NOT BREAKING NEWS : Time For A Change at the BBC

The BBC is one of our great British institutions and I never want to see it scrapped, however it does need cutting down to size. In the multi-media platform world we live in, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to justify the funding, The BBC has become a British Leyland of broadcasting funded by means of a punitive poll tax which you must pay or face prison.

In effect, the BBC should only be providing services and programmes that the market can’t or won’t produce. They also have no right to infest every sector of broadcasting with their soft-leftie over funded propaganda.

In an age when it is easy to watch the news, be entertained, follow sport and surf the internet without ever using the state monopoly’s services, why on earth should we still be forced to pay for this dinosaur? In an era of austerity the saving of the licence fee, which essentially is a tax on each household would be wildly popular, but it’s probably not the answer.

I’m not calling for the BBC to be completely privatised. I just want the BBC to concentrate on providing a value for money service to us, its funders. I want them to be dragged, kicking and screaming if necessary into the real world, and I want it to be forced to both earn and justify its existence.

A very recent example of this over blown, unnecessary spending of tax payer’s money was the BBC coverage of the death of Nelson Mandella. Yes it was an important event, but didn’t need the uprooting of the entire BBC News team to go on a junket to South Africa for a fortnight then making it the main news item everyday for that period to justify the trip! Did Question Time really need to broadcast its edition that week from South Africa? How many important UK news stories can no longer be investigated as they’ve spent the budget on Mandella?    

Of course, the BBC is held in high esteem around the world and it has obviously produced some brilliant radio and TV over the years. But unfortunately at home its presence in all media areas is too dominant. As the state broadcaster it has tremendous privileges and rights, but it should also have enormous equal responsibilities to us, the very people who are forced to pay for it.

A particular bug-bear of mine is the left wing angle you constantly get on certain, so called impartial news programmes. The Today Programme on Radio 4; Newsnight; Question Time, to me, are all very impartial. Indeed a recent Question Time edition came from Boston in Lincolnshire, a town that has an extremely high population of immigrants, it also has what’s probably the largest UKIP following of any town. Strange then how the audience seemed to be made up of immigrant supporting, anti-UKIP people.   

On top of all this is the cover up of the whole Jimmy Savile; Dave Lee Travis; sex abuse issues that lead to Operation Yewtree. Many senior people in the BBC knew what was going on, yet did nothing about it. Was this to protect Savile or protect the BBC? The one thing it didn’t protect was the victims !

Lose BBC3 and/or BBC4?

Let me say I wouldn't miss BBC3 for a moment; it’s a repeats channel really. BBC4 costs the licence payer a mighty £50m a year; however it does have some great programmes on. But being a fan of BBC4 and having no interest in BBC3 is exactly the reason why both are important, but are they affordable? Maybe a solution would be to merge them into one, taking the best bits of each.

It also depends on if they were to do anything with BBC2, though. If the documentaries and arts programmes (and high quality foreign imports) move there, then that's acceptable. If however BBC2 continues to show a diet of cooking, gardening, Dad's Army and talent show spinoffs, then no thanks get rid of BBC2 instead.

Sponsorship

Can anyone give me one good reason why popular BBC programmes such as EastEnders; Strictly; Casualty or The One Show can’t be sponsored in the same way as Coronation Street is by Compare The Market? I’m not suggesting advertising interrupting the shows, but surely they could flog credits at the beginning and the end? Again, revenue brought in this way would free up cash.

BBC Radio

Radio 1 and Radio 2 should be sold off to the highest bidder. The BBC’s argument that both stations bring on new talent and champion minority causes can be easily satisfied by opening up sections of the licence fee for both private companies and the BBC to bid for to put on these types of shows.

Radio 3 has lost its way as well. It’s nothing more than an expensive fig-leaf for the whole operation. Lousy programming, lousy sound, tiny audiences too, for whom they have little but contempt. Yes, the Proms are fun but they’re hardly a duty of the licence-payer to the tune of millions.

And when it comes to BBC Five Live, I like it, but should they really be allowed to use our money to bid for Premiership football rights and effectively outbid commercial stations? They then use the football to build their brand!

Six Music is a really good station, its programming is unique amongst the whole radio network and its successful, but only a few can hear it as it only broadcasts digitally. With a wider audience this station could fulfil the gap left by Radios 1 and 2 being sold off whilst fulfilling the BBC’s diversity ethos.

Local Radio

All of this money saved could then be used to fund BBC core activities that will not be provided by the private sector, such as ‘proper’ local radio which sadly, no longer seems to exist in the UK anymore.

The best, truly local radio station I ever listened to was Manchester’s Piccadilly Radio. It had everything, popular music; specialist music; news; debate; investigative shows; sport etc. It had huge listening figures and created many local personalities that ended up as national figures such as Chris Evans. Piccadilly disappeared when big corporate business started buying up local radio in the 80’s, their descendant; KEY103 is a dire, chart music, playlist station with nondescript, identikit presenters. It appeals to teenagers and that’s about it. They could be broadcasting anywhere in the country, the output would still be the same.     

