February 10, 2020 - 4:59pm
BBC TV is rubbish, says my Moral Maze colleague Tim Stanley in the Telegraph today. In contrast listening figures out last week showed that BBC radio output continues to thrive, with Radio 4 and 5 live growing audiences.
So why not dump BBC TV and the website, I muse to myself? Radio is so obviously the best bit of BBC output, and could easily shoulder the Reithian mission at a fraction of the cost.
“Oh no”, said my wife over breakfast, “you have to keep Attenborough”. Yes of course, I said: “And Peaky Blinders”. Oh agreed, I said. And, on behalf of the children, she put in an unanswerable case for CBeebies — the BBC delivering what has to be easily the best children’s television in the world. Hey Duggee is a work of genius. Yes, yes, I keep on retreating. OK, apart from Attenborough, and Peaky Blinders, and Hey Duggee … I am beginning to feel like John Cleese here … let’s cut the lot of it apart from the radio.
“And, of course, you have to keep the news”, she insists. “We couldn’t do without BBC news”. I feel on stronger ground here. Sky does a good job, I suggest, and isn’t it all terribly woke now on the BBC? “But you never watch Sky” she replies. And it’s true. I can feel myself losing every point. BBC News reaches nearly 400 million people a week, worldwide. By the end of the porridge, I have lost the argument. And glad to have lost.
After all, the BBC and the Church of England have a great deal in common. They are both nationalised industries; indeed, I would say, both national treasures. Both with a moral mission. Both custodians of culture. Both, apparently, in need of reform. Both obsessed with attracting young people.
My own view is that when the Church starts chasing a younger audience simply as an end in itself it ends up losing sight of its core mission — and that the same is probably true for the BBC. No, concentrate unashamedly on the edification proposed by your founding fathers. Don’t be embarrassed by a commitment to higher culture. And stick to what you do best.
In the foyer of Old Broadcasting House building there is a Latin inscription. In English it reads:
“This Temple of the Arts and Muses is dedicated to Almighty God by the first governors of Broadcasting House in the year 1931, Sir John Reith being director-general. It is their prayer that good seed sown may bring forth a good harvest, that all things hostile to peace or purity may be banished from this house, and that the people, inclining their ear to whatsoever things are beautiful and honest and of good report, may tread the path of wisdom and uprightness.”
The reference here is to St Paul’s letter to the Philippians:
“Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.”
Not bad advice for the next director-general.
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SubscribePeople in the north (where I’m from originally) never seem to have accepted that the broken industries that went down in the 80s weren’t maliciously killed by Thatcher, they were dead already, she simply ended the theatre of dressing up the corpses in clothes and pretending they were still alive. If they’d been healthy competitive companies they wouldn’t have died the moment state support was withdrawn, but decades of a “it’s not our fault it woz fatcher innit” mentality has stopped people from accepting that.
So it’s an endless circle of problems – who would want to try and set up a new company in a place where everyone is proud to be as left wing as possible (=they see management as enemies not friends which is the last thing you need when trying to build a firm), then without new companies they can’t move on from the past, and the poverty that results keeps people voting left wing so the cycle repeats.
It’s really sad. It also holds the rest of the country back (like Scotland is doing). The north means even the Tories have to worship the NHS even though it’s now in open collapse. What can be done about that sort of leftism?
I’m from Liverpool, and I can tell you they’ll never get over it, and as a result it’ll never rise above the ingrained sense of dependant entitlement.
Its like there’s pride in failure because it just proves how everyone else holds them back. They even manage to complain about probably the cleverest football club owners in the Country who turned LFC around from 30 years of decline.
“Death before Resurrection”.
Germany proves that another way was possible. She helped South England adjust to the economic realities of the 21th century, but took the North back to the 18th. And the whole country is still paying the price.
It’s the same story in Newcastle where the LibDems had a taste of power in the Council but lost to further hegemony by Labour. And the people wonder why nothing changes when they have the same old, same old in charge for ever. As Oscar Wilde put it – a triumph of hope over experience.
What is missed out in this article is that ever since Manchester and Liverpool became dominated by Labour they have used the Local Govt machine as a propanganda machine for left wing views.The one that got away was Brexit.On the evening of the referendum i had a social event in Tameside with 20 mostly working class local people and it turned out only 2 of us (the 2 bohemian people present) were voting remain .In the 2019 election the Tories came within 1000 votes of taking what had been a very safe labour seat there.What the Tories need to do is a U-turn on Net Zero and take on the green red left on energy policy.
Yes its so blindingly obvious. Net zero is pointless, irrelevant and not based on science. And yet it will make the poor even poorer. Why on earth cant the Tories see this. It’s an open goal to win back the red wall
Because the green movement is generally not calling for policies that make the poor poorer. Quite the opposite, if not implemented regressively (as it has been by the economic right here, in France, the Netherlands etc): insulating homes would save working people money, the green new deal would create proper paid, highly skilled jobs, renewable energy development would reduce our dependency on foreign energy (although of course national storage capacity needs to be expanded to avoid the ‘unreliables’ accusation) – unfortunately however our government isn’t doing those things
Just for information (as another Tory, originally from Manchester), Didsbury, as part of the Manchester Withington constituency, had a Tory MP, Fred Silvester, until the 1987 election. Didsbury Ward continued to be represented by three Conservative councillors until 1994. The last (elected) Tory councillor, Cllr Peter Hilton, lost Didsbury in the May elections of 1996. He’s now the President of the Manchester Conservative Association. The absence of any Conservative representation — or alternative to the dominant left-wing voice — on the city council is indeed a sad loss, not least given the very long and distinguished service of the Tories in the city (Dame Kathleen Ollerenshaw, Nellie Beer, Eveline Hill, Harold Tucker, etc.) throughout the 20th century.
I thought that Manchester was given a Mayor with additional spending money – Andy Burnham, I believe. What’s he done?
Over on Tees-side the Mayor there seems to be running a Free Port and investing in manufacturing!
What’s wrong with Manchester? Are they sitting down with their feet up?
I feel so isolated as a single parent conservative party member in likely the most socio economically run down neighbourhood in Manchester that im relocating to a more conservative city in the South. The lack of motivation to improve ones lot is incredible. I refuse to have my child grow up thinking this life attitude is acceptable.
The simple answer is no, they don’t need the Tories. Apart from London, the NW, you can also add the NE, receive more funding than any other region in England including the SE. What would having a few Tory MPs do for them. Burnham is clear going for more power, which is the next logical step.
The problem is that so many people only think of London when they think of the SE. I have heard many work collegues who relocated from the North to central southern England saying that they were unaware that there was any poverty in the South, they believed that everyone was sitting pretty here; food banks in the South was something that they could not conceive of.
Deprivation in parts of London is also Dickensian,
as a stroll around Tower Hamlets will quickly reveal
The pampered parasites of Quislington are the exception not the rule.
Fortunately London is policed by, as we used to say “the finest Police Force money can buy”, so there is no cause for concern………..yet.
Islington has some of the highest levels of deprivation in the country
Do you have any evidence to support this?
Here you go Tom.
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn04033/
Thanks for this link – very interesting.
The article doesn’t fit its headline. How is it Labour’s fault that consecutive Conservative governments have invested so little in the north? (And, from what they have been telling us, whoever wins this drawn-out leader contest will continue in the same vein.)
Conservative governments have invested huge amounts in the North. It’s just that as it’s in large part via public sector salaries it’s not very obvious.