Brennig Jones (and friends)

I didn’t realise that Daily Mail staff had to pay a massive premium on their television licence fee just, presumably, for being Daily Mail employees:

click the image for the big picture

Serves them right, really.

According to this headline in The Daily Mail, a senior circuit judge has been ‘forced to resign after a passionate affair with a male prostitute’.

I find myself asking if the judge’s error was in having ‘a passionate affair’. If, for example, he’d done things ‘the British way’, and had a ‘mildly diverting’ relationship, would the judge’s career be safe?

What if, I muse silently, he’d had a ‘couldn’t really be arsed bothered’ relationship, would the judge be upheld for his emotional independence – and therefore be promoted?

Anyway, in other news…

I’ve noticed that the British Public Broadcaster – that’s the BBC to you and me – has made a recent addition to the page on the BBC News website where they carry links to the British national press.

Here’s what I mean (click on the image for the big picture):

BBC news webpage

Yep, along with national newspapers such as The Daily Telegraph and The Financial Times and all of the usual (former) ‘Fleet Street’ titles, the BBC is now linking to…

The Jewish Chronicle.

Not The Church Times.

Not The Muslim Times.

Not the newspapers of any other faith-based sector.

The reason I’m bringing this up is not because I feel that all religious newspapers should be represented.

As a card-carrying atheist and a believer in a secular society, I feel none of them should be – not on the website of the British National Broadcaster.

And it offends me that the BBC have done this.

I feel a letter of complaint coming on, it shall be addressed to Mark Byford, who holds the post of Head of BBC Journalism and is also the Deputy Director General.

Feel free to join me.

p.s. Has anyone else noticed that within hours of it being announced that Roman Polanski is *not* going to be extradited to the US from Switzerland, Facebook announced that they will, after all, install a panic button for children?

The way the UK’s national broadcasting service – the BBC – is funded, we are often told, is unique.

Which it plainly is.

The notion that every television receiver has to have an accompanying Licence, and the income from that Licence funds everything the BBC does, is distinctly unique.

I need to pause here to say that I am not uncomfortable with the concept of having a public tax to pay for the BBC!

I am, however, deeply uncomfortable with the business model that HMG operates around the Licence fee collection process.

Deeply uncomfortable on two points:

The first flaw in the logic is the example of a person owning a television receiver that is hooked up to a satellite dish, that they only use to watch Spanish (or whatever foreign country you prefer) television – because, under our unique BBC funding model, that person must still pay the television Licence.

If you own a television that is technologically capable of receiving tuneable signals, you have a legal obligation to pay the annual television Licence – because one day you might watch something on a BBC channel.

But the reality of the situation is that even if you never watch a BBC product, you must pay the Licence fee.

So, in a nutshell, the Licence fee is a tax, because there is no ducking or dodging it.

And because it plainly is a tax, this leads me to the second point that makes me so uncomfortable:

Bizarrely, the Licence-fee monitoring/collection department costs £123 million to run.

That’s £123 million *a year*, to collect an independent stream of taxation.

One has to take a step back from this peculiar situation and ask the obvious question, ‘Why?’

Why is the BBC spending £123 million *a year* to collect a tax?

OK, I’ll admit that the revenue that is collected through this tax goes to the BBC and not to HMRC, but once again, the question ‘Why?’ surfaces?

Why does anyone think that spending £123 million *a year* on collecting a tax that, frankly, almost every household in the UK *has to pay* is an economical method of generating an annual income stream?

The Licence fee generates £3.4 billion a year, so spending £123 million a year might look like a worthwhile expenditure to someone in the BBC and/or HMG, but I really can’t agree.

If the BBC needs to trim its expenditure, why is it not giving the annual spend of £123 million it costs to collect Licence fee income from tardy payers, a long, penetrative and searching stare?

Is it beyond the whit of someone in HM Treasury to look at this situation, and come to the staggeringly obvious conclusion that the best plan would be to stop spending £123 million a year collecting another taxation stream?

Is it beyond our national capability to save £123 million a year by attaching the £3.4 billion it costs to fund the BBC to our national income tax?

Is this so very unreasonable?

Is ‘not wasting money’ such a bad idea?

This peculiar situation is a mirror of the Road Fund Tax: The simplest way of collecting that revenue would be to attach a very small portion to the price of a litre of fuel.

Is all of this thinking so bad that only I can see the benefits, whilst being too close to my own logic to see any of the flaws?

Or is HMG so caught up in established funding models, that they are unable to see the obvious improvements that sit outside their comfort zone?

Answers on a postcard please, because I’m finding it difficult to believe that we’ve got any of this right.

I just need to get a few things off my chest.

1. The BBC headline ‘West Bromwich in debt deal talks‘. Why couldn’t the BBC make it clear that they’re prattling on about the West Bromwich Building Society? I feel sure that the majority of people would read that headline and think it related to West Bromwich Football Club.

