More trouble at the Beeb this week

They have hit (their own) headlines, yet again after deciding not to broadcast an appeal to raise money for those affected by the Gaza conflict due to fears it may infringe on one of their founding principles of “impartiality”. Obviously there is always going to be impartiality in news broadcasts anyway purely because of the basis on which news stories are selected and which are not – for example, while we were being informed of the Darfur crisis, ongoing instability in, say, Columbia is being ignored.

This is the second time in three months that the BBC, the medium through which we, the public, are supposed to be informed of the news has, arrogantly, decided that the goings on within it’s own organisation are more important than actual news; whether it’s ongoing wars, murders, election campaigns etc. So we had the bizarre (to me, anyway) situation over the weekend where the top story on the BBC was them trying to justify their reasons for not showing an appeal and putting the reason for the appeal i.e. Gaza crisis, to second billing.

I understand that because the BBC is publically funded and so should be answerable to the licence payers but not at the expense of other “more newsworthy” stories.

If angering the licence fee payers is set to become a regular thing for 2009, may I suggest a weekly Points of View style show? Instead of it being hosted by a jovial Terry Wogan with people ringing in complaining about how crap My Family is, we could have hard-hitting, serious journalist Jeremy Paxman grilling other media types over their shoddy decisions and dodgy judgments…and then perhaps a viewers’ phone in vote on whether they should be fired or not. Wouldn’t work would it?

Why I love the people in my town…

Every week the free local paper, The Citizen (or the Shitizen as it is affectionately known in our house, mainly by me) is delivered. For many residents in the area I am sure this complimentary source of local news and information simply winds up unread and used for their pets’ bedding but I almost look forward to it because there are always some gems waiting there for the avid reader to spot. All of which give an insight into the lovely, kind hearted, if sometimes slightly dim people of the local area.

This week’s front page headline is the simple and fitting “Brassed Off” which is accompanied by a photo of a glum looking woman who was conned into spending her Christmas shopping money on £150 gold jewellery by a “poor family” only to find out the next day it was worthless brass.

Reading the letters page always brings great joy. Often it is the same people writing in week after week- a school teacher noticed this phenomenon back in 2000, when I overheard her mention to a colleague that her neighbour was constantly writing letters to the newspaper and yet did not have enough time to clean his house that apparently “stank of cat piss”.

Amongst the letters complaining about the litter in the city, the fact a recent government report spelt the town’s name wrong or the proposed by-pass, there are always bound to be a few from the local councillors making petty little digs at or even down right bitching about one another.

The most recent controversial topic of debate to appear on the letters page concerned the weight of local women, asking the not so tactful question of “is it just me or are all women getting fatter?” The best thing is the following week a woman wrote in and rather than being angry at the chauvinistic, stirring letter happily agreed.

 

This week one of the letters was praising and defending the local youth. A resident wrote in specifically to comment on all the helpful young men she had encountered on a shopping trip to Lancaster, despite it seems, causing her more hassle in the long run. Firstly, she described an earnest store worker and customer trying to help her locate a bolt for her bathroom door, which unfortunately the store did not have…

 
“I then went to the library to use the photo-copy machine and a boy aged about 10 or 11 came over and said that he could do it for me. That went wrong and he apologised but another young man, aged about 18 did it for me.”

As long as there are people happy to waste their time by writing letters, I’m more than happy to waste my time reading them. 

The classified section is also full of its own entertaining delights; every week there is some numpty who has paid more in advertising costs than the value of whatever they’re selling. The one that sticks out in my mind is a “pair of size 16 khaki shorts, 50p ono” with a mobile number.

 

The following is a link to more local paper antics 

http://www.voteforjuanzo.blogspot.com/