The ThunderDragon

Brown is increasingly becoming a complete irrelevance. He has been mocked by an amusement park and a university careers service. A

nd now the BBC is even allowing Bruce Forsyth to openly take the piss out of him on Strictly Come Dancing, as he did on yesterday’s opening night - right at the start as well!

Click here to watch the programme [2m 40s in].

Don’t worry, I’m not back yet. However, with the opening ceremony today, I think it’s appropriate to cross-post one of my own blog entries from before I left the land of the internet.

So today, we’ve all seen Boris collecting the flag and the end of the 29th Summer Olympiad. There’s big a huge party on the Mall, and all thoughts have been turning towards the London Games in 4 years time. But not mine. Not yet at any rate.

Since I first saw the Summer Paralympic Games at Atlanta in 1996, I’ve always preferred them to Olympics ‘proper’. Olympic athletes are obviously proud of their achievements - and winning an Olympic gold is something all will be proud of. Even the tennis players.

But, for a paralympian, finishing the race is a tremendous achievement for most. It’s emotive stuff, often tear jerking, and the skill of the athletes is magnified.

I really do enjoy it - which 4 years ago was to the chagrin of my then housemates, watching the Wheelchair Basketball bronze-medal playoff live at 8am one morning and waking the house up with my cheering.

We also do brilliantly well at the games as Team GB. Fourth it Atlanta (39 Golds, 122 medals) before jumping to 2nd in 2000 behind only Australia (41 Golds, 131 medals). In Athens, the Chinese investment in sport started to show its prowess, as they headed the medal table with 63 Golds - Team GB again in second with 35 golds. A similar performance should be achievable in a few weeks time.

Such success is perhaps not surprising. Whilst it was the Greek that created the modern olympics, it was the British that created the modern paralympics- in 1948 at Stoke Mandeville hospital. They joined with the Olympics, sharing venues a few weeks after the Oympics, in 1988. Since then, some British paralympians have become household names - notably Ade Adeptain (Wheelchair baskterball) and of course Dame Tanni Grey-Thompson (wheelchair athletics).

The BBC will be providing even more extensive coverage than previously, so we can follow the games fully. I’ll be watching.

~Asp

I hold no real grudges against the BBC. Unlike many right-wingers, I don’t see the BBC as soe sort of evil monolith dedicated to pushing Leftie solutions and spreading social liberalism. I see it as an organisation which does its best to maintain political impartiality - even if it can fail more often than we would like. But rarely is this intentional, and not always to the detriment of the right.

When it comes to the licence fee, I am both for and against it. I can see arguments for both sides - especially as I like not being interrupted by adverts all the bloody time. For example, Doctor Who with adverts would just destroy the programme. However, I don’t like the fact that if I own a TV I have to pay for a TV licence, whether or not I make any use of the BBC’s services.

What does annoy me is when BBC directors are getting more than a £100,000 pay rise. For what, exactly? I haven’t seen an exceptionally high standard of programmes be screened. Unlike other broadcasters - and companies in general - there is no profit or loss figures for the BBC. They don’t make or lose money - they just spend it. And we always have to pick up the tab.

I object to the pay of BBC executive directors to be “benchmarked” against private companies - whatever relation they hold to what other broadcasters pay. Because this is my money that they are getting - and my entire pay is substantially less than £100,000 per year in itself, let alone any pay rise. Especially when Darling is calling for us to be “restrained” in our pay demands.

The problem for the BBC is that they no real empirical way to evaluate themselves. They have no profit and loss margin. They have nothing except for the viewing figures, which are imprecise and can be fooled by a few popular programmes.

When you work for a tax-payer funded service such as the BBC, you can’t expect salaries as large as elsewhere. Teachers, policemen, nurses, firefighters, doctors, and other key staff accept this. So must TV executives.

… according to the BBC anyway.

After getting home from my camp this weekend and having missed Doctor Who on Saturday night, I went to download it on BBC iPlayer… only to get the message below.

Is Watford no longer part of the UK? Have I missed something that happened over the last couple of days? Or are the BBC just being thick?

Click to enlarge

UPDATE: BBC iPlayer has now decided that I am in the UK after all - but that it’s servers are busy. Which doesn’t really help me much in my desire to download and watch the programme! It does appear to just be crap now, since it obviously doesn’t have the capacity to cope with the demand.

Click to enlarge

It seems that the iPlayer has pissed of internet providers:

Erm, why should the BBC contribute towards updating an ISPs infrastructure? We pay the BBC tax every year anyway, and we pay for broadband internet as we use it. If you need to upgrade your network in order to supply the services that your customers expect, then I think you should just do it - and pass the cost on to your customers. That’s kinda what the market is all about, paying for the service you want and need.

People - such as myself - want to download TV shows using iPlayer so as to watch them when we choose to, rather than only being able to when they are being broadcast, and will paywhat we need to do so.The BBC - like every other website - are just providing a service which people want. The ISPs just have to keep up with the demands of their customers. Or go out of business.

If keeping their customers means upgrading their network capabilities - which it does - then they’d better get on with doing it! And stop bitching about it.

The BBC bleeped the word “faggot” in the Christmas song Fairytale of New York because they feared that it might offend some gay viewers. The offending passage goes:

This obviously and deservedly produced a hell of a lot of criticism from listeners and DJs alike, and the BBC has since backtracked from their absurd position. It’s hardly as if the word “faggot” was used as an attack on gay people in this context, or as if the BBC has not played some far more offensive lyrics masquerading as “music”.

The BBC have at least reversed this decision. But it is far more worrying to me that it could even be considered offensive, and thus worthy of being bleeped out. Political correctness gone stark raving bonkers!

It does fill me with some sense of hope for the future of society, however, quite how roundly they have been criticised for doing it. Long may this attack of common sense continue.