Ofcom : "Guido is a Public Service"
Guido has only just become aware that Ofcom has published a consultation paper on Public Service Broadcasting in the Digital Age. So what?Well, this blog is cited in the review of "public service content available online" as "an example of a widely read and influential blog that has become a must-read in Westminster." Of course, but is it a "public service"? It is, after all, primarily for Guido's personal amusement and mischief making merriment. This is not a public space, it is private property.
On the other hand, the Tories have a policy proposal to top slice the telly-tax to other public service providers to promote diversity and stimulate the creative industries market. If Guido is a public service content provider, does that not mean as content goes multi-platform, with online video-on-demand and suchlike, that Guido should get a splash of the £3 billion gravy train? Drinks all round on the telly taxpayer, why waste all that money on the BBC?
55 comments:
Ooooh! I'll vote for that. But with all due respect Guido, it does rather highlight the idiocy of the TV License in this day and age. Anything to get that creepy Orwellian Big Brother advert from the TV Licensing Stasi off my television screen.
If the BBC is so loved by its audience as the BBC claims, why do they lack confidence is offering it by subscription. The claimed public love for the BBC is a lie. That's why they prosecute 10,000 people a month (mainly poor women) who would rather buy shoes for their children than holidays in St Barts for Jonathan Ross.
"This is not a public space, it is private property."
That's what pub landlords thought prior to the smoking ban......!
The small print will mean you employing Nicjk Robinson and Andrew Marr as co-moderators, natch.
Unfortunately I stopped paying for the bbc some years ago, otherwise you would have been welcome to a top slice of my whack !
Perhaps you could treat yourself to a juicy tax payer funded mega contributory pension and a few quango jobs , all the other beeboid types do.
You'll need a test card. I'm on to it.
Ah! do I detect another Gordo cunning stunt?
Step 1. They heap lots of praise on you (Guido) and describe you as a "Public Service"
Step 2. They give you some of the BBC cash to keep up the good work (Public Service).
Step 3. They stick "D notices" on you (are they still called D notices?) Well gags! and shut you down as a threat to national security and they will probably lock you up for 42 days!
Tell them to F**** off!
As far as I can tell virtually all of the licence fee income is spent on a succession of ever more frequent, increasingly nasty "we've got a database, pay your licence fee, or else ..." ads.
But I'd be happy to see the few remaining crumbs go Guido's way !
Doesnt the licence fee go on moving to manchester when you have all your kit bought and paid for in London? Or selling the perfectly serviceable buildings in White City because it is a 50s building and doesnt go with your need to sit in a big glass eco structure near Hoxton attanding meetings on climate change?
Why waste ANY money and extort from the public?
Make the BBC go subscription. Let's see how many value the service enough to pay for it.
The technology is all there (and subscription is SUBSTANTIALLY cheaper to collect (and that's not including the hundreds of thousands of people taken to court each year which isn't included in the collection costs), the digital transmitters are all there. The digiboxes are totally affordable.
The only thing that needs to be seen is if the DG of the BBC was really worth the 4 million in his pension pot, or was he another parasite on the back of the British people.
What they mean is that you provide a valuable safety valve for people who would otherwise be going round stabbing and kicking Labour policticians. And bicycle thieves.
Careful Guido - you know what they say about using a 'long spoon'!!
If you became in any way bought and paid for by the Establishment, the end would be nigh for you, my friend...
The BBC would be as rich as Croesus is they'd sold the contents of their costume department on eBay one at a time or at auction instead of practically giving them away to the sleazebag Angels company - just like Jeremy Isaacs did when he was asset-stripping the Royal Opera House.
Guido is indeed a provider of a public service - slaying corrupt politicians and dodgy lobbyists from under whatever stone they have have crawled.
If the Tories want to be really clever and gain a million votes at least, why don't they make a commitment to scrapping the telly tax altogether?
That would mean you get fuck all Guido...but what the fuck, I can live with that.
Hmm, could be good. The likely outcome would be some misanthrop trying to kill you. Sounds good to me! One less tory scum; I always like hearing about dead tories
Guido - one day you will be a Think Tank. Wonderful ... !
