The BBC

I'll admit I don't know much about the issue and if I am curious enough, I hope all the facts don't take too many hours to read.

I don't even have a dream.

just take responsibility for your own life and get rid of your own damned TV and leave the BBC intact for those of us who want it and appreciate it, even for its flaws.

and who want to pay for it

not really any sentient argument for paying for market-level shit like bbc1 radio1 etc via a poll tax enforced by criminal censure

that shit should all be privatized and the less market amenable public interest stuff financed via general taxation

I live with other people, it isn't my tv.

Actually, fuck privatising the BBC. A TV licence is cheaper than the cable package I'd inevitably be forced to buy in the name of 'choice' in a post-privatised world. I consider that my licence pays for multiple channels and radio stations where I never have to watch an advert for anything but another BBC programme. BARGAIN.

yeah the serenity you get from not having to watch adverts is probably less valuable than ending a system that criminalizes hundreds of thousands of people irrespective of whether they consume bbc content, two thirds of whom are women, along with plenty of non-english speakers, the indigent and vulnerable, whoever the capita tv licensing etc vermin can intimidate most easily in lieu of a search warrant, and dozens of whom are then imprisoned when they can't afford the fine

I have a friend who said the investigating people she met were polite and easy to convince. But I get the impression others are more demanding? If I moved into my own place with no tv, would I possibly have to convince them I don't use the iPlayer or the radio function on my CD player?

there is no obligation to acknowedge them at all unless they have a search warrant

But what if they did have a warrant? How much do you have to prove.

hundreds of thousands of people? really?
I know a real piece of work who takes pride in refusing to pay for a TV licence (despite being well able to, and watching it very loudly all day) and she won't answer her door unless you do a 'special knock' because she's scared of being busted. However, she's never had anything more than a letter every so often.

bbc scotland news is a disgrace. Biased towards the no to independence campaign. Its really turning me against the news department of the BBC.

btw you can use iplayer as long as its not a live program. Just watch it after the progs finished on catch up

they won't have a warrant unless unless they have already amassed or feigned enough 'evidence' to convince a magistrate that you require but do not have a tv licence

they very rarely obtain warrants anyway, there are foi reqests to individual police forces confirming this

"I don't even own a TV"

so, they can't come in?

bbc scotland news is a disgrace. Biased towards the no to independence campaign. Its really turning me against the news department of the BBC.

― Scooby Doom (۩), Friday, 18 April 2014 18:39 (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the bbc will always act as a state broadcaster, supine to whichever administration, the most credulous of all tv channels during the iraq war and now happily normalizing/rationalizing the current government's welfare polciy (though there are minor correctives and exceptions)

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2003/07/bbc-j10.html

I hate the way BBC News are pushing welfare bullshit, but I've heard that when the government of the day gets more than 60 per cent of the vote, which is the case right now, there's an onus on the state broadcaster not to challenge their policies.

I'm just wary of any privatisation, including handing over the licence monitoring job to Crapita, more than I am exercised about £12/month*.
Besides, you can use iPlayer and/or the radio without a licence. What you aren't supposed to do is watch live TV.

*The last time I had no licence and a Crapitan on my doorstep, he tried to front his way into my flat by pretending he was one of the builders working on my kitchen. He got told. The real builders were massively entertained by seeing him frog-marched out with 'You. FUCK. OFF. NOW!'

hundreds of thousands of people? really?

― kinder, Friday, 18 April 2014 18:39 (12 minutes ago)

uhuh, ~200k p/a

so, they can't come in?

― kinder, Friday, 18 April 2014 18:43 (8 minutes ago)

~99% time no

Yet they never manage to catch Charles Moore, who writes columns about refusing to have a licence. BTW, if you work at the BBC and are found not to have one, you're sacked.

they would never catch charles moore cuz the capita salesmen who earn pro rata will always victimize poor areas

they have never visited me in an upper middle class inner suburb of london (full of tv execs and at least one bbc 'talent' nearby)

Why is radio and iPlayer made exceptions? They don't have adverts either, so it is basically free in that case.

This has nothing to do with quality but one of the current weather reporters for Scottish news is incredibly beautiful.

I hate the way BBC News are pushing welfare bullshit, but I've heard that when the government of the day gets more than 60 per cent of the vote, which is the case right now, there's an onus on the state broadcaster not to challenge their policies.

― baked beings on toast (suzy), Friday, 18 April 2014 18:53 (8 minutes ago)

don't think this is true in any formalized sense, bbc kowtows via the natural inertia of hegemony in a a british context

section 4 of their charter covers informality

nb i don't require a tv license, the only live tv broadcasts i watch are russian hd football or tennis streams, which still necessitates having a tv license since they are shown simultaneously via domestic broadcasters, so i take a bottle of wine to my (tv licensed) cuz nextdoors in order to watch them

*The last time I had no licence and a Crapitan on my doorstep, he tried to front his way into my flat by pretending he was one of the builders working on my kitchen. He got told. The real builders were massively entertained by seeing him frog-marched out with 'You. FUCK. OFF. NOW!'

― baked beings on toast (suzy), Friday, 18 April 2014 18:53 (18 minutes ago)

since you had corroborating evidence from the builders you might have reported this to the police as aggravated trespass / harassment / assault / whatever and complained to capita independently (the individual wastemen presumably being logged to certain addresses and identifiable)

lol

I might have done, but since he didn't actually cross the threshold, all I could do was to escort him from the block knowing the 'trades' button didn't work to get him back in. If you'd registered that important detail you wouldn't have introduced the coulda/shoulda/woulda element, right?

yeah don't be so pissy, 'frog-marched out' left trespass ambiguous but irrespective of that, attempting to gain entry through impersonation is still worth reporting to the police

Maybe less of the calling others pissy when in the midst of own epic attack of same - but feel free to call the cops if you're ever in that situation, OK?

