BBC's Tim Davie claims most households happy at being forced to pay the license fee

[Retro]

Tim Davie, BBC Director General, said:

most households are pretty happy paying a licence being a forced payment. It’s amazing what we’re pulling off."

Awww, doesn't that warm the cockles of your heart, bless?

Such effing arrogance from someone who's just received a 16.6% pay rise from £450,000 to £525,000 per year while the corporation is looking to save a billion pounds with cuts, especially job cuts.

No, I resent being forced paying that license fee and so does most of the country, yet this dipshit pretends that this isn't the case. The irony is that I'd be happy to subscribe to the BBC if it was optional as I watch quite a lot of its programs and I like the lack of ads, especially during a program.

Outrage, here:

‘Truly amazing what we’re pulling off’ in forcing people to pay BBC licence fee, says Tim Davie

The director-general of the BBC has said it is “truly amazing” that the broadcaster is “pulling off” forcing households to pay the licence fee.

uk.news.yahoo.com

 

[Arantor]

I think the reality is somewhere in the middle; the people who actively consume BBC content, on the whole, don't seem to mind paying for it because they understand the TV licence funds the BBC. And those who don't watch BBC content don't want to have to pay at all - understandably.

I think cases like his where there is a huge payrise are definite reasons to take umbridge with the situation - but honestly I have more reservations about how the BBC's famous historical impartiality has been utterly abused by the government where they're just not able to call the govt out on their various failings.

The problem with switching it over to a fully voluntary model is that their funding would seriously drop overnight and they'd have to make worse cuts. The BBC has had the same stripped-to-the-bone as everything else nationalised.

 

[Retro]

Yeah, the impartiality issue is more important I guess, but the funding model shouldn't be ignored, either. Agreed that removing it overnight will lead to serious consequences for the BBC, so a phased rollout would be best. Perhaps a yearly reduction going to zero after 5 years, something like that, with the BBC being allowed to use ads and other ways of making money that they don't have now. I don't claim to have the definitive plan here though, just a suggestion as a starting point.

Going back to impartiality, they don't seem that bad in my opinion and no organisation is immune from bias. It seems to be more in what they don't say sometimes, including articles that don't appear rather than spreading propaganda. They're certainly much more outspoken about the damage of brexit nowadays, which is going in the right direction.

Nerdy things that bug me are the way they consistently don't capitalise properly, such as acronyms like NATO being written as Nato, NASA / Nasa etc. Seems to be a style policy, as it never changes. Other than this, the articles are otherwise usually pretty well written for spelling and grammar.

 

[Arantor]

The funding model is why they're no longer impartial, though.

they don't seem that bad in my opinion

Watch BBC Question Time and tell me they're impartial, with a straight face. In particular, how often non Tory voters are hushed/silenced, how often Brexit studiously and carefully avoided as a cause of anything, and how often Labour are blamed for things that happened in the last 10 years.

they consistently don't capitalise properly, such as acronyms like NATO being written as Nato, NASA / Nasa etc

You mean they correctly differentiate between initialisms and acronyms - it's frequently in older British institutions' style guides to treat anything that is an actual acronym as if it were a proper noun (or, non-proper noun in the case of, say, laser)

Perhaps we need to talk about LASERs more often, as well as RaDAR or LiDAR, or perhaps you're a diver with SCUBA gear. I'd probaby even take RAM and ROM at this point...

 

[Retro]

I haven't seen QT since 2019 after Johnson won that GE, so can't say how it is nowadays. It was somewhat pro brexit biased at the time though and that was annoying. That still doesn't negate the point I've made though as I'm talking about an overall impression, especially from reading their news website everyday.

The funding model hasn't changed (yet) so why has it made them no longer impartial? Surely, it would have always been that way?

You mean they correctly differentiate between initialisms and acronyms

Um, no, I meant what I said.

And yeah, there's an inconsistency with this. I remember seeing it written as LASER in science articles years ago, but now everyone just writes laser, including me. However, capitalising certain acronyms like Nasa like I've described just looks plain stupid. Nvidia and Amd are others where it just doesn't look right.

And as usual in the English language, there's some ambiguity. In the article below, check out the section entitled "Comparing a few examples of each type" to see some examples of this.

Acronym - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Arantor]

Surely, it would have always been that way?

No. When politics was still mostly run by people with honour, the BBC was able to be more impartial. Now they've been actively leaned on by the Tories to be complicit - with the threat of no funding dangling over their heads - they can't be impartial.

Nvidia and Amd are others where it just doesn't look right.

nVidia is complicated because it's not cleanly pronouncible without emphasising the V. As for AMD, I don't pronounce it as Am-duh to make it a word; it's firmly an initialism in the same way we have IBM not Ib-um or NTSC not nut-sc'h.

 

[Retro]

No. When politics was still mostly run by people with honour, the BBC was able to be more impartial. Now they've been actively leaned on by the Tories to be complicit - with the threat of no funding dangling over their heads - they can't be impartial.

Yeah, could be right. Now I think about it, didn't the tories plant one of their stooges at the top of the organisation? That whiffs of corruption, doesn't it?

nVidia is complicated because it's not cleanly pronouncible without emphasising the V. As for AMD, I don't pronounce it as Am-duh to make it a word; it's firmly an initialism in the same way we have IBM not Ib-um or NTSC not nut-sc'h.

If you go on the NVIDIA website, they write it in all caps as I've done, so that's how I write it. Look at copyright messages, About pages, Ts&Cs etc. I think they used to write it nVidia a long time ago though, which I think is cooler.

Yeah, AMD can only be pronounced A-M-D, initialism style. You could try pronouncing it "amd", like "and" and see how silly you feel doing it.

Did you know that Gigabyte actually write their name as GIGABYTE on their website? Yeah, pretentious gits trying to get noticed, so I just write it sensibly as Gigabyte.