The RNLI run a very public service.
They steadfastly refuse to have anything to do with government provided money, no doubt for very good reasons.
Nor should you and probably for the same reasons...
Nothing to do with this... but the BBC are currently letting me enjoy watching Yvette Cooper make a complete Balls up (geddit?) of defending the 10p tax cut.
If you were a genuine public service you'd be asking why so many sources are suggesting that our defence Minister is suffering mental health problems. Instead you blow smoke up your own arse.
Come on Paul, break the real story and stop believing your own hype, my friends are dying out there while you play beltway politics
Listened today to one Nulab org (BBC) interview another, the superbly acronymed WRAP (Westminster Rapes and Pillages)..about the big issue in the world today. Plastic Bags. I have been out of the UK for about six years now and make two visits back per year. I've noticed a few changes, mainly in personal apperance and hygiene. people look worse and smell badly. Are people so in need of pre-paid mobile minutes they have foregone soap? But really, the main reason for my post....did you really need to form a government agency called WRAP (Priceless!...well 5p) over the 'issue' of plastic bags FFS, this is a nation that nurtured the industrial revolution, strode the globe and humbled dictators and now, PLASTIC BAG agencies.
Whereas in the country I now reside, it is simple - you have a copule of sturdy shopping bags and you take them with you. For the boot of the car they have collapsible plastic crates. These itmes last for years. End of Story.
Beware of the states advances Mr Fawkes!
The state will always want something in return ALWAYS!
The state has realised that they can gag, manipulate and buy off the MSM but the free media of the internet is beyond their grubby and choking grasp(for now).
The state machine has realised that their control of information is under direct threat, how many stories have been ignored by the MSM but have been run by the blogoshere(free media)? How many dirty secrets have been uncovered by the free media and yet have gone unreported by the MSM?
The state hates and fears the free media because they cannot control it or buy it off! The states dirty little secrets and the corruption of its political servants have been dragged into the light of day by the free media and the state does not like it one bit!
The state hates and fears you Mr Fawkes and make no mistake they are busy dreaming up ways to put the 'bridle' on you!
The state cannot afford to have a free press, they see it as a threat to their existence and they will not rest untill they have the same control over the free media that they enjoy over the MSM!
The authoritarian state monolith has its nasty and cruel eyes on the free media now? Make no mistake about it, they see you as a threat and they are laying the groundwork for your subjugation!
Hey hey, cunty monkey...you not been lurking with your flaccid little cunt chops here for a while have you?
"If Guido is a public service content provider,..."
He would have the Diversity Police breathing down his neck.
I got rid of my tellies four years ago since they only showed rubbish and view it ( Telly-Vission ) with the same disdain as an obsolete waste of space that my teenage neighbours do for VHS.
Thus I ignore the frequent begging letters from the Oh So Clever BBC Collections Computer. ( Same company that does the London congestion charge).
Perhaps I might in future subscribe to ( ie pay for ) a BBC internet service that allowed me to selectivly avoid game-shows, Kutting Ej Yoof Progs innit, reality, sports, old movies blah blah. It really is not the money, I am not a poor woman.
Everything I read about the BBC cutting back on the good stuff they used to do; News/Current Affairs, World Service, Drama, Natural History saddens me further though as a hideously white, employed male I don't suppose that my opinions count for much.
Im afraid if you took the BBC shilling then no one would visit and nobody would believe what you say.
Just like the real BBC and think of all the health and safety issues and risk assessments need I go on?
You really sex me up.
see www.tvlicensing.biz/
See the table - an annex to the ‘Delivering Public Value’ report the BBC submitted to DCMS in 2005. For the first time it puts a figure on the gap between what the public might be willing to pay for the BBC, and the £3 billion it actually pays via a tax that makes it a crime to watch any TV unless you pay the BBC. By the BBC’s own figure this gap is £1.8 billion. A high price for a ministry of truth.
