It must be a fundamental human right not to have to pay James Purnell. The obnoxious Blair clone is on £420,000 a year at the BBC. I found this article absolutely horrifying; the BBC has appointed as director of news and current affairs James Harding, a man who wrote a defence of the 2008/9 massacre of 1400 Palestinians in Gaza, which used illegal and horrifying white phosphorous bombs as well as depleted uranium, and killed hundreds of small children. That attack was so shocking it reintroduced a significant proportion of the British student population to the idea of radical politics.
That the BBC should appoint the openly politically partisan to top positions – and that they should be openly neo-con – is not shocking because we have come to accept the depredations of the political class as normal.
The purpose of the BBC ended when Grag Dyke and Andrew Gilligan were forced out and the BBC issued a formal apology – in effect to Tony Blair – an apology for telling the truth about Iraqi WMD and the “dodgy dossier” which Blair, Campbell and Scarlett conducted. The BBC has seldom made the mistake of telling the truth since.
I increasingly find myself advocating political opinions I would have found anathema five years ago. I am forced to the opinion that now it is time to abolish the licence fee and end all public funding to the BBC. We should not be blinded by nostalgia; the BBC has no claim to impartiality or “public service ethic.” Nor, for the most part, to quality. Talent shows, reality TV and endless cooking and property auction programmes are not something everybody should be obliged to pay for, on penalty of not owning a television.
Doubtless bits of the BBC would survive in the private sector. World Service broadcasting might be taken over by DFID – another “fake independent agency” can be interposed if desired. But even if some good were lost, the overall harm done by this inflated structure and its all-pervading propaganda is such that it would be worth the sacrifice.
The Leveson Inquiry was a brilliant sleight of hand which managed to get liberals arguing for more government control of the media, while the real problem – the need for a radical breaking up of media ownership – was ignored. If we fracture the Murdoch empire and break up the BBC, with radically tough regulations restricting the percentage of the market any owner can have, we have a real chance to have a diverse media and broader political debate.
All institutions tend to corruption the longer they have existed. Over time those who control the structures of power develop ways to make sure large institutions are twisted to their personal interests. There is not much the rest of us can in truth do about it, except to give the kaleidoscope a good hard shake every now and then.
It is time to shake the kaleidoscope and abolish the BBC.
UPDATE
Just received from BBC Press Office:
Hi Craig
We wanted to draw your attention to our release from 14 Feb this year:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/latestnews/2013/tony-hall-senior-team.html
James Purnell’s salary as Director, Strategy and Digital, will be a total of £295,000 not £420,000.
Best wishes
BBC Press Office
So that’s OK then.
The Zionist-neocon-Elite controlled BBC is indeed one of their biggest propaganda machines. The only two DEC Humanitarian Appeals the BBC has refused to broadcast ( by Mark Thompson – an ardent Zionist ) have been appeals for the victims of Zionist terrorism. Gaza and Lebanon. As the Yanks say … Go figure!
Andrew Marr’s repulsive broadcast literally urinating over the dead bodies of Iraqi victims of Zionist violence following the end of the Iraq invasion is another overt example .. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_JC371jxPI
But let’s not forget the BBC was created as a propaganda machine from the outset. A notable early use was against the General Strike in 1926
I’m in two mind’s about the abolition of the BBC. Yes it’s a Zio propaganda machine, but it does, normally through gritted teeth, actually sometimes publish the other side of the story even if it’s tucked in some tiny fonted corner of it’s website or at 4am.
What happens if we get rid of the BBC? Do the general populace who absorb the MSM as being the truth simply move towards the even more biased privately owned media outlets.
They control all of the MSM, so getting rid of one will only mean the others will absorb the hypnotised.
http://www.killingauntiefilms.co.uk/
Tempting in principle. But the alternative is probably even worse.
A few hours watching the programmes on the other Freeview channels and Sky News show that it’s unlikely that a breakup of the BBC would lead to better or fairer programming.
And the need to keep advertisers sweet would surely lead to an even more neo-con agenda. At least there is [B]some[/B] brake on the output of the BBC.
Controlling the press and controlling the money supply have been the main tools ( along with oligarchal religion ) to control the people by “The Powers that Be” for centuries. The press is a hydra, and the BBC is one it’s slightly less corrupt heads.
I very much agree Craig. Like the Poll tax people simply should just stop paying. The BBC already pimps itself to adverts on its website. So many times I’ve clicked a video link only to have some annoying advert come on and then when the video clip is set to begin words to the effect of “We are sorry, you do not have the bandwidth to view this video”. Plenty of bandwidth for the advert tho.
Navigating the BBC website takes a bit of skill too to dodge all those annoying drop down adverts that obscure the BBC latest propaganda article that I’m trying to identify. Flog the few good bits off.
One more time: People of conscience, please stop paying the license.
Totally agree Craig. The propaganda is being carried with licence fee payers’ money too let us not forget as Lwtc247 points out above.
