The BBC

I more clearly meant "there is nothing I can say that can suitably express my anger and powerlessness about that".

Thanks for those links, Tracer...

Mr Alston, whose work focuses on extreme poverty and human rights, said foodbanks play "a really crucial role... that real safety net so that people don't quite starve ".

got to cling on to that first world status, much more important than a triple a rating - just keep 'em in that sweet spot where they don't quite starve!

But seriously I have had a few conversations recently about multiple people who have died in the last 5 years, a mixture of vulnerable people and people with other underlying drug/alcohol or mental health problems. Now all the maisonette flats around the corner mostly contain cramped families rather than the "disappeared". One person I used to know had got help with his alcohol/mental health problems and was found dead in his flat, and this goes back to depression caused by his brother's recent suicide. I'd love to talk to this rapporteur guy myself.

One of saddest things I saw in recent years was a very autism-spectrum type guy I used to regularly speak to, telling me he couldn't keep his dog anymore because they had stopped his dole, never seen him since:(

since when has the BBC been outright tory propaganda. felt different ten, fifteen years ago

The question isn't whether or not it's Tory propaganda and more how it relates to the government at the time. The BBC got a lot of shit for being too pro-Blair but it held New Labour to account a lot more successfully than it did either the coalition or the post-2015 governments.

One reason for this is, I suspect, the fact that the BBC is under existential threat from the Tories and is well aware of that and unwilling to antagonise them too much.

(Question Time etc are produced by external providers who are expected to abide by BBC impartiality rules but do so largely unsuccessfully - it's more fringe right groups that benefit than the Tories per se.)

The BBC *as a whole* feels like it's improved in the last couple of years even as its news and current affairs output had got markedly worse.

Unfortunately news and current affairs are the largest part of the argument for its continued existence

when I was young and stupid (as opposed to old) I used to think Brian Walden really hated the tories with his contemptuous "I put it to you" line of aggressive questioning. But amazingly he is still alive and a recent wiki check showed he had run as Labour candidate in the 60's and Thatcher had some notion that the BBC hated them, apparently. But most startlingly there was something floating about on google about how it was Walden who persuaded Cameron + Osborne to do the ConDem rather than attempt a minority gov.

He was a Labour MP from 1964 to 1977.

i mainly associate him with Weekend World which was on ITV tbf

I've killed so many brain cells since then, it feels like a century ago.

but I used to watch him through Sunday hangovers, back then. For reason I thought he was beeb.

i had to double check

now i've just got "Nantucket Sleighride" stuck in my head

"Nantucket Sleighride" amiritedudes? *high fives and misses*

LOL frazzled minds think alike.

Andrew Marr doesn't rock this hard

The BBC *as a whole* feels like it's improved in the last couple of years

No Clarkson (who ten years ago was hosting the corp's most popular entertainment show and using that to take potshots at the then PM while being best pals with his successor) helps

the BBC is like a tree that is rotten from the roots, rotten from the top and .. um rotten in the middle. A tree with Brian Cox at the top, smugly pissing on you.

Worst Christmas ever. Again.

lol!

scuse me, I read that as worst Christmas Tree ever.

just stick R3 on for some medieval x-mas hymns and avoid the Dr Who spesh at all costs imo.

No Clarkson (who ten years ago was hosting the corp's most popular entertainment show and using that to take potshots at the then PM while being best pals with his successor) helps

and no Moyles

for every Moyles, Evans, Clarkson that has gone there are still scores of terrible people who you are compelled by law to pay for. And none of them were tried for their crimes, although Moyles seems to have disappeared without a trace, thank fuck!

Chris Moyles can be heard seguing Oasis into the Courteeners on Radio X if you're really interested.

that cursed netherworld where he was one of the highest paid at the beeb was some kind of bad dream, you might be tempted to think. But no.

Shaun Keaveney's still on the books, the Chris Moyles for Shed 7 fans

Stella Creasy will be a regular listener then!

