Tim Worstall

Phillip Hensher

Well, quite:

Personally, I don’t care whether "comedians" or "presenters" make
insulting comments about gay people or anything else. After all, the
talent of such people as Patrick Kielty, Chris Moyles or Jimmy Carr is
practically zero, so they might as well find material where they can. I
would much rather they did it while being paid by someone other than
me, however. It is a disgrace that a public corporation such as the
BBC, or a publicly owned company such as Channel 4 – which is supposed
to "appeal to the tastes and interests of a culturally diverse society"
– should broadcast such hateful material, and, in response to
objections, provide contradictory excuses.

Others make similar complaints on other matters: both stations near insane antipathy to markets for example. A very good argument for flogging both of them off, don’t you think, so that we are no longer paying for them without the choice of not doing so?

In

12 responses

  1. JonnyB Avatar
    JonnyB

    Hmmmmm. I’m not a great fan of Jimmy Carr, can’t stand Chris Moyles and Patrick Kielty should stick to what he does best – ie not presenting rubbish shows.
    But to say they have a talent of ‘practically zero’ is such a lazy, lazy, lazy piece of writing. He means that he doesn’t like them either.

    Reply
  2. James Avatar
    James

    Channel 4 is publicly owned but doesn’t receive any public funding as far as I’m aware so we aren’t being forced to pay for anything on there.

    Reply
  3. AntiCitizenOne Avatar
    AntiCitizenOne

    Channel 4 gets its Airwaves frequencies for at no cost. This is effectively a subsidy.

    Reply
  4. F0ul Avatar
    F0ul

    So what is wrong with a bit of laddish humour? What you see on TV is only the tip of the iceberg compared to real life conversations!
    Roll on the end of prudish newspaper commentators who think its ok to the mouth piece of the totalitarian PC movement – but can’t take being an observer in a bit of tv banter!

    Reply
  5. zorro Avatar
    zorro

    Jesus Christ on a bike. So Top Gear can’t call a car gay any more? What if it is a gay car like a pink Nissan Micra CC ??
    I don’t have a problem with gay people, I have a problem with political correctness.
    Surely even gay people would accept some cars are gay? Purple Escort cabriolet anyone? Volkswagen scirocco?
    How is the BBC supposed to appeal to /everybody/ without offending /anyone/? Think about it, not going to be very interesting TV is it?
    Fuck.
    Funding the BBC is a whole different argument I’m afraid. Were it to still be independent of government I would be more than happy to continue to pay the license fee, but since it was castrated by Hutton they are about as much use as Murdoch’s version…

    Reply
  6. dsquared Avatar
    dsquared

    [both stations near insane antipathy to markets for example]
    Tim, shouldn’t all these posts be footnoted that you don’t actually watch these channels and are relying on secondary sources here? At the very least, a statement like this ought to be backed up with some sort of specifics. Have you ever seen “Dragons’ Den”, for example?

    Reply
  7. dearieme Avatar
    dearieme

    Come off it, D^2. He’s referring to the relentless anti-market bias in News and Current Affairs, as you well know. Even on the rare occasion that one of their biases happens to match some opinion of mine, I still squirm at their impropriety.

    Reply
  8. Pete Avatar
    Pete

    The columnist doesn’t want his licence fee spent on this type of programming. Tough. He misunderstands the BBC. It takes our cash and decides what we want, whether we like it or not.

    Reply
  9. BurntMaze Avatar
    BurntMaze

    I agree completely that these two organisations are at sea but I worry about the impact of dissolving these publically funded broadcasters on the ‘tougher than most’ programmes such as Newsnight, Question Time and the like – NB: Channel4 can sink for all I care.
    Surely if we go all the way to privately owned broadcasters there is the worry that the quality of visual political punditary will fall?
    I realise that the viewing figures for both of the above (NN & QT) are far from high and that the licence fee is basically paid by all for an element of the middle classes but don’t we need benchmarks capable of inspiring similar programmes?
    Love your blog by the way.

    Reply
  10. dsquared Avatar
    dsquared

    [He’s referring to the relentless anti-market bias in News and Current Affairs, as you well know.]
    Would anyone care to provide specific examples of this bias (please note that we are looking for “relentless” and “insane” views here, rather than the normal social-democratic consensus which is slap bang in the mainstream of British politics).
    Tim adds: Well, as you know, I regard the social democratic consensus as both relentless and insane. And thus it is proven!

    Reply
  11. dsquared Avatar
    dsquared

    it is indeed proven that you are a weirdo by any reasonable standard, but I confess I fail to see why this would be a good reason to abolish the BBC. It’s not as if you personally either pay for it or watch it, do you? And you whinge just as much about the Guardian, which is 100% free online, so it’s not like we’d get even that small social benefit.

    Reply
  12. StuartA Avatar
    StuartA

    Another magnificently bungled intervention.
    You wish for the day when “we” don’t have to pay for the BBC, forgetting that you don’t. Simultaneously you manage to upset your saloon bar political-correctness-gone-mad fans by forgetting that they rather enjoy demeaning gay people.
    Good work.

    Reply

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