DEFUND THE BBC – THE LAST NIGHT OF THE PROMS

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The outgoing Director-General of the Bolshevik Broadcasting Corporation, Tony Hall, recently made a speech to the Edinburgh International Television Conference. The speech was an excellent example of what is wrong with the BBC and why the compulsory licence fee should be abolished.

Tony Hall’s justification of the BBC’s funding was somewhat at odds with reality. He described the BBC as being available: ‘No subscription – free.’ He also boasted that for ‘Every £1 we spend generates £2 for the UK economy.’ The BBC is not free and is funded by a compulsory licence fee for which the ultimate failure to pay is imprisonment. The claim that for ‘every £1 we spend generates £2 for the UK economy’, is nothing more than the multiplier effect. The BBC gets its money, spends it on providers and employee salaries, and the recipients of that expenditure in turn spend the money they receive on goods and services, those recipients in turn…

The licence fee is not the only source of funds, the BBC also gets monies from the taxpayer via the government. Tony Hall explained how the then Tory chancellor, George Osborne, had agreed to pay ‘£86 million per year’ for ‘the biggest expansion of the World Service since the Second World War’. The World Service used to be funded by the foreign office (until 2014), before being transferred across to the BBC. It would seem, despite the policy of austerity following the financial crash of 2008, that policy did not include the BBC.

The BBC is currently trying to wriggle out of allowing free TV licences for the elderly.

Tony Hall said ‘that our responsibility as the UK’s most trusted news provider has never been clearer and more important’ in that the BBC had a ‘duty to help bring the nation together … to help strengthen society and build bridges by making sure all voices and perspectives are heard’. He was dismissive of the ‘forces of disinformation and social media [that] tend to feed on fracture and drive polarisation’. He further said: ‘Impartiality is the keystone of broadcast journalism in this country. So let’s not forget that, in the BBC, the UK has a remarkable asset: the pre-eminent provider to the world of facts you can trust.’ This all presumes that the BBC is impartial – it is not, as, to cite just one example, the fallout of the EU referendum proved. Social media was maligned even though it essentially is ordinary people posting stuff, sharing, and stating opinions.

Tony Hall then meandered his way to his real point, which was that he saw the BBC as being ‘absolutely crucial to any vision of “Global Britain”’. The £86 million of taxpayer’s monies had enabled the BBC to assume a global presence:

‘We now operate in 42 languages. We’ve opened new bureaux with more local journalists on the ground. We’ve got new investigative teams holding power to account around the world.

My goal, when I arrived at the BBC, was to double our global audience to reach 500 million people by 2022 – our centenary year. With two years to go, we are today reaching 468 million people each week… 468 million. We have plans in place to double that ambition – to reach a global audience of 1 billion people by the end of the decade. But it needs extra investment from government and that bid is with them right now.

No one can do more to carry Britain’s voice and values to the world … This could hardly be more important as Britain sets out to forge a new relationship with the world, based on an ambitious vision of “Global Britain”. Success will mean drawing on all our considerable international assets. And that means unleashing the full global potential of the BBC.’

Despite the parlous state of the UK economy, the Covid-19 depression, and that the Tories have quadrupled the national debt in only 10 years, the BBC has visions of extra funding for their global status.

And what values do the BBC espouse? Tony Hall referred to: ‘The killing of George Floyd has left no one in any doubt about the scale and feeling of injustice in our society. And recession may well fan that anger and unfairness still further.’ He also gushed:

‘When I watched David Olusoga’s outstanding programmes on Empire, on Windrush, on being black and British, I thought that these are programmes with deep public service values at their heart. Helping the country, us all, to wrestle with complex issues of identity and history. That’s what we’re all here to do.’

Also:

‘We’ve prioritised £100 million of our commissioning budget for diverse and inclusive programming. And we’ve introduced a new mandatory 20% diverse-talent target in all new network commissions from next April. It means we’re throwing open the doors of the BBC more widely than ever to diverse stories and diverse storytellers. And we’ve already followed it up by doing the same with £12 million of our commissioning budget across Radio and Music.’

Put simply, the BBC’s values are political correctness, especially race war politics.

