3522 days ago
From Greece in the South I have been watching the run up to the referendum debate in the Greece of the North with some amusement. Ever since Gordon Brown lent his weight to the No campaign, Scots have been flocking to the Yes camp in increasing numbers and a poll tonight suggests 51% will vote for independence. As an English taxpayer I am delighted, the sooner the welfare addicted scroungers piss off the better.
89% of Scots are net takers from the State. Scotland has every year bar one (1976) been a net taker from England since the Act of Union. All mainstream Scots political parties are Money Tree worshippers and consistently demand that Government spends more and more. That is Scotland’s problem, it has created a nation of welfare junkies.
The debate seems to have been of an abysmal standard. One side invents major new oil fields which the English wish to steal, while Call Me Dave warns Scots that without England they are more vulnerable to Al-Qaeda/ISIS attacks. Yeah right…I know that many ISIS fighters come from places like Somalia but even they would find 95% of urban Scotland a bit of a shit hole. And imagine if an ISIS fighter was captured by the Scots. Stick him in a room with a bunch of overweight, chain smoking workshy Glaswegians and after 24 hours of them bleating on about how England causes all their problems, the Islamofascist would beg for mercy and reveal all.
As an English taxpayer I cannot wait to have the economic burden of Scotland removed as soon as possible. I am also praying
3712 days ago
BBC Director of Television Danny Cohen thanks that Match of the day needs to change. Hanson, Lineker, Shearer et al might know about soccer, be pretty entertaining and have a good on screen rapport but they are all white men. That is clearly no good at all. It is not representative, blah, blah, blah.
So who should host MOTD? Naturally I nominate Hazel Irvine (for whom I have such a soft spot that I even watched a few minutes of the watching paint dry Winter Olympics) who has an encyclopaedic knowledge of soccer. Garth Crooks is excellent. And why not bring in Graham Norton for true diversity and since he appears to be camped out at the BBC so he can appear almost 24 hours a day on our screens.
I am sure Norton would do it. Irvine and Crooks, however, strike me as decent folk who would argue that the current team is excellent (if overpaid) and that merit should out. Neither has risen through the ranks through affirmative action but through natural talent. The BBC once stood for excellence. What is so bad about that?
3717 days ago
I think that I must have watched all of thirty minutes of the Winter Olympics and that is only because I have always had a very soft spot for Hazel Irvine. Cripes, is that the sort of thing one should admit to in print? I digress.
Did the BBC really need to send such a large team to cover the Games? There were in fact more BBC staff at the Games than members of Team GB. That is, I am afraid just so BBC.
North of the games there is a different drama playing out in the Ukraine. I rephrase: if you have woken up after snoring in front of the Men’s 20 km cross country ski where they also shoot guns event, there is real drama in the Ukraine. So on the BBC news we have reports from two different reporters on the ground (each with a camera crew). Switch to Newsnight and there is another BBC reporter with a camera crew. Over on radio 4 I can hear another chappie.
And guess what none are breaking news. All are simply relaying events with a slightly different emphasis but basically importing facts. How many BBC reporters are now in Kiev and how many BB support staff? Anyone care to hazard a guess? Can anyone actually justify it?
Can anyone explain why the BBC needed so many folks on the ground at the Olympics? Surely all we need is non-stop Hazel Irvine from the studio with pictures brought in from Russian TV and a few expert commentators for the odd sport about which Hazel does not have a truly encyclopaedic knowledge?
As ever, organisations where there is no bottom line to worry about are always rather poor when it comes to basic cost benefit analysis and cost control. Meet the BBC.