...BTW, all the nasty foreigners I know don't listen as much to Al-Beeb as they can't understand the mutilated 'regional accents' that are put on by presenters. My eldest daughter watched a BBC prog last night, where she witnessed an apparently respectable middle age / middle class woman end a sentence with "Owriat, Rock on" I beleive this may have been an attempt to be with it, but I got the impression it was rehearsed and then badly delivered, mis-cued.
Ofcom would do well to demand that the BBC deliver its programmes in a language understandable to a vast swathe of its licence (tax) payers. Yes, that includes us overseas who pay Al-Beebera via our cable fees.
Oh Guido, the big boys want you to play with them. Ha fucking ha!
IF they do offer to fund you, tell them to fuck off. They'd have you put an end to my denigration of tories and fucking capitalism. Remember; he who pays the piper calls the fucking tune...
Fucking delicious!
If this blog were publically funded it would stop being of any use and be just about as relevant as the Arts Council or the UNISON website.
Guido, if you are a 'public service' that means you should take the wishes of your readers very seriously. In which case, I would like to make a request that you include Shakira in the 'totty watch'. Gordon might be the most rubbish PM ever, but at least he gives you an excuse to put some luscious young ladies on your impeccable site. Why bother? - you may ask, but just remember, this is JONAH Brown she is meeting...there is bound to be some Jonah-esque impact on her (I wouldn't like to consider that)...so I think we need to admire her fine young Columbian’s body while we still can.
Publicly funded broadcasting is supposed to be politically "impartial" or in other words, blatantly very left-wing anti-conservative and anti-Right.
I'm sure the media (Guardianista) establishment in this country, would dearly love to bribe you with public money so you can't say what you want to say and thereby fuck-up the whole point of your website and effectively put you out of business.
If they offer you some money, please do yourself and the world of democracy a favour and tell them to FUCK-OFF!
mitch said...
'Im afraid if you took the BBC shilling then no one would visit and nobody would believe what you say.'
I'd visit every day. Blog mod would be in over drive!
I don't have a TV (far too busy living) so I receive a shedload of begging letters from the purveyors of licences, which I simply ignore. "If you do not use a television," they whine, "please let us know and we will contact you." [my emphasis]. It's remarkably easy to ignore an invitation like that.
GO FOR IT GUIDO!
I get more pleasure and satisfaction per sec out of reading this blog than the hours of crap that I pay for, but do not watch on Al-ja-Beeba.
I bet a reader of this blog at Ofcom has decided to see if he/she can sneak a mention of this blog into a report, even though in the terms of the report, it didn't belong in it!
Well done, whoever did it!
BBC Parliament, Kipling would have loved it, the UK government are such shits that Tommy Atkins' best friend is not the part-time war minister, Browne, not the Labour Party, nor the Tory Party but the fucking Coroner and the government, in the person of Tony McNutter, as vile and unworthy a person as ever held public office tries, now, to muzzle even him; Tommy, like the rest of us, must be defenceless before Government, friendless when cheated and betrayed, even the tiny ripples of criticism from the Coroners' Courts must be dammed-up, diverted.
Wittering in front of whey-faced, puddingy Jacqui Schmidt at home office questions, this famously mouthy cunt in his tie and haircut bleated that the Coroners had to be shut up in the interests of national security, that is to say in the interests of McNutter's own job.
Nobody demurred, nobody grabbed the Mace and whacked this obnoxious prick in the face with it.
Tories - Mercer, surprisingly - nit-picking over time scales but cowed by the shibboleth of national security. If this household paid the BBC tax, the horror show that is the house of commons would be worth every penny. Even through the tv screen you could almost smell the shit on Tony McNulty's breath, how do they do that?
Given that your blog is 'A must-read in Westminster' I would say it does provide a public service. It enables your posters to let our political masters know just how much we loath and despise them. Be very afraid NuLab, as your chickens come home to roost.
off topic:
Daily Telegraph web headline
"Gordon Brown and Shakira discuss third world education"
Who the fuck is Gordon Brown?
Headline: Gordon Brown, "The House Information Packs don't lie about negative equity!"
It is, after all, primarily for Guido's personal amusement and mischief making merriment. This is not a public space, it is private property.
Substitute BBC for Guido and the sentence is still true.
Gordon is a CUNT.
