The Sprout

Politics & Media: 6Music, UKIP & 'Yoof'

Postiwyd gan hollymorris o Caerdydd - Cyhoeddwyd ar 29/07/2010 am 11:10
1 sylwadau » - Tagiwyd fel Diwylliant, Cerddoriaeth, Pobl

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Yn Gymraeg

Looking back on two major breaking stories that hit BBC News which caught my attention, and much of the public's...

1. The General Election. Betrayed by the Liberal Democrats, which experienced an extraordinary growth in support from the younger generation, I turned back to Labour. But unfortunately we've ended up with shiny-faced Eton boyo backed by traitor Cleggy. Yes yes, we're all entitled to our own opinions. Bring on the cuts.

2. The BBC's foolish decision to try and close their unique station 6Music. As a music obsessive, I spent months campaigning and hyperventilating over it. Thankfully, it's been saved now- we can all breathe once more. Probably a publicity stunt, but nonetheless it worked; the station's listenership soared.

In a stormy conglomeration of my outrage over the BBC's spreading itself too thinly and the appalling state of today's Government and politics as a whole, I emailed the political parties that had stood in my area about my concern over the 6Music situation.

Here is UKIP's derogatory response.

Dear Ms Morris

Thank you for your email. UKIP is receiving many thousands of questionnaires on various topics (from protection of our precious woodland, to the hunting debate, to tackling global poverty).

I'm sorry but we simply don't have time to forward each of these on to the 500+ UKIP candidates. We're a small party that relies on donations from members and well-wishers, and are not backed by big business or, indeed, the TUC. I am afraid that we are therefore unable to respond to your query in great detail. This does not imply either support or opposition to the particular matter you have raised. If you visit www.ukip.org and click on 'policies' you will hopefully gain an insight into the general direction of UKIP's approach.

UKIP is a great fan of the BBC and recognises the huge contribution it has made to British cultural life over the decades. We also support a publicly funded licence fee. (If you've ever watched American TV you'll know what we mean). Nevertheless the Corporation has certainly allowed itself to dumb-down during the last few years, and seems to have completely surrendered to the liberal-left agenda.

One example is "Global Warming" which the BBC completely embraced, ignoring the fact that thousands of reputable scientists had grave doubts about the "science" behind it, doubts that have now burst to the surface. Another example is the BBC's insistence on quoting distances in metric when the British equivalent is 'miles'. For example, BBC journalist John Simpson, during the first Iraq War, doing a piece to camera: "The Iraqi positions are five kilometres down the valley." Suddenly there was a loud 'whooshing' noise and the air was thick with dust, stones and falling rocks. Off camera we heard Simpson say: "BLOODY HELL, that was 20 feet away!"

We might also add that when the BBC stops advertising its vacancies in leftie newspapers like The Guardian, critics might be more convinced of its neutrality.

If a miracle happened and the BBC ever returned to the Reithian doctrine of "Inform, Explain, Entertain", I suspect that it might be astounded at the positive response from the public.

On the issue of Music-6 etc... UKIP would have no objection to the Corporation shedding some of its services (frankly we think it already tries to do far, far too much) and would applaud a policy of fewer channels but of greater quality. UKIP cannot comment on which particular services should be axed. That is an operational decision for those running the BBC. We would just hope that in future the Corporation pays greater attention to 'middle-England' which actually pays the bills, and less attention pandering to 'Yoof', most of whom watch SKY anyway.

I could elaborate further but hopefully you have by now received the picture. Thank you for contacting us.

David Challice

Head Office

UK Independence Party

This is what I replied with...

Dear UKIP,

Not only have I found this email slightly insulting, I was disappointed with UKIP’s lack of participation in the matter of the BBC cuts. However I accept that this is excusable due to a lack of larger backing e.g. candidates, TUC, businesses.

But speaking from the direct point of view of the British ‘Yoof’ you speak of, the BBC has suggested that ‘we’ turn to Channel 4 (or as you suggest, SKY, which by-the-by I’m not sure I’ve ever watched) for our ‘field of entertainment’. Exactly how is this efficient or businesslike, particularly of the government and the pressure it’s put onto this publicly financed corporation? Has the BBC just given up after spreading itself too thinly? Not only that, but they’ve also suggested cutting the young people’s network BBC Switch and the network helping young people break into the media, BBC Blast. After we lose 6Music there’ll literally be nothing left for me in this company, for which it has been a dream for many years to work for and which I always held up in high respect.

Forget not that we are the future generation who’ll be paying the taxes and essentially running the Beeb. This is something the leaders of this country need seriously to take into account, rather than settling for more sports telly for the dads, more kids telly for the mums and babes, and more BBC 4 re-runs.

A small suggestion would be to look into cutting local stations and airing everything bar local news directly from the base up in London, though I’m sure there are many other reasonable cuts which have been overlooked. I actually did a vox pop on the 6Music cut and found out that in fact nobody had even heard of 6Music, let alone actually listened to it, meaning the real issue here is the BBC’s abilities in self-publicity.

Thanks for your time, please do take into consideration some of the above points.

Holly

Surprisingly they never did email back.

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