In 2012 Chris Moyles was involved in a tax avoidance scheme[81] and requested a court order to prevent the press from reporting it, because he claimed it would infringe his human rights

can u have human rights if ur not human

makes u think

just stick R3 on for some medieval x-mas hymns and avoid the Dr Who spesh at all costs imo.

― calzino, Tuesday, December 4, 2018 1:22 AM (three hours ago)

the wily Chibnall has outwitted you again by having a New Years special this year instead

As a tribute to his punch-ably annoying smug face and terrible writing I'll watch summat I got from the movie torrents instead.

gregg wallace and his unearned gurning

(in fact i still love masterchef despite this)

My Youtube history has some shameful stuff: DJ Smile, The Young Turks, H Lewis JP GQ interview, Eddie Shit videos, The Queen's Corgi trailer and even J Oliver associated Food Tube stuff. But I have never delved into that Masterchef space.

https://paulbernal.wordpress.com/2018/12/04/fake-news-and-fake-vicars/

A bit of groaning and moaning about the BBC. In the end the stuff on post-truth and too big to change etc. undercuts what are a bunch of reasonable points.

and the new Eastenders set is going to be extremely delayed and several millions pounds over budget, which seems like an absolute disaster?

Not if it keeps Eastenders off our TV screens.

we're due to play united there mid feb so i really hope its in ok shape by then

That is one of the best pieces I’ve read about the BBC in a long time.

It is wrong to conflate BBC News and World Service with the BBC, as it does, though. That’s only about half the corp and half the story. The situation in TV and Radio is different and they’re facing different challenges.

The BBC is also not doing a great job of describing all the ways it is trying to change rn. It’s an org that is good at resisting core change but nevertheless changing the outer levels quite radically and I think another of those is brewing

I find Simon Reeve's stuff seductively enjoyable but I don't really trust him in the same way calz hates Dan Snow

totally get that. don't trust him either. something's up. don't know what.

I think he just presents a specific kind of party line - Foreign Office-ish, really - but sells it as more neutral and exploratory than it is. Like I say tho, I enjoy his programmes if for no other reason than they show bits of the world not widely filmed.

Same, about not trusting him. I've only seen the last series, Mediterranean, but he comes across as being out of depth, a bit of a lightweight? Which can't be right looking at the long list of series he's done. And yet.

from what I've seen (some of the Myanmar one) it's nicely shot and there are genuine attempts to capture the interesting details of the location rather than centering the presenter all the time. And they slum it with the hoi polloi and you get a good look at ordinary things like what the public transport is like or what life is like in obscure provincial places. But it's a very mediocre BBC voice he has, like some have already said ..untrustworthy. He sort of seems to typify that R Biggs classic quote about travel narrowing the mind - and it's almost like his entire knowledge of history comes from reading Tristam Hunt books at times.

I haven't seen much of his stuff I'll admit but imo that whole style just needs to go. it's patronizing even when it's good. i want to hear people talking about it from the inside. take one of the interviewees and make them the presenter.

Bingo

A problem I have with a lot of travel TV and writing is the overapplication of journalistic distance, like we know you they are coming from one culture and viewing another, know they are keen not to be appropriating anything, but giving up even trying to experience anything except in the most presentery way makes for shit lifestyle TV & books and nothing else. I don't mean they need to marry a local and spend a decade living with their family like I did, but the refusal to stake part of themselves in a place means you're just making a more highbrow version of those awful business travel shows.

I like the guy who goes and shrooms with various tribes and takes the initiation ceremonies whose name I can't be arsed to Google right now but the stench of 19th century missionary comes off most of these shows. Palin kind of side-stepped it by playing himself as character.

Yeah Calz and Tracer and NV otm. It is that. Inevitably you yourself, as a viewer, stumble upon a certain subject or country you happen to know something about as well. And then it starts to grate, realizing that if Reeve gets something wrong and on this off instance you can call it out... Then how much more moments must there be about topics you might not know as well, where his representation is just as feeble?

And yes, it's patronizing. The 'Tintin goes to Africa' style needs to go.

(apols for that terribly written post, the gist of what I mean is in there somewhere)