BBC Bias Over Roads

From the BBC:-

Two short lengths of road are about to open at a combined cost of £1bn. They represent a last hurrah for expensive road projects in an era of cost-cutting.

At a time of austerity, the idea of spending more than half a billion pounds on a five-mile stretch of road might seem strange to some. But the M74 extension is about to open in Glasgow at a cost of £657m, which works out at £131m per mile or £75,000 a yard (£80,000 a metre).

Go on, try and find an article anywhere on the BBC where a writer talks about the idea of spending billions on HS2 as "strange".

The most expensive road per mile is the Limehouse Link. The 1.1 mile (1.8 km) tunnel in London's Docklands opened in 1993 at a cost £293m. Adjusted for one measure of inflation that would be £445m or £230,000 per yard (£250,000 per metre). It was designed and built in seven years and at the time was the second biggest engineering project in Europe after the Channel Tunnel.
"It was almost insane," says Sir Peter Hall, Bartlett professor of planning at University College London. "But Margaret Thatcher would stop at nothing to get the Isle of Dogs developed." The price tag can be explained by the fact it had to avoid other tunnels and a river basin and incorporate a junction within the tunnel.

Ah yes, the left's favourite old witch. You can use words like "insane" around Thatcher. Of course, the Jubilee Line extension had to do similar things and cost 10 times more, but no-one's calling Blair that.

The advent of the road protest movement - personified by Swampy at the Newbury bypass protests of the 1990s - showed that attitudes had changed. Governments saw roads as potentially controversial and took seriously the arguments against.

Sadly, because they believed that somehow, a few NIMBYs and swampies actually represented the people. I remember what it was like going from Oxford to Portsmouth pre-Newbury bypass, and the word "insanity" summed up what you had. About 60 miles of dual-carriageway on the major link between the midlands and the south, with a bottleneck of about 2 miles in the middle.

People still like roads. The numbers spell this out.

Nowadays the motorway is more likely to be associated with long tailbacks than speed, as summed up by Chris Rea's song about the M25: "This ain't no upwardly mobile freeway, oh no, this is the road to Hell."

More leftist anti-road propaganda. The fact is that while the M25 ain't perfect, I've actually tried the alternatives like the North Circular (for a laugh) and, I would never go back on it.

This sounds like a stitch-up

If so, come and join me on The Street That Cut Everything – that’s the title of a programme to be shown on BBC1 next week. The street in question is in Preston, but it could be pretty much any street in any town or city except for one thing. The residents of this street agreed to take part in a unique experiment. They agreed to live without all the services their council tax pays for – all, that is, except for schools for their children and the emergency services – and to let the BBC film how they got along or, more often, how they did not.
..
The residents weren’t paid for taking part, but they were given back their council tax money for those six weeks to spend – not on themselves but on the needs of their community.

And what about the rest of it? If you live in Preston, 60% of income comes from central government. Then there's things like parking charges that make quite a few millions.


It's not really surprising that people couldn't do as well as the council, if they're not getting as much money, is it?

Reeking of Bias

BBC unions last night declared war on the Conservatives with an extraordinary threat to black out coverage of David Cameron’s keynote speech to the Tory party conference.

That demolishes Mark Thompson's statement that the BBC was once left-wing, but isn't any longer.

The effect of party conferences is that coverage raises the polling for the party being covered, at least temporarily. Not showing the Conservative conference (or scaling it down), would be a boost for the other parties.

Regardless of whether this goes ahead, the government should now get onto replacing the licence fee with a subscription.

Mark Thompson in a Muddle

Via the BBC:

Mr Thompson responded to these criticisms, saying Sky was on its way to becoming "the most dominant force in broadcast media in this country".

He suggested that the broadcaster was not doing enough to produce its own original content.

"It's time that Sky pulled its weight... its investment in original British content is just not enough," he told an audience at the Edinburgh International Television Festival.

So, it's becoming the most dominant force in broadcast media without producing enough original content, yet Mark Thompson thinks it should produce more. Nope. Doesn't add up, and as Sky's a private business, I don't see it's anything of Thompson's concern.

Typical BBC

Today's headline on the BBC Website:-

Witnesses cast doubt on Israel's convoy raid account

What witnesses might those be?

Eyewitness accounts from ships raided by Israeli commandos have cast doubt on Israel's version of events that led to the deaths of at least 10 people.

German pro-Palestinian activist Norman Paech said he had only seen wooden sticks being brandished as troops abseiled on to the deck of the ship.

I see. So, not so much "witness" as "participant".

Complaint will be in the post...

The BBC Compares Private and Public Sector

From the BBC


It's all about money or shorter hours - isn't it? There are many assumptions made about why people work in the public or private sector, but what's the reality when two workers compare their jobs?

Interestingly, it's in the field of software development which I happen to work in.

Now, the job and the experience are comparable, so we're looking at a level playing field.

Core Hours: Public 36 Hours. Private 35 Hours.

First up, this is bullshit. I've worked in a lot of companies and I know what their staff work, and 35 hours/week is rare. It's generally 37 or maybe 39 hours.