*sigh*

nah not really trying to engage yr own ample delusions of reference nor remotely doubting the capacity of fearsome west end matriarch big suze to send the capita bro packing with his tail between his legs so much as avowing the general principle, since the next person they victimize may well lack capacity (linguistic, mental, etc)

these people are cunts who behave entirely unconscionably so it is worth pursuing them when they betray very least their own protocols, and possibly the law too, not that they would ever get convicted for that (although a quick search shows a couple dozen tv license enforcers are successully prosecuted every year) but it's at least dubious enough to report it in order to expedite a private complaint to their employer

*sigh*

hey nakh do "market level" commercial rivals to radio 1 broadcast hour-long documentaries about teenage domestic abuse? do they play 65 hours of specialist music a week? do young people not deserve to have their culture reflected on the radio without being told what kind of pizza to be eating and what sort of mobile phones to buy?

fuck outta here

that shit should all be privatized and the less market amenable public interest stuff financed via general taxation

http://www.brandsoftheworld.com/sites/default/files/styles/logo-thumbnail/public/0018/4202/brand.gif

I hear args (certainly from people in classical music/R3 listeners) that R1/2 is basically just a 24/7 commercial because it broadcasts music that is distributed by private interests. Unlike R3 which has much of its avant-garde funded by public arts bodies.

I love R3 but I never had much for this. The BBC is about all sorts of output, has always been, and then music fundamentally (by what it is an, by whom it is made by, etc etc) muddies the waters anyway.

how much of BBC output is core BBC? I ask because the BBC seems in my lifetime to have essentially become a core outsourcing department (with extremely expensive Big Four consultants and a high level of managerial bureaucracy).

However, presumably buildings (W1 and Salford), the full news chain of production (some journos, playout, engineering etc) are still entirely BBC.

my entire being revolts against BBC privatisation, but a combination of having to money chase the "you get taxpayers' money, be more populist"/"you're indistinguishable from itv/sky" right-wing BBC-hating fork, and an apparently supine news editorial policy means I scrape around a bit when looking for detail. plus an awful lot is spent on the bureaucracy of outsourcing, as I say (crucially, less than in-house production, but of course the money goes to different people).

probably still a higher percentage of arts programming, right? radio: 3 has become a bit of a battleground for the fork mentioned above, but although 4 seems to outsource to external production companies as much as TV, the editorial policy seems sound? Sounds from TH like R1 is still providing something beyond the remit if many popular music commercial stations. Olympics coverage was remarkable, an extraordinary feat of cross-platform broadcasting, but it knew it didn't have to fight it's wearying public funding arguments for that. what else?

This is essential viewing whilst it is still on iplayer, could listen to Ian Nairn talking forever, wasters like Richard Clay, Helen Czerski and the odious Brian Cox take notes please. Not that any of them will ever be worth shit.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p01rn270/Nairn_Across_Britain_From_London_to_Lancashire/

yeah they're touching & awkward & beautiful & slow. some discussion on the jonathan meades thread

I am way behind the times as usual, what a brilliant and essential person.

"yeah they're touching & awkward & beautiful & slow"
Just watched the Leeds to Scotland one again and that is a perfect description.

How do you rip these fuckers? Just tried it the google way and spent an hour purging all the extraneous malware crap that I got.

the last time i tried to rip an iplayer show it was sufficiently difficult that i gave it up

I think it's on iplayer for the forseeable future, don't know if they'll add more nairn but would love to see better quality versions of some of the stuff on youtube.

673:	Nairn Across Britain - 1. From London to Lancashire, BBC Web Only, Arts Culture & the Media,Factual,Lifestyle & Leisure,TV,Travel, default, 0 days 0 hours ago - Writer and journalist Ian Nairn takes a journey to the industrial North. (1972)
INFO: File name prefix = Nairn_Across_Britain_-_1._From_London_to_Lancashire_p01rn270_default                 
available:      Unknown
categories:     Factual,Arts, Culture & the Media,Lifestyle & Leisure,Travel
channel:        BBC Web Only
desc:           First transmitted in 1972, writer and journalist Ian Nairn takes the first of three journeys north through the British Isles to look at the land we live in. Following an imaginary straight line between London and Manchester, and ignoring the motorways, Nairn finds it to be a journey of surprises.    Nairn bemoans the pulling down of Northampton's Emporium Arcade and decries the bleakness of the M1 motorway experience. But he is heartened by the preservation of Staunton Harold Hall and church, and by a Stockport shopping precinct.
descmedium:     First transmitted in 1972, Ian Nairn takes a journey to the industrial North and finds plenty to comment about in a landscape of surprises.
descshort:      Writer and journalist Ian Nairn takes a journey to the industrial North. (1972)
episode:        1. From London to Lancashire
episodenum:     1
episodeshort:   From London to Lancashire
expiry:         2099-01-01T00:00:00Z
expiryrel:      in 84 years 234 days 11 hours

84 years...

I know bbc are working backwards to digitize everything but it's so slow you'd think they could fish out obviously special stuff like this and get 3 months behind on newsround or whatever

The slow part of the process is rights clearance, unfortunately.

They have collections of stuff that's up for ever already, eg all these documentaries on London:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/collections/p00synd3/london

And these, on postwar architecture:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/collections/p01s0hpy/post-war-architecture

How do you rip these fuckers? Just tried it the google way and spent an hour purging all the extraneous malware crap that I got

You can download them on t0rrentz and then rip them using software like Nero or Toast.

I have done more research and currently recording an episode using WM recorder, if it is successful I will upload the results.

(get_iplayer will download the original mp4s which vlc will happily play (as will my tv from a usb stick). dependencies are a bit of a pain though. easier with linux...)