You want reasons for keeping the BBC licence fee?

August 17th, 2011 § 0 comments § permalink

Click here to find out why.

This has to be one of the better rants for keeping the BBC licence fee.

Broken TV starts off with a defence of BBC4 but by the end is just defending the BBC as a whole. And deservedly so.

We’ve long held the (possibly misguided) notion that BBC Four is the very last outpost of British television where the right people can happily be given a budget and a timeslot, and be told “go off and make something” without being followed by a swarm of middle-managers who prod the talent with sticks while hissing “can we skew younger?”, “can we get Mickey Flanagan in here somewhere, I owe his agent a favour”, or “this play about Shakespeare is all very worthy, but I don’t like Shakespeare. Can it all be about him being shit?” It’s the BBC of the Radiophonic Workshop, of a thirteen-part series being made because of something Barry Took said in the BBC bar, of half-hour sitcoms lasting for thirty-four minutes because that’s how long it needs to be – or as close as it can be in the era of credit-squeezing and logo guidelines.

In short, if BBC Four were a person, it’d be Alessandro Del Piero taking part in an under-12s football match, and it’s time for him to have his bootlaces tied together to give everyone else a chance.

So, what are the alternatives to clipping BBC Four’s wings? People on Twitter seem to have come up with a few ideas, though they don’t really hold up to much scrutiny.

JUST CLOSE BBC THREE INSTEAD! I DON’T LIKE IT, SO I’M HAPPY FOR IT TO CLOSE.”

A popular opinion, but one we’d have to disagree with. Yes, it’s full of shows called JAMES CORDEN’S WELL GOOD FUCK OFF I’M GINGER AND WAHEY LADS SHAGGING EH SHOW or whatever, and despite making huge amounts of original content most people only watch EastEnders repeats and Family Guy, but there is an audience for it.

One of the reasons we stopped liking Harry Hill quite as much is down to a recent interview on Five Live, he was asked why TV Burp had stopped poking fun at BBC Three’s Freaky Eaters. His reply was along the lines of “it’s awful, that’s why. And I’m paying for it!” Well, sorry to break this to you Harry. The people who watch BBC Three pay their licence fee, too. They’re paying for the things they like, you’re paying for the things you like. Oddly, considering “young people are always moaning, they don’t know how lucky they are!”, we never really hear fans of Spendaholics complaining about how their licence fee pays for coverage of The Chelsea Flower Show or Countryfile, but when the Beeb sent a team off the Glasto to capture around sixty hours of entertainment for less than the price of two hours drama, it’s as if the ghost of Sir Hugh Greene is sneaking into the houses of Daily Mail readers and rifling through their handbags.

And on it goes. It also contains a method for watching TV without a licence, for all those whingy, whiney fuckers. Well worth a read.

Please, don’t feel you have to support England

June 13th, 2010 § 5 comments § permalink

Oh for fucks sake.

If you don’t want to support the England team, don’t. It doesn’t fucking matter. It really doesn’t.

The trouble with football (collapsing a whole long list into a handful of bugbears) is that its mindset bears an uncanny resemblance to the belief in “my country/party right or wrong”. It appears designed to programme the collective brain out of thinking and nuance, making those same synaptic connections that can only deal with black and white, binary three-minute hate. Us (good) and them (bad).

And what’s wrong with that? What’s wrong with enjoying something that is adversarial, is black and white and in the end is inconsequential?

Coming out of the Second World War, which devastated huge swathes of the globe, we valued our intellectuals and artists for helping to make the world a better place.

Nowadays, changing social conditions means social engineering, militarising society and the creation a nation of gladiators. From Sky to Skynet, turning you into a combat machine. Prepare to be assimilated.

What? How are we being turned into a ‘combat machine’? We have the most restrictive gun laws in the world. The army, even though actually deployed overseas in armed combat, is not exactly enjoying a surge in popularity and the fledgling gladiators are all stabbing themselves over fags, cheap cider and mobile phones. Even if I believed the last to be true I still wouldn’t think our society was being prepped for war.

It’s like living in Spartacus: Blood and Sand. Existence reduced to sex and death as we close ourselves down. All hail the sacred ground where you mash the opposition into the dirt, whether on the field, in the ring or at the dispatch box.

I can see the metaphor with Sparticus and it works well, but then it falls… *nods off*

Huh? Wha…? *ahem* Sorry, where was I?

Do I really want to identify with massively overpaid narcissists and their big-buck masters?

Well if you don’t want to, don’t. The overpaid narcissists don’t give a shit. And neither do I really. I enjoy the games, usually, but don’t feel I have to ‘identify’ with any of the people involved. Why should I? What would I be doing any different if I did identify with them? They’re overpaid, usually arrogant, more often than not womanising cunts. So fucking what?

I don’t pay any money to watch them play except when go to a game, and then if the ticket costs too much or there is a player that is a particular shister, I won’t go. Anything else in their personal life is their business.

How does victory for one set of businessmen over another set improve my life?

It doesn’t. Do you make all you decisions like this? When you decide to who to support in athletics, do you decide which of their sponsors will improve your life?

I love the artistry of great footballers. Watching George Best run rings around his opponents like he was occupying a different time and space was a joy to behold. But the small local football team that was part of the community is a myth, destroyed when British soccer emulated the American sports system and became a money-spinning industry, making your passion something that could be bought and sold. It bears the same relationship to the beautiful game as porn does to sex. So your team can spend millions on a talent from Nowheresville, Abroad? Well done. That means you are the best because some oligarch had deep pockets

So watch the tournament for some great football. Have a moan about how the way TV money isn’t distributed in a way that gets down to the grass roots of the game. Have a moan about that, then. Oh, by the way, don’t get confused between the national and international games. You cannot buy any player to play in your national team. To whinge about the way the money men have gone into the national clubs and buy up the best players from around the world in a post about why you’re not supporting England in the World Cup belies a lack of knowledge that means you do not really understand football or how it really works beyond what makes the front pages of the press, rather than the back, and so should shut the fuck up.

I cheer England on in athletics because it isn’t about two sides crushing each other. It really is the best man or woman winning through skill and it is possible to appreciate the accomplishments of the winner even if they aren’t on your team. Same with British culture when we do something great in film or music.

So individual competitive sports are fine but not team sports. You can, believe it or not, support a team and not go in for all stuff about grinding them into the dirt. You can even appreciate when an opposing team have played brilliantly and outplayed your team, or you own team were lucky to win. You would be amazed at the amount of England games where I haven’t called the opposition a bunch of foreign cunts of some sort or another.

I’ll probably succumb, though, and watch the bloody thing out of curiosity and an indulgence of my own pack instincts…

The pack instinct doesn’t mean you have to behave like a wanker, though. If you’re on a demo and someone chucked something through a window would you join in with it? No. So you don’t need to with the World Cup. Enjoy the football that’s on display. If you don’t want to support your home team, don’t.

After all, despite being told the contrary many times before, it is just a game.

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