The Official Nonsense Thread

[Caspin]

Personally I've never minded paying the TV licence. Compared to some of the drivel put out on the commercial TV channels, the BBC does a reasonable job of producing programmes and providing news coverage etc, all with no irritating adverts. Or at least that's been my view in the past. My relationship with the BBC has changed a little over the last few years, as the quality of the reporting has dipped (or I've just paid more attention, possibly). It's a widespread problem - the "news" is a jumble of celebrity-spotting and hysterical reporting. It's too frequently formed from opinions rather than facts and can be infuriatingly inaccurate/biased/incomplete. BBC Radio 4 is particularly irritating to listen to if you are a scientist. I've submitted a variety of complaints to the BBC in the last few years and the responses have made my blood boil. I foolishly expected better but have had to lower those expectations. It's probably still a hell of a lot better than some of the alternatives though.

I was once trapped in a hotel abroad, attending a conference, and the only news channels in English were US channels (did I tell you this already? - you must shush me if I start repeating myself!). I spent nearly an hour watching some US news channel and apart from briefly reading out a few random headlines, most of it appeared to be some shrieking harpy with massive 1980s-style hair having an argument with some hapless guy they'd brought on to be interviewed about some political matter (if I'm vague on the topic it's because I never did actually grasp the purpose of the interview), followed by almost half an hour of coverage of a visit to a factory that makes jellybeans. The rest was adverts. By the end of that I felt like my brain had turned into soup. So, no offence intended to any other nation whatsoever, but despite its many serious flaws, the BBC does tend to provide something slightly more bearable and I'm willing to pay for that.

Also I really like documentaries, so BBC4 is something I would not really like to do without.

Apparently the recent budget removed funding for BBC Alba and any other Gaelic programming, to show all nations of the UK that the government really does love them all equally as long as they are England. As does this computer, as it keeps correcting to "garlic"!

In other news, I see that Black Friday here is being declared a flop as nobody bothered to go shopping. Hahaha! I can't really imagine physically going shopping on BF and most people just shop online now anyway, don't they? So this is maybe not surprising. Hopefully it means that the number of punch-ups over a discounted telly were greatly reduced from previous years. I'm really glad I hate shopping. Saves me a lot of trouble.

In other news my voice really is lost and I have not been able to do more than whisper for over 24 hours. But I don't think many people have actually noticed.