Tony Hall’s speech coincided with a decision by the BBC to refuse to sing the lyrics to Rule Britannia and Land of Hope and Glory at the Last Night of the Proms. A Finn conductor and a South African singer were in agreement with this policy. Other songs would be sung. Apparently, there were no English conductors or singers available.

The problem with the Proms has been around for decades, as has the BBC’s attempts to water down the patriotism of the Last Night. The Parekh Report (into multiculturalism), published in 2000, stated:

‘“The Rule Britannia mindset, given the full-blown expression at the Last Night of the Proms and until recently at the start of programming each day on BBC Radio 4, is a major part of the problem of Britain. In the same way that it continues to fight the Second World War … Britain seems incapable of shaking off its imperialist identity. The Brits do appear to believe that “Britons never, never, never shall be slaves” … [But] it is impossible to colonise three-fifths of the world … without enslaving oneself. Our problem has been that Britain has never understood itself and has steadfastly refused to see and understand itself through the prism of our experience of it, here and in its coloniser mode.”

From a presentation to the Commission’

‘8.1 “Stories”, writes Ben Okri, “are the secret reservoir of values; change the stories individuals and nations live by and tell themselves and you change the individuals and nations.” He continues: “Nations and peoples are largely the stories they feed themselves. If they tell themselves stories that are lies, they will suffer the future consequences of those lies. If they tell themselves stories that face their own truths, they will free their histories for future flowerings.”’

(Ben Okri is a Nigerian poet and writer.)

The BBC cited the BLM movement as being a part of their decision-making process, as well as the innate hostility to patriotism. The BLM movement are communist revolutionaries.

Wayne Mapp, MP, who for a time was New Zealand’s ‘Political Correctness Eradicator’ with the task of stamping out political correctness from public institutions, made a speech in 2005 in which he explained that it is the capture of public institutions that sets political correctness apart from other ideas and ideologies. Furthermore, the consequence of this capture is that the public institutions cease to represent the interests of the majority and instead ‘become focussed on the cares and concerns of minority sector groups’ (italics my own emphasis): ‘The minority, therefore, has come to dominate the majority, which is an inherent feature of political correctness … the intent is to ensure that minority world views take precedence over the reasonably held views of the majority.’

For Wayne Mapp: ‘Removing the power of the politically correct means removing their institutional and legislative base.’ To that end, the BBC should be defunded. It does not represent the views, or even respect the views, of those who fund it. It is a minority pressure group promoting other politically-correct minority pressure groups.

Tony Hall’s speech betrayed the BBC’s multifaceted political correctness. Their support for BLM is race war politics. Their determination to ethnically cleanse the BBC of English people with quotas is colonisation by and not assimilation of immigrants. The rejection of British culture is a part of the so-called civic nationalist agenda. The BBC has been captured by the politically correct (as per Gramsci’s march through the institutions strategy), and their contempt for ordinary people is an example of producer capture (where organizations no longer serve the consumer but do as they like).

The speech further demonstrated the power of culture, that afflicts organizations too. Changing culture is very difficult, if not impossible. That the BBC is at odds with the public is well known. In Brexit Means Brexit: How the British Ponzi Class Survived the EU Referendum, in assessing the failure of the Brexit vote to bring about change, I wrote:

‘The obsession with quotas remained. In October 2016, ONS figures showed that only 1.1% of the population described themselves as either gay or lesbian, and only 0.6% described themselves as bisexual. The BBC had a target to have 8% of its staff be gay, lesbian or bisexual by 2020. In September 2016, the BBC set a target quota of 15% for non-whites. That the BBC was out of touch was revealed in June 2016, when, just after the referendum vote, a memo leaked that had been written for the BBC by David Cowling, a former special adviser to a Labour cabinet minister in the 1970s and the former head of the BBC’s political research unit. The memo stated:

“It seems to me that the London bubble has to burst if there is to be any prospect of addressing the issues that have brought us to our current situation. There are many millions of people in the UK who do not enthuse about diversity and do not embrace metropolitan values yet do not consider themselves lesser human beings for all that. Until their values and opinions are acknowledged and respected, rather than ignored and despised, our present discord will persist.

Because these discontents run very wide and very deep and the metropolitan political class, confronted by them, seems completely bewildered and at a loss about how to respond (“who are these ghastly people and where do they come from?” doesn’t really hack it).