2. The BBC headline ‘Ugg boot fetishist targeted girls‘. WTF? Aren’t girls who are stupid enough to wear Fugli boots deserving of enough ridicule? And now there’s a Fugli Boot Stalker? Oh good grief.

3. Last night Vin was a complete and utter mental headcase who would have killed lesser riders.

4. Tonight he was the sweetest angel ever to grace this cosmos.

5. Horses. Tsk!

BBC Switch is the brand for BBC content aimed at UK teenagers. The brand launched on Saturday 20 October 2007 on BBC Two. It includes a block of television programmes on BBC Two, an online portal, and programming on the BBC’s youth radio station, BBC Radio 1

It has come to my attention that the BBC Switch Guest List has twice sent out emails in the last few weeks, both emails include this message:

SOUND
- Do you love music?
- Do you like annoying your mum and dad?
- Do you want to get on TV?

Then get involved in our brand new Grimshaw Files challenge – ‘songs to annoy your parents with’.

Here’s what we want you to do…

All you need is a video camera, a bedroom, a banging track, and a parent (or guardian):

1: Shut your bedroom door
2: Turn on your video camera
3: Say the name of the song and artist into the camera
4: Stick that track on really really loud
5: Wait for your mum or dad
[6: And video the ensuing argument between you and your parents]*

Please apply now to take part or for more information.

Get sending them in now for your chance to win a prize.

* I added number six because although the action is implied it isn’t clearly stated, even though the intent is implicit. So let me ask you folks a couple of quick questions.

1. Is the BBC being a responsible family broadcaster in inciting domestic disputes between parents and their offspring?

2. Or have the BBC ‘Youf’ programmers/editors/managers completely and utterly lost the plot?

I am on the way home. It is 21.17, I’ll be home about 22.40. I’ve been up since 04.45. That, my friend, is a loooong day.

So I’m tired. And hungry. And hungry. And tired. And a little bit grumpy but that might be related to the tiredness. And the grumpiness.

[inserts random question: I'm going to record podcast episode 53 tomorrow afternoon. So what's the worst job you've ever had? It could be a part-time or school holiday job. Comment here or email thisrealitypodcast@gmail.com with your answer]

The journey is going v.quickly but not quickly enough; I just want to be home.

Listening to a recording of Edith Murray interview Duffy at The Brits, it sounds like a mentally defective person talking to a mentally defective person. How on earth do these people manage to survive the rigours of day-to-day life in the 21st century? I’m asking because surely they’re not allowed out by themselves? I find that idea far too frightening.

Did Edith Murray go to the Fearne Cotton school of brain training? I’m not expecting a discourse on Wittgenstein’s philosophy of mathematics or even a synoptical statement on disambiguation… I would just like to hear a Q/A session between two people who might sound as if their combined IQ was marginally higher than 42.

Am I asking too much?

which kind of sounds as though I’m pissed but I’m so completely not!

And so the snow spreads beyond London village.

Snowploughs out on the A40 at 05.40.  Three cars at crazy angles in hedges.

The season of the twat driver is upon us.

Even now, we’re gently meandering down the M40 at… umm… about 45… Even now the twats are still upon us.

Overtaking in their snow-covered cars. It’s easy to imagine the drivers peering through the snow-cleared slits of their windscreens like some kind of First World War artilleryman in the trenches.

Revise my speed downwards. The speed limit signs are illuminated at 40mph.

And that white van has just cruised past us at maybe 55mph.

Anyway, arseholes aside, it’s an interesting view of the world.

I find myself very excited by this unexpected whiteness.

It’s the schoolboy in me.

Why, mummy, is that car all covered in snow? And why is it on the motorway mummy? Does the driver think that if she or he clears all the snow off the car *before* they start the journey, it won’t go as well as if it is covered in snow? Huh huh huh?

Sorry, I’ll put the schoolboy down for a couple of minutes.

This morning my first meeting is in Victoria. My second is in Southwark. My third is in Greenwich. My fourth is in a different building in Westminster and afterwards I am to spend the rest of the day incarcerated in my office in a different building in Westminster.

The joys of a typical working day made significantly brighter by a simple coating of white.

Except disappointment looms.

The closer we get to London the less deep, crisp and even is the whiteness. This firmly implies that by the time we get in to Central London Village the snow will be all gone.

This might explain why the rest of the country heard sweet Felicity Arkwright from the BBC about ‘snow’ this morning. Because as we all know, if something doesn’t happen in London then it doesn’t happen; it vanishes in to some kind of Orwellian Room 101, a non-place where non-things erm non-happen.

No bitterness there. As you can tell.

I’ll sing my heart out tonight
To a black sky under a street light
You’ll cry your eyes out tonight
Over something that was never really anything at all
Tonight

Whoa!!! Slow down Leigh. I can’t transcribe as quickly as you can get the lyrics out!

Alright
We’ll make our beds lying down…

Soddit. I can’t keep up with his vocal.