Salary: Public £30-35K. Private £35K+Overtime
As one of them works in London, does this include London weighting?

Holiday days look about right.

Overtime: Public unofficial and unpaid. Private on-call rota + call-in time.
I did some work in the public sector, and whilst it might be "unofficial and unpaid", I didn't see much evidence that people had to do much beyond their core hours. A few hours a month is "normal" to most staff.

Pensions: Public no final salary but 19.5% of salary from employer. Private final salary with employer paying in double.
Final pension salaries are very rare in the private sector, especially for people who've joined a company in the past 5 years. And most employers don't pay in double the pension on top. And if the private sector pension gets overfunded, the employers will quit paying in (unlike the public sector).

Annual Bonus: Private - up to 6%. Public - 0.
Yes, and 4% of that has to be earnt. Which means going above average. 2% is based on company performance which is out of your hands. And lots of companies right now are paying out nothing.

Staff Benefits: Private - money saving discounts at certain retailers. Public - none.
Yeah, big deal.

On top of all of this, it's also worth noting that the private sector is generally less generous than the public sector with redundancy payouts.

You'll also get away with a lot more sick days.

But the biggest single thing is the difference in work ethic between public sector and the private sector IT departments. I know a lot of independent software developers, and the one expression that I have used by people use when referring to the public sector is "holiday camp", and this reflects my own experience in a brief period. In the department I worked, I could have run the department on about 2/3rds of the staff that they had.

Now, the thing is that there used to be a trade-off. Easier work, job security, more holiday, more pensions. But in exchange you got quite a lot less salary. New Labour have tipped this far too far and now, this is crippling the private sector which can't compete for staff.

What's unfortunate about this BBC piece is that it doesn't reflect reality and is actually showing the public sector as not much better off than the private sector (which just isn't the case at the moment).

Torchwood: Children of Earth

I've watched a bit of Torchwood before and while it's not bad entertainment and a bit hokey, never taken it seriously.

So, series 3, Children of Earth was something of a revelation. It's rare for TV (and especially the BBC) to use science fiction to reflect society, to ask difficult moral questions. But Torchwood: Children of Earth did this rather spectacularly. It also did sci-fi without resorting to huge levels of special effects, but instead by making a compelling drama, by learning from what people like Hitchcock knew: sometimes, it's about what you don't show that scares more than what you do.

To be honest, it's about the most shocking, serious drama that I can remember the BBC doing for a very long time. You've got to go back to something like Edge of Darkness to find something close to it. Seriously... it's Monty Python good, Fawlty Towers good. You just don't get TV this good and this mature in the UK very often.

Question Time:-

Good:-

David Dimbleby is to miss Question Time for the first time tonight - after being knocked out by a bullock.

I don't wish ill on Mr Dimbleby, but I won't miss him on QT

Bad:-

John Humphrys, the veteran presenter of the Today programme, will deputise for Dimbleby on tonight’s episode of the political panel show

Fucksocks.

Not Much Left at the BBC

I have a list of Things I Like At The BBC:-

- Top Gear
- QI
- Eggheads
- Terry Wogan

Now my license fee is even poorer value than it was.

Incidentally, I met Wogan once at a book signing for a friend. The guy was a real gent who really seemed to understand that his fans were the people who put him there.

The Rest of Us Spend Our Own Money

BBC Spends £11,000 on Leaving Party for Jenny Abramsky

The BBC spent more than £11,000 of licence payers' money on a leaving party for executive Dame Jenny Abramsky, it was revealed today.

After 39 years of service, the former director of Audio & Music was thrown a lavish do at BBC Radio Theatre in Broadcasting House.

The extravagant celebration included a food and drinks bill of £8,130, £575 on invitations and £1,320 on event management, according to figures quoted in the Daily Telegraph.

So, an £11K party for 540 guests for someone who's leaving?

In the big long list of "things you're doing wrong", one of the first is doing anything for people who are leaving. You don't have to stop them leaving (obviously) or motivate them in any way.

OK, I'm not against a send-off, but the fanciest one I ever went to was for a head of IT at a large company. His send off was in the big conference room, and the catering staff put out glasses of champagne and orange juice and some crisps and nibbles. It certainly wouldn't have cost £20 each to put that on. The "event management" would have involved his PA sending out an email to everyone.

'After such a long period of distinguished service many people wanted to show their respect and appreciation for Jenny's outstanding contribution to the organisation and this was reflected in a guest list of 540 who were invited to the event.'

If you want to show your respect and admiration, do it with your own goddamned money, not mine.

The BBC License Fee

Via the Daily Hate:-

But increasing numbers are switching to computers and other devices to watch shows via websites such as BBC iPlayer – for which they do not need a licence.

This has sparked fears that fewer and fewer will actually bother to pay the £142.50 charge. Now the BBC’s most senior executive has admitted that ‘you might define the licence fee in a different way’.

Simple answer to that: Make iPlayer subscription-based. Sign up, put in your credit card details and you get an account you can use.