Some 45 actors and comedians have sent a letter to The Observer urging the public to protect the BBC on polling day – i.e. whatever you do, you must not vote Conservative or they’ll have a real hissy fit! Using the BBC as the pretext for some anti-Tory electioneering strikes me as disgusting, given the only “threat” the Tories have made to the BBC is to propose that its accounts are scrutinized by the National Audit Office. As the corporation is funded by a legally enforceable poll tax, this seems utterly reasonable. Why shouldn’t the public be allowed to see exactly how their money is being spent?
I have a great fondness for the BBC: I thoroughly enjoyed my eighteen years with the corporation, and have been involved with two immensely satisfying projects for them over the past couple of years (funded, I hasten to add, by the Foreign Office rather than the license fee). I still have many good friends there. As a license payer, I reckon it represents a pretty good deal for my family: I spend more time watching BBC 4 than any other channel, I’m a fan of Radio 3, my wife loves Radio 4, and my son rates Radio 7. There’s Ashes to Ashes, and we finally have a Dr Who who doesn’t make me want to kick the screen in. If the BBC were to disappear, It would leave a massive hole in our weekly viewing and listening habits: I’m sure that’s true for millions of Britons.
Does the BBC waste money? Of course it does. Are there too many middle-managers attending too many meetings and indulging in too much political in-fighting? Definitely. Does it make mistakes in terms of taste and judgement? Does it employ too many young people? Does it make some bad programmes? Does it pay too much for “talent”? Is it politically biased? Is it too big? Does it try to do too many things? Are some of its senior managers ludicrously overpaid?
Yes, to all the above.
When I worked there, I was convinced that the BBC was a massively wasteful organisation. Having spent several years working in the private sector as a consultant, I haven’t changed my mind about the BBC’s profligacy – but I’ve come to realise that most big outfits are equally riven by civil wars and just as addicted to pointless, time-consuming meetings, redundant layers of overpaid management, and to frittering cash away on daft, doomed projects.
The great difference is that we, the public, don’t normally have to subsidise such excesses (with the exception of banks and companies which live off government contracts).
As for my experience of the rest of the public sector, the waste is on an eye-wateringly cosmic scale – much, much worse than the BBC. Seeing massed ranks of civil servants in a huge open-plan office for the first time is a bit of shock: this, you realise, is where the bulk of your taxes are disappearing. Realising how many of them are highly-paid consultants from the private sector is annoying – if all those civil servants aren’t up to the job, sack them! When you hear the sort of fatuous social engineering projects many of these civil servants and their private sector cohorts are being paid to work on, it can lead to apoplexy.
Judged by these standards, the BBC represents excellent value for money. And you get some pretty decent programmes at the end of the process.
High fives all round!
I expect there are still some pretty horrible skeletons to emerge from the BBC’s cupboard, but on the whole, it has a pretty good story to tell. Jonathan Ross and executive pay were real problems, but attempts to whip the public up into an indignant frenzy about corporate expenses hasn’t really worked. Full disclosure might not prove that painful.
Besides, the corporation is strong enough to fight its own battles - it has an awful lot of very bright people working for it. What it really doesn’t need – and what makes me truly angry - is the usual cosy bunch of self-important left-wing entertainers using the corporation as a trumped up excuse to instruct license-payers to vote against the Conservatives.
What right do Eddie Bloody Izzard, Harold Sodding Enfield, and Jo Bleeding Brand ands that self-righteous little socialist pillock, David Tennant, have to tell me – or anyone - how to vote? Peter Capaldi plays a political spin doctor brilliantly – but does he seriously imagine that gives him the right to lecture me about politics?
If he and his lefty chums would promise not to abuse their fame by issuing voting instructions, I promise not to go round to their houses on a Sunday morning with a loudhailer, bellowing “Vote Tory, you crypto-communist bastards!”
Roger Lloyd Pack, who, apparently, appeared in Only Fools and Horses, typifies the deluded, self-regarding, privileged little bubble-world world these tiresome thespians inhabit. Speaking of the lack of attention being paid to the BBC’s future during the election campaign, he says (dim the lights, extreme close-up, scary music) “It is very sinister that no one is mentioning it”.
Sinister?
Listen, Rog, this country is currently paying £20,000,000 a day to service the massive debt run up by Labour. Many of our children are receiving an appalling education. Many hospitals are a disgrace. Private sector pensions have been decimated. Violent crime is rocketing. So is unemployment. Inflation has started to rise. Europe’s gauleiters have us by the throat. And we’re about to piss away billions to fight global warming – a problem that does not exist!
Don’t you think the electorate has enough to worry about without having to ensure that you and your mates can keep coining it from the license fee? (Rog is currently filming for the BBC - now there’s a surprise!)
The election is two weeks away. Could you and your mates desist from using the BBC to further your tediously predictable luvvie views until then?
Thank you, darlings. Mwah! Mwah!
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