Here is Adam Levick of CIF Watch speaking to Israeli National Radio.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTBLdZPFSq0
He is the same Adam Levick who took the trouble to make the nasty little You Tube of Amena Saleem (on Craig’s link) using some strange wide angle camera setting which makes her look like a relative of ET. Not so subtle smearing Mr.Levick and pointless. Ten of her words are worth thousands of yours.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSxbBcSkv7c George Galloway speaking in the background and in Arabic too I think.
She has brought new life to the PSC and has obviously rattled the Israel lobby’s cage.
Levick http://cifwatch.com/about/
I totally gave up on TV about a decade ago – am now hearing 75 -so obviously have NOT been continuing to buy any licence and the way they are responding is causing harassment – they’ve been here out of the blue to inspect – absolutely no prob fair do’s – but that was a year or so ago and now they are back at it like crazy over and over and their liasion systems are crap too. Crap outfit.
I don’t think I have paid a TV licence in years…I just send back the computer generated demand every year with No Resident at this address…they never check..and as far at those notorious detector vans..what a joke..they only ever made 2 of them and they stopped working years ago…the entire licence fee is a fucking joke along with the BBC as a whole…I never pay in principle and if they want to find me, good luck.
You are playing into the hands of the far worse stalking horse, the Murdoch empire Craig. The problem is, and has been, the chairman & DG appointments as well as MI5 on the trust & Bilderberger recently running the Barclays Libor fraud Marcus Agius on the executive board.
Al Milne & Greg Dyke did well in top job!
Like so many we need a purge of the gangster place men at the BBC starting obviously with Savile cover up boy Chris Patten.
Agree with Tony G – just because the BBC has been subverted and cowed by the last 3 decades of rightwingery does not mean that it cannot fulfill the functions that we need. A progressive govenment would/should reestablish the corporation with an update to its original remit and a charter of editorial independence for its news reporting division. And, of course, reform of media ownership in the private sector will be essential, with incentives for papers/radio stations that are not owned by large corporate concerns.
So we scrap the BBC and replace it with what? Another commercial station like ITV?
If you don’t like their news don’t watch it but as many people complain about the BBC’s anti-Israeli bias.
The BBC have all but completely ignored the death of Stephanie Bottrill, the first person known to have killed themselves because of the bedroom tax/penalty.
Greg Dyke and Andrew Gilligan were on this programme very recently somewhat unbelievably in view of what we think of the BBC. Perhaps one of its purpose is to absorb dissent. Hoon was his usual self and he and Tom Kelly tried to hold the B.Liar/A Campbell line but failed. A. Campbell was invited to participate but declined. Wonder why!
The Hutton Inquiry
Duration: 45 minutes
First broadcast:Sunday 05 May 2013On 29 May 2003, the Today programme broadcast a report criticising the government’s use of intelligence in the lead up to war with Iraq.
At the heart of the report was the allegation that Number 10 had “sexed up” an intelligence dossier to make a more convincing case for war. More specifically, that the government probably knew that one of the key claims in the dossier was wrong before they put it in: the claim that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction that could be “ready within 45 minutes of an order to use them”.
The government, and specifically Director of Communications, Alastair Campbell, were furious. The row that followed was one of the bitterest in BBC history, and was fuelled in part by the death of the story’s source, government scientist, David Kelly. The Hutton Inquiry was set up to establish what went wrong and exposed the inner workings of the BBC, secret services, civil service and government machinery. Its findings, when published in January 2004, caused reverberations throughout the British establishment.
Sue MacGregor reunites some of the people who were caught up in that row: Andrew Gilligan, the Today programme reporter whose broadcast was the cause of the argument; Geoff Hoon, Defence Secretary, who was accused of leaking David Kelly’s name as the source of the story; Tom Kelly, who as Tony Blair’s spokesman was at the heart of the storm and Greg Dyke, who resigned as Director General when Hutton’s conclusions were so critical of the BBC.
Producer: Deborah Dudgeon and Kate Taylor
Series Producer: David Prest
A Whistledown production for BBC Radio 4
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01s7vzx
Defund them – cancel your license:
http://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/check/viewtopiccontent.aspx?id=TOP12&iqdocumentid=TOP12&WT.mc_id=r001
Those few hours of programming you can;t miss (and they are very few) can be seen legitimately on iPlayer.
Christ, no. See US TV for why. Like everything else in this tragic country, the upper echelons are populated by gravy-drooling fat cats, sapping resources from and dictating bias to the poor bloody infantry, but the BBC even now has much more independence than the only alternative, which is mindless commercial pap. Also, I’d guarantee if the BBC went, the standards of the rest would slip still further, and the effect would be total audience anaesthesia.
Comrades, it is time to burn down the business schools, hang anyone earning over £200K from a lamppost and reduce the management quota nationwide to 5% of its present level, re-employing the victims, selected by their inability to speak plain English, on Fenland farms picking strawberries and sorting eggs. Managementspeak isn’t all that different from Polish, when you come right down to it. Not many Englishmen understand either.