BBC Radio Manchester is a fairly good local talk station with brilliant news and sport coverage, however with a bit of investment it could be so much more. If the BBC were to take the Piccadilly Radio model and merge it with what Radio Manchester does they’d have a perfect offering, listenership would go through the roof.

Put It In The Manifesto

I don’t think it’s helpful to call for the abolition of the BBC. I think it’s a reductive, if not nihilistic game whereby abolition plays into the hands of the likes of Murdoch and a wide variety of extremists. However something needs to be done.

The BBC is rightly seen as a great symbol of all that is great in Britain but it has to be cut down to size and made apolitical. It needs to be made more accountable to the British public if we are to continue to be forced to pay for it. It also needs to stop being a supporter of minorities first and foremost and be more supportive of the British way of life instead. It should reflect our shared values and not be an organ of propaganda for those who seek to destroy our way of life or change it without even consulting us.

All the political parties will be drawing their manifestos shortly ready for the General Election next year. Times are changing. They should put some serious thought into what the BBC needs to look like in these modern times. It could be a vote winner !

Manchester Canal Deaths – Too Many, Too Often

Another Monday morning, another report of a young man fighting for his life after being rescued from a canal in Manchester City Centre. This one, a lad in his 20s, was pulled from the Rochdale Canal on Dale Street near Piccadilly Station at around 10.30pm last night. He was taken to the Manchester Royal Infirmary where he's described as "critically ill".

It seems that every time I look at the Manchester Evening News website there’s another body in a Manchester canal. 2014 is only three weeks old and this is the FOURTH one so far this year. The first died on the 7^th in the Ashton Canal, the second, died on the 10^th in the canal near Great Ancoats Street and the third was rescued on the 14^th from the canal in Princess Street. What’s going on ?

Chilling Statistics

This isn’t a recent thing either, It seems to be happening more and more frequently with young men going missing after a night out in Manchester. A quick internet search reveals the official numbers from Greater Manchester Police are that between 1^st January 2008 and 18^th March 2013 there have been 61 bodies retrieved from Greater Manchester waterways. That’s almost one a month. I know it's not a particularly useful comparison, but if a particular stretch of road was that dangerous, I'm sure they'd be looking at safety improvements.

Why Manchester?

Why does Manchester seem to have so many young males meeting a watery grave. It does happen elsewhere in the UK, but not at anywhere near the same frequency. Are we really to believe that young men in Manchester are just phenomenally clumsy compared to the rest of the country? It all seems very strange to me.

Birmingham, has a large canal network around bars and clubs but there’s no reports there of men falling in canals after a night out and being killed. Indeed, Birmingham has more canals than Venice, so you'd expect if it was just drunk people falling into them (and some of the Manchester victims had relatively low levels of blood alcohol), you'd expect it to be a weekly occurrence there – but it’s not!

With all these young men’s bodies being dragged out of Manchester canals/rivers in the space of a decade you do wonder is something else going on here? Of course, it may just be coincidence, but the first thing the police seem to say in all these cases is "no signs of anything suspicious". That's pretty dismissive really isn't it?

No Suspicious Circumstances

As I say, most of these incidents seem to eventually get dismissed as "no suspicious circumstances". I suppose part of the reason for this is that if there's no CCTV near the canals (which there isn't near most of them in Manchester), then how are they supposed to prove anything untoward has happened? Even if the body has cuts, bruises and they can see that something has happened, water can wash away any DNA and other evidence. Still, there’s no way on earth this many young males are falling into canals though.

Why Is It Always Young Men?

The one thing that really bothers me is the age and type of person that keeps slipping into the water and drowning. With only a few exceptions, these victims are all young males in their late teens or early twenties. Why should that be the case? They’re usually leaving a party not even in the area of a water way late at night. It seems females don't slip or leave party's late at night in the Manchester area.

If there is ‘no suspicious circumstances’ and they’re not being pushed in or thrown in then one way to help prevent more deaths is some sort of fencing around the death black spots on the water ways, or is that too simplistic?

It may sound a bit of an obvious, even silly thing to say, but it really should be impressed upon young people, never ever walk along close by a canal or waterway at night. It's too easy to trip, when tired, when stumbling in the dark.

More Sinister?

Personally I feel there's something more sinister happening with all these canal deaths; there’s far too many of them in Manchester, and the lads are rarely intoxicated. Most incidents happen around the 'Gay Village' - Canal Street and its environs - quite a civilised place until the small hours, and the towpaths there are also seen as a short cut home for some. How many people have died in that canal after being thrown in? Canal Street breeds drugs and violence late at night. Are these young men’s drinks being spiked (rohypnol etc) disorienting them to a state where they end up falling in the canal? Is something sinister going on in the gay community there? Something's going on for sure!