The 2016 EU referendum has witnessed the cashing in of some very bitter bankable grudges but I believe that, throughout this 2016 campaign, Europe has been the shadow not the substance.”’

I also pointed out:

‘In October 2016, it was revealed that the HMRC was investigating up to 100 BBC presenters over allegations of tax dodging. Twenty-three staff members were believed to have set up elaborate schemes to avoid tax liabilities. The BBC dismissed the matter as historic and an industrywide problem. The lavishness of the BBC was simply breathtaking. George Entwistle resigned as BBC director-general after only 54 days after assuming the post. His payoff totalled £450,000 (double the contractual entitlement), plus his legal costs in negotiating his pay-off, plus £107,000 for appearing as a witness in the Saville abuse inquiry, plus 12 months of medical insurance, plus £6,000 for PR costs. Sharon Baylay, the former director of marketing, ecommunications and audience was made redundant after 17 months; she received almost £400,000 redundancy plus £1,763 for BUPA health cover. Caroline Thomson received a payoff of £680,000 and £14,000 for lawyers when she was made redundant. John Smith, the chief executive of BBC Worldwide, despite being only 55 years old, was awarded a £212,000 pension payment per annum and a £1.6million severance payment. Pat Loughrey, director of nations and regions, received £866,000, including £300,000 in lieu of notice even though he had already worked his notice and had been paid to do so. Roly Keating, director of archive content, got a new job at the British Library before negotiating a payoff of £376,000 from the BBC – which he returned due to the public outcry. Mark Byford got a payoff of £1million when he was made redundant as deputy director-general.

In July 2017, after much opposition, the BBC was forced to disclose the names of all its staff who were paid more than £150,000 per year. Those who were being paid via third-party organizations were not included. The disclosures showed that the BBC’s highest paid employee was Chris Evans, who got £2.25million. Gary Linekar got £1.8million. Even some fairly unknown and low-ranking presenters were getting more than £150,000. There was some friction between female and male presenters on the same show where the female presenter was being paid less. Women were deemed to be underrepresented, and the BBC was therefore accused of sexism.

Also on the BBC “rich list” were more than 100 managers, including those with non-jobs such as analytics architect; identity architect; service architect; integration lead; technical project manager; head of strategic change, world service; chief architect; director audiences; head of network supply; and director future commissioning. The BBC director-general, Tony Hall, was paid £450,000 per year, and the head of BBC Worldwide, Tim Davies, was paid £682,000 per year. It further emerged that many of the BBC’s biggest stars were still using personal service companies to avoid income tax despite previously saying that they would phase out the practice.’

Regarding the Last Night of the Proms, I wrote:

‘There was a determined attempt to demonize Brexit supporters as hateful or racist and to prevent them from celebrating the referendum victory or having freedom of speech. In September 2016, writing in The Guardian, Sir Nicholas Kenyon, a former director of BBC Proms and a Remain campaigner, argued:

“As the annual ritual of the Last Night of the Proms approaches in the year of the Brexit referendum, there may be a sense of foreboding that this most British of occasions might be hijacked to celebrate the triumph of Little England, to reinforce the message of a land of hope and glory in which Britons never shall be slaves – to the EU or anyone else. How wrong that would be.”’

The culture of entitlement has remained undisturbed. The warning from David Cowling made no impact whatsoever. The BBC is run and controlled by a bunch of greedy, tax-dodging fat cats, and snobs, who they are not the sort of people to allow those they regard as a bunch of Brexit-voting, flag-waving plebs to stand in the way of their globalist dreams. For them, especially in the BLM era, it is intolerable that one night a year some people come together to enjoy themselves in a celebration of Britain’s musical heritage – including patriotic songs – while wearing top hats, Union Jack waistcoats, fun costumes, and waving flags and balloons, blowing horns and letting off fireworks, and singing merrily along.

The culture of the BBC remains political correctness and it should be defunded.

We want OUR Last Night of the Proms back, with Land of Hope and Glory and Rule Britannia (including, PLEASE NOTE, an encore for each).

Whatever problems might be posed by Covid-19, there is nothing to stop a previous year’s proms being shown in full or in part.