Tony Gosling. Not forgetting Mark Thompson who knew. Miles Goslett was on the case from the beginning.
http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/miles-goslett-extraordinary-no-newspapers-would-touch-my-bbc-savile-story
A link to an audio where Thompson is asked directly.
http://order-order.com/2013/03/08/audio-tape-reveals-mark-thompson-did-know-about-savile/
Excruciating to listen to Thompson who seems to find difficulty in stringing two words together. It is not a stammer which I would be sympathetic about.
btw Thompson and his wife Jane Blumberg (she comes from a strongly Zionist US upbringing) visited Israel to meet Sharon. They were also friends of a rich lawyer Scot Young who introduced them to the rich Israeli Zabludowicz and others.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1293708/The-BBC-s-DG-man-400m-divorce–strange-incident-Drones-restaurant.html
PS Scot Young is not a lawyer but a ‘property tycoon’ according to that piece.
If the BBCs decommonisioning would leave a hole, at least there would be a vacancy no longer occupied (luxuriously) by the current lot of professionaly unconscionable schmoozers, who plug corporate scripts in the name of honesty.
Only pointless low-brow controversies and circular arguments are permitted in order to foster the appearance of fallible authenticity.
The BBC is a propagandistic organisation which serves the criminal lunatics who have abandoned democracy and are now blowing up our welfare state. If you don’t work yourself to the bone for peanuts you will just be left to starve to death with the police making sure you don’t steal any food to keep yourself alive. You will be crushed at work and starved if you are out of work. The BBC will not bother about your plight. They will switch to reporting more on the ‘royal’ family. The screams will be drowned out by the dancing parades of the rich and privileged. They love the people to suffer. Goebbels would have been proud of the BBC. It surely is formed out of his ideas to brainwash people. As for the argument that we will be left with Sky and ITV that is like saying we shouldn’t jail a mass murderer because there are other mass murderers out there. We want to shut the lot of them down as they are all involved in a psychological war against the people.
More on the friend of the Thompsons, the tycoon Scot Young.
Major bank dragged into Scot Young divorce battle http://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/major-bank-dragged-into-scot-young-divorce-battle-8589793.html
The bank concerned is HBOS.
there’s a fight going on in every area of society, within every institution from our schools to the BBC. on the one side are people who generally agree with the (generally) humanitarian ethos of this board, and on the other side are people who want nothing but power and profit. since the humanitarians in society clearly outnumber the latter, one wonders why the latter are so clearly in danger of winning.
i don’t think it’s helpful to call for the abolition of the BBC, and not only because no-one on this board has anything like the power to do it. i think it’s a reductive, if not nihilistic game which i agree plays into the hands of murdoch and a wide variety of extremists.
We want to shut the lot of them down as they are all involved in a psychological war against the people.
With the general support of the people. Just sayin’. Brave would be he who shut down TV’s sports coverage and reality-fleeing soaps
Please see update to post above 🙂
With the BBC being dependent on funding provided by parliament its no surprise that it needs to bow to the will of the government from time to time. That’s just the nature of the beast, sad though it is.
I think that scrapping it is going too far. Regardless of the bias shown on some, and the lack of reporting on other, issues the nature of the BBC means that it is open to scrutiny and can be called to account for this. The same isn’t true of any of the other sources of news.
The licence fee question needs to be settled once and for all and put out of touch of this, and any future, government. With this maybe we’d see a braver BBC.
^ He still hangs.
Amusing that they correct you on his salary, but let ‘obnoxious Blair clone’ stand.
The problem with the BBC is not its partiality, but its partiality alongside its reputation for neutrality and objectivity. The rest of the MSM carries implicit health warnings, but the BEEB is always objective, always the voice of informed and respectable opinion. If it’s not to be abolished then the only way I can think of saving it is by having its board of governors dismissed and replaced by a jury of one hundred part-time, unpaid volunteers, selected at random from the population at large. Same sort of thing applies to the government, as I’ve said before.
“James Purnell’s salary as Director, Strategy and Digital, will be a total of £295,000 not £420,000.”
I bet you when pension and other benefits are taken into account the total will be nearer £420000 than £295000
I must say, the lack of imagination of a post-disbanded BBC being anything other than some crap US channel or a ‘and finally… ITV’ is disappointing. Or is it simply entrenched realism talking?
Purnell So clean.
http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/aboutthebbc/insidethebbc/managementstructure/biographies/pdf/2011_12/dopi/james_purnell_DOPI_2013.pdf
cf as an MP 2002-10
http://www.theyworkforyou.com/regmem/?p=11176
£40k pa from Open Left, donations from Policy Network, trips to Chile, Israel, Israel, Israel, Spain, India, writing for Serco, etc etc.
More here http://www.powerbase.info/index.php/James_Purnell
Or is it simply entrenched realism talking?
Follow the money. If it gets viewers, it makes money. Hence, lowest-common denominator programming will always win on a commercial basis.