Ladies and gentlemen… I give you one of the two new tracks by The Razorbax.

And I challenge you to not tap your feet while you listen to Tonight or the other new song Shooting Stars

There really is no justice in the world. The Razorbax; four immensely talented, capable, hard-rockin’ young lads who write their own material and get out and gig… get no media recognition whilst manufactured, talentless, semi-conscious, plastic, anodyne, personality-transplanted bimbo-esque karaoke acts like Rhianna get acres of column inches (fnarr!) and more television and radio exposure than all of the starving millions in the third world.

Justice sadly lacking.

Anyway.

I’ve been sent an album to review for an Eastern-European guitarist.

Sigh.

He’s a kind of Ukrainian Mark Knopfler with a multi-track fetish and a taste for flourish where basics might be more appropriate.

So you want me to say he’s absolutely rubbish?

Tough.

He’s the best solo musician I think I’ve *ever* listened to – and I’ve been listening to musicians of all numbers for too many decades to be entirely comfortable with.

The trouble is, no matter how favourably I review his album and no matter where the review gets published (hello NME!), the sad fact is this guy, this Ukrainian wunderkind of the plank-spanking world… he is so completely unlikely to cut it in this country.

Maybe Germany. And a handful of Eastern states. But make it in the UK – the home of the largest music-spending public in Europe?

Nah.

Because we can’t even pronounce his name.

So the mainstream media will continue to throw Rhianna at us and the boys and girls who know no better will continue to lap it up like cats from saucers of just-about-going-off cream.

No justice.

Anyway, Leigh, Louis (who is the hardest working drummer I’ve seen live since…. Muse at the NEC 18 months ago), Jack and James are done.

And the next track up on iTunes is…

Holy Moly! It’s Muse (Time is Running Out).

Karma, my friends.

It – unlike justice – exists.

This is a biggie for us Brits but feel free to answer the questions if you’re from another place

How much do you trust your news sources?
Totally / Mostly / Some / Not at all

How much do you trust the BBC News that you hear on the radio or see on the television?
Totally / Mostly / Some / Not at all

If a BBC News programme stated a position by a politician and then played a video clip of that politician saying words that supported that position, would you believe it?
Totally / Mostly / Some / Not at all

What if you came across evidence that the BBC staff had spliced together unrelated clips by that politician, and that the position the BBC News were presenting was actually a fabrication, a total misrepresentation of the words that the politician spoke, and what if that politician was the President of the United States? Would you feel comfortable in believing the BBC ever again?
Yes / No / Don’t know

Do you believe that this will never happen?

Until today I thought the BBC was truthful and would never edit information together in such a way as to present a falsehood.

Now go and read this.

It takes quite a lot to get me wound up. Well that’s what I think. So there.

But a story on BBC’s website slipped, very easily, straight beneath my skin and pushed my ‘React’ button.

And here’s why. And this might surprise you.

The Taxpayers Alliance are getting their knickers in a knot about local authorities and their spending on ‘publicity’.

The Taxpayers Alliance have got a little information from just a few local authorities and have extrapolated that across every local authority in the country, in a ‘mean average’ kind of way.

So it’s not exactly accurate data and that’s an important point to make.

The second, far more important point is the definition of ‘publicity’, and we need to examine this – we really do, it’s bloody important!

Under local authority accounting regulations as laid down by the Audit Commission (prop: Her Majesty’s Government), financial outlay on ‘publicity’ is defined as, and I quote from the Local Government Handbook (1993 – it’s the only copy I could get hold of at such short notice – thank goodness the library had a copy!):

“any communication, in whatever form (that is) addressed to the public at large or to a section of the public”.

So that’s mail-outs to tell people about changes in service whether upwards or downwards, or communicating variations in office hours or venues or letters to school pupils or youth centre newsletters and – wait for it – all public-facing web-developments.

The Taxpayers Alliance doesn’t come right out and say that they don’t want local authorities to communicate to the public, but they are ‘… incredibly disappointed…’ at the figures.

Arseholes.

The third, and most important fact to give anyone who picks up the story is that in a list of spending on anything it is very likely that Birmingham City Council will always come top.

This is because Birmingham City Council is the largest local authority in the United Kingdom.

Yeah, it really is.

The housing department of Birmingham City Council deals with more people than the entire number of people that the London Borough of Camden has on their books.

So when you’re talking about Birmingham, get used to reading really big numbers. And, at the same time take some comfort in economies of scale.

I hate bad journalism. This piece from the BBC is just a faithful hashup of the Taxpayers Alliance press release, and contains the most half-hearted attempt at explanation of ‘spend by category’ and absolutely no attempt to explain size of spend.

Lazy journalists = lazy journalism.

B.

Joy of joys, Danny Baker is back on Radio 2 as a (probably temporary) replacement for Jonathan Ross.

Funny, intelligent, flowing conversation about a diverse range of topics and never about himself. Long overdue!

B.