I begin to wonder if this is just a host of coincidences or is there a serial killer at large? This theory never even entered my mind when I started writing this blog and I don't see why there is any reason to believe there is one at this point, but I do think it's chilling and very sad that cases of young men disappearing and later being found dead are on the increase.

I don't really think I believe that serious, organised  foul play is occurring, it's just that if these deaths were young women people would be sympathetic and worried. I find the total lack of reaction about the increasing number of young men dying (whether they die innocently or because others have done them harm) sinister and sad.

Doesn’t Make Sense

None of it makes any sense. Why the hell are there so many young males going missing, then being found dead in water in Manchester? What are Greater Manchester Police doing about this? Something quite dodgy and disturbing is going on. If I'm thinking there's a possible serial killer about, and I know I'm not the only one thinking this, then maybe the likes of the Manchester Evening News should be doing some ‘investigative’ journalism rather than ignoring it.

A question to Greater Manchester Police. What are you doing about this? Why are there so many 'not suspicious circumstances' when you can't get any more suspicious than a load of young men being found dead in canals? What is going on?

Whether foul play is involved or not, these deaths and disappearances need investigating and reporting on a lot more. Maybe if a little more awareness was raised, these young men could avoid harm. There again, I suppose because they aren't blonde haired, blue eyed middle class girls the media just doesn't give a shit.

Religion. Sorry, I Just Don't Buy it

Happy New Year one and all, the season of greed and madness has passed and we're into another year, another year of experience and progress and another year closer to shuffling off this mortal coil.

What's changed then ?  

Well nothing really from what I see, the economy is finally picking up, can't say I've noticed it in my pay packet though. The Government still aren't listening to us about all sorts of things, like immigration, HS2, EU Membership etc. The fracking debate goes on and I'm still not clear where I stand as the messages are so mixed, maybe the subject of a future blog. The Labour Party are still un-electable in their current form. 

What else ? 

Oh yeah, our under equipped soldiers are still fighting other peoples wars. These wars, and to be honest virtually all modern wars are a result of one religion's people trying to eliminate an opposing religion's people. Oh and there was all that appalling weather, the flooding, people without power on Christmas day, the deaths as a consequence of the weather. There's a link between wars and the weather and that's religion. People fight wars for their religion, people also believe that the weather is an 'Act of God'. So it seems we have a deity that is happy to willfully murder people by causing terrible weather conditions, either that or by allowing them to murder each other in his name. I'm not really buying this, are you ?

Nice Architecture, that's about all though!

I quite like good architecture, churches are generally fine, attractive buildings, they do have those monolithic stained glass windows though; all those images in them of Jesus Christ being crucified on a cross. That just gives me the horrors, sends shivers down my spine. I can't understand the way God is represented in church. He's not exactly a barrel of laughs, is he? I thought the whole idea is that religion is meant to give you comfort and happiness yet the God Squad are always so terribly dour and serious.

I honestly can't see that religion gives much pleasure to people at all. If someone genuinely believes that they're going to end up in heaven, surely they should be spending their entire lives with a huge smile on their face. I don't go along with any of it. It seems so patently obvious to me that the whole this is one big con, one giant delusion of wishful thinking and all it does is pit people against each other and creates at least as much damage and bad feeling as politicians do.

The world would be a much safer, happier place if people embraced the idea that death just might be the end, so why not try and do good while they're here on earth, not get away with hatred and murder in the expectation that they'll be forgiven in the next life.

Religion is Control

Religion and control seem to go hand in hand, much as communism and control did. When you're a Christian, or a Muslim or a Jew (or whatever religion you may be), your beliefs are taught to you. In a sense, you are told what to believe and most people just do what they're told. The result of this is that you live in a controlled society, only accepting what you're told to accept because you think that your beliefs are better than other people's and you will accept no other opinions, you only have to look what's happening in the Muslim world to evidence what I'm saying. 

Atheism

As you've probably guessed, I'm an atheist, I've developed my own opinions. I don't feel pressured by religious teachings to accept thoughts that may not really be what your heart wants you to believe or head tells you is just plain impossible. Being an atheist allows me to be free to examine multiple sides to arguments, and be open-minded on others' opinions. I control my own life. 

I might be an atheist, a none believer, but I'm not against God or people believing in God. I am merely against people who use their religion as a weapon, and who use it publicly trying to force it on other people. Beliefs should be private and sacred. In general, globally, religious people try to use what they've been taught to be above other people where atheists don't. In my opinion, atheism is about being open to learning and developing, whereas religion isn't. 

Does God Exist ?

If God actually existed we would ALL believe in him or her. But the evidence points more to the fact that the reason God was invented was because thousands of years ago, they did not know how to explain our existence. Today however, our origins are somewhat clearer.