some extent (or at least the notion of it) and obviously it sucks for the people who work there, but otoh I don't think I've actually watched more than a minute of it in my life so *shrugs*

Complete waste of money

They're giving it to Scotland as a leaving present.

it'll mean a loss of diversity to some extent

On the contrary

Great for Being Human and festival coverage, not so great for American Dad/Family Guy ad infinitum. E4 is even worse, though.

(or at least the notion of it)

That's the nub I think. The idea of provideing diversity just by being a distinct channel would have carried more weight in the analogue days, but there are so many channels now that just existing doesn't add much in the way of diversity if you aren't providing something a bit different.

providing

where am i gonna watch Family Guy now?

i'm aware that my reaction to BBC3 says a lot about my worse instincts tbh, but i'm not sure if Sun, Sex and Suspicious Parents has added much of value to the culture.

the downside of this is quite possibly more dilution of BBC4 but

in an ideal world, i'm sure there shd be a place for everything, but i'm pretty sure the target audience for BBC3 is more or less exactly the demographic that watches least broadcast telly?

gonna be a lot of godawful stand-up comics and sitcom writers signing on, too

maybe broader, less middle-class-solipsist-scumbag question: is it possible to do Youth TV that doesn't pander?