Ed Balls is a bigger CUNT, if that is possible.
And OFCOM have officialy endorsed this viewpoint.
So has Gordon sent a get well card to Swiss Des?
As for t'Gruniad claiming that Labour have reduced the Tory lead by 5%, it sounds like a load of Balls.
I thought the BBC and nu Labour party were already paying guido. His lets have an amnesty for all illigal immigrants was very right on!
I really feel for those who are caught out and fined for not having a TV licence. As was mentioned previously many of these people are piss-poor anyway.
I chose to get rid of my telly two years ago. Of course, I got loads of nasty, threatening letters. But when one of the TV licencing goons turned up at my doorstep he soon left when I asked if he had a warrant to search my property.
Regardless of whether you have a telly or not you are not legally obliged to let them in!
I don't miss TV at all- except for Doctor Who and that's turned shite since Catherine Tate joined the cast.
Guido, as others have said, please DON'T take the State's shilling if offered to you. You're doing an excellent job without it!
It should also be noted that the TV licence fee is a way of taxing people on their 'right' to receive state propaganda!
British State propaganda is of such 'quality' we have to pay for it!!!
WTF??????
Casual Observer said...
"The RNLI run a very public service.
They steadfastly refuse to have anything to do with government provided money, no doubt for very good reasons."
The RNLI is a hugely successful charity and doesn't need government money. They actually have a very large surplus.
Welcome everyone. This is the brand new publicly funded Guido Fawkes 2009 site
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whilst i agree that guido is a public service and with cassandras post "that the last thing the state needs is free press" I am worried that guido may have momentarily fallen the glory of recieving state funding .
oh to be put up there with likes of the bbc and national braodcast, perhaps improved chances of bafta .
margeux focus groups (well at leat up to second bottle) canapes during power lunches !! fawning international media barrons sharing lunches and villas .
when you become chairman as opposed sole propietor let us know we will know that EUSSR has truly arrived
Guido, it is a typing error in the report. It should have said "a valuable pubic service", because you shine the spotlight on cunts, dicks and arseholes in parliament.
YOUR BBC telly tax at work
"Muslim call to adopt Mecca Time"
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7359258.stm
By Magdi Abdelhadi
BBC Arab affairs analyst
"Muslim scientists and clerics have called for the adoption of Mecca time to replace GMT, arguing that the Saudi city is the true centre of the Earth."
Don't take the 30 pieces of silver Guido, stay independant. In my bachelor days I was without a TV so I didn't need a licence but the blighters wouldn't believe me or leave me alone. Letter after letter. Just like the Stasi. "We know where you live, we have detailed records of all licences in your area, we can tell which room your telly is in, we can kick down your door at 4 in the morning."
No, Guido, don't be part of it keep slinging it at them.
As for Minekiller's comments. Why did BBC Radio 4 have a continuity announcer with a Posh Jamaican accent before one with a Norfolk or a Devon accent? Anti-English bias at the Beeb, again?
Referring to Boris Johnson 'There are questions about his seriousness' on a BBC live outside broadcast at 8:26.Trouble is the BBC is believed when it makes an announcement like that.Why not 'Some people have questioned his seriousness'? Do they think he'll wear a cap-and-bells in the mayoral office? BBC you're bent as Paddick and not nearly as funny.
Anon @6.14
Read that last night in wide mouthed amazement. The best bit was the geologist who claimed Mecca was better as it was on the same longitude as the magnetic north pole.
Not a particularly good geologist then, as the pole has moved by about 20 degrees since 1900, and looks all set to fuck about for the foreseeable future.
You'd have thunk the BBC should actually have mentioned this to him, rather than just letting him spout this nonsense.
Well, Anon@6.14 and Silas, The Muslims will have a fight on their hands because the term GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) did not meet with favour from the French who stamped their little feet and demanded it be changed to UTC (Universal Time Constant). Mainly because it contained the name of a town in Perfidious Albion! I am told that they also once lobbied hard for the starting point for time zones to be relocated to Paris.
Although, thinking about it, 12:00 hours PMT might be confused with the time when your girlfriend starts getting stroppy.
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