Bad weather at the BBC

It all seems rather cold wet and miserable at the moment. I have finally got to the point in my degree where some modicum of work is required and yet it gets to the weekend, and I think “Fantastic, time to go out!” And hey presto God starts crying buckets and howling a gale down my poor old neck, replete with cramp from my terrible posture. And the worst thing, the Met Office can’t even come up with a good name for the wretched storm de weekend – Dennis? Really?

A couple of years ago the BBC stopped using the Met Office for their weather. Instead, they opted for some chap in a shed with a computer from the 1970s and a beaker outside to check how much rain has occurred. Shockingly, the weather forecasts immediately became wildly inaccurate. Not that the Met Office was brilliant, but it could at least tell me whether it was going to rain or not. The BBC seem to have opted for a weather data provider which can’t even do that. Why? Well, money, obviously. It was another in a long line of cuts which the poor staff at the BBC have had to endure.

Now, they are slashing their newsroom budgets of another £80m. This means 450 people are going to be made redundant. 450 liberals and leftists (or generally some combination of the two) without a cause. Extinction rebellion get recruiting. This has got my puzzled. Mainly because I don’t really understand how they can get rid of 450 people in a newsroom and still have some left. It would seem rather a lot of people to remove as a streamlining effort. I have the BBC news app, and frankly I could write stories on my own faster than they publish them. What on earth are they all doing?

Now I’m on a roll, let’s keep moaning about the Beeb. Even Jeremy Clarkson recently wrote about how ridiculous it’s all got. The best bit has to be the diversity that gets thrust down our neck. It seems to be the priority in every decision the corporation makes. No producer, don’t worry about making an interesting person, just make sure there is a sufficiently diverse cast and its sure to be a success. Shockingly, BBC ratings continue to fall. It’s almost as if people don’t want to tune into the television to be told how great diversity is. Here’s an unfortunate truth for you Mr BBC exec – most people really don’t care enough.

I am hardly a bigot, or a racist. I am in fact very fond of diversity and getting people on in life. It’s why I’m a Conservative. I believe that people should be able to advance themselves, no matter where they came from or who they are. I believe it is the job of government to help them do that, but, where possible keep its sticky little paws out. Therefore, I really don’t have any particular issue with people from all backgrounds doing jobs. This, I think, is in fact quite good.

However, there does seem to be an issue when the national behemoth is bequeathing to us a metropolitan ideology of truth. Most people agree in this day and age that people are equal regardless of race, sexuality etc. But they don’t need someone to tell them. Especially not some washed-up middle-class nitwit who has a marketing degree from University of Nincompoop who has nothing better to do with their days than be brainwashed. In turn, they then funnel their activities into attempting to brainwash the rest of us. Climate change, diversity, hating Brexit. The London metropolitan elite who work at the BBC like to virtue signal to us quite how great they are through their programming. They’ve even hired the delightful Greta Thunberg to bore us all about how important the environment is.

Once again – I caveat. I think the environment is important. I just don’t need the BBC to tell me this in the most patronising form possible of a 16-year-old girl who doesn’t really bother with school. Apparently, for some reason totally unbeknown to me, she is too important for that.

Now why am I having this prolonged meander through my bug bears about the BBC? Note that I haven’t even started whining about the clear political bias shown by the broadcaster in all of their output. Well, simple, because they are a wing of the government, let us not forget.

We (or our unfortunate parents in my case) are charged a fabulous sum of £150 a year for this nonsense. And, better than that, if we don’t pay it, we get a court order. It is, in fact an involuntary tax dressed up as a fee. The posh cretins at the BBC then get billions of pounds a year of taxpayers’ money, stolen by threat of the state, to pay equally large quantities to all their new diverse people. They then use our money to tell us how to think and what to do, how to behave and how to be good modern citizens.

This seems to me a bit peculiar. Because, Netflix charges half that amount. They provide a product which people actually want, and hey presto, people take them up on it. They don’t have newsrooms with 450 people who can just be removed. They are not that inefficient. They don’t worry about what people ought to think; they just show them stuff they want to see. Isn’t that nice: doing what people actually want, given they are paying for it.

Therefore, I beseech thee whoever is in charge now. The most recent cabinet reshuffle has completely passed me by (one of the joys of political retirement). Please, please get rid of the BBC. Just shut it down. None of this making the licence fee optional idea. No, no, no, just do the right thing and go for a nice clean chop. Then the washed-up journalists might have something else to whine about other than how terrible everything in the country is.

Toby Morrison (Ex-President, Ex-Political Officer, Ex-Publications Editor, and Ex-Deputy Returning Officer) is a third year reading Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Magdalen College