In defence of the BBC and the licence fee

Everyone has their own fall back phrase and actions they use to describe their feelings when something has infuriated them. Mine usually involves the word “ridiculous” and a subsequent blog post that’s wonderfully unselfconsciously self-righteous, but that’s me.

The standard fall back phrase when the BBC produces a TV or radio show that someone doesn’t like is “it’s a waste of licence fee payers’ money”.* For the record, over 75% of BBC revenue comes from licence fee income so it is a large part of the broadcaster’s income that comes from the public so the loosely defined public has a right to get their money’s worth.

It’s kind of an easy target really is the poor old BBC as one is paying money directly to the institution for the programming and journalism one receives. One wouldn’t say it’s a waste of your weekly shop at ASDA money when ITV broadcasts a terrible show, despite the fact that said money is indirectly paying for the production of said show in the form of advertising. Although it’s something of a stupid concept, it’s vaguely valid in its own roundabout kind of way.

Firstly, the annoying semantics. Technically it isn’t a waste as you pay your licence fee for the BBC to produce programming on television or radio. Throwing said money into a giant hole and burying it or buying all the tickets to Glastonbury and not showing up would be a waste of money. If the BBC broadcasts something you don’t like, that would be a misuse of licence fee payers’ money, not a waste as there is guaranteed to be someone out there who liked the broadcast which made it viable.

Anyway, semantics aside, the real bone of contention I have with the lazy, fallback phrase outlined is that I find it very difficult to believe people do not get their money’s worth from the most renowned and admired public service broadcaster in the world.

For example, if you just watch the national and local news on the BBC five nights a week (that’s 4 million people on average), that’s around 270 hours of broadcasting you have watched a year meaning you pay around £1.90 an hour to watch. Which sounds like a lot.

However, no-one watches just the news on the BBC. From Eastenders to Match of the Day to QI to Top Gear to Strictly Come Dancing, there are shows on the BBC that draw in huge numbers viewers each and every week, all with large production values that must cost a bomb to make. According to the Broadcaster’s Audience Research Board, BBC1 and 2 alone have an average 21.3% audience share of TV viewers which is a whole lot of hours and licence fee being justified.

Then factor in the other aspects of the BBC’s output from a radio service that has a total listening share of 54.5% nationally, a news website that offers full multimedia interactivity and as up-to-date stories as any paid for media, various digital output at specialised audiences (from children to minority social groups) and the ongoing digital switchover to give more people the chance to have more access to more channels.

Taking into account all of the services the BBC offers, it is something of a miracle the revenue it produces is stretched so far.

Factor in all of this and even the staunchest non-BBC user probably swallows up more BBC output than they realise. Your commute to work? Might well have some BBC on the radio. Want to check up on the latest news? The BBC News website might be your first port of call. Need to keep up with the latest football scores? BBC Sport online is at least the equal of its competitors in this field, and with TV highlights to be found on the website to boot. The hours consuming BBC output soon adds up. It would be a very interesting experiment to see just how long you spend using some form of BBC service. And when I say “interesting” the result would be, not the procedure.

Yes, the BBC does screw up occasionally with its choice of programming and its ‘impartial’ journalism but to get either of these spot-on 100% of the time is a fool’s errand and fool’s expectation.

*Disclaimer; due to circumstances dictating that I am living at home with my parents once again, I am not currently paying for a TV licence. Go forth and state my reason to have an opinion on the matter is invalid.

That’s Britain- BBC1 @ 8pm Wednesdays- 3 out of 10

At the risk of sounding like an advert for stereotyping Britishness, we Brits all love a good moan. That and not making eye contact. And hiding our prejudices under a veneer of awkward politeness. Just to clarify, the first thing I said is what ‘That’s Britain’ is all about.

Fronting the show are second coolest stubble wearer in the world Nick Knowles and Julia Bradbury (of whom I have nothing to say really) who proceed to participate in awkward banter and bonhomie about Tube drivers, dog poo, recycling and why Warwickshire County Council shouldn’t make huge towers out of gold sheets.

To start with something called The Wall of Anger is introduced, which is a bit strong but then again, the Wall of Mild Annoyance isn’t quite as grabbing. It’s basically like a Tweet Clod and allows Knowles to rant, well, like an amateur really. Queues at the petrol station are caused by “turning them into supermarkets”. True, but hardly enthralling ranting their Knowlesy. Hopefully Twitter can organise some sort of campaign whereby the biggest thing on the wall is ‘That’s Britain’ itself making a paradox of embarrassment.

It’s not the only name that’s misleading. The kind of things that are investigated or the cause of annoyance are the same anywhere in the world. It probably should be called “That’s the world” or something a whole lot more imaginative than that.

Elsewhere, there are four reporters who tackle an issue each week in their own ways.

This week, first up was call centre operator’s nightmare Grainne Seoige who kicked off with a political piece on junk mail which was interesting at some points but incredibly boring at others. Not even Seoige’s Irishness (usually a surefire way to this reviewer’s heart) could redeem the feature. Oh, and it was spliced with tonnes of vox pops as why get expert opinion when you can ask the average plank on the street for a monotone monosyllable answer?

Next up, we had Shaun Williamson who looked dreadfully angry whenever he was referred to as “Eastenders’ Shaun Williamson”, which is fair enough as he left eight years ago. At least refer to him as “Extras’ Shaun Williamson”. Williamson was basically asking a question no one really wants to know the answer to; should we get bus conductors back? It would be quite nice to have bus conductors back but it would also be nice to have a house with four bathrooms but, for financial reasons, it probably isn’t going to happen. To cap it all off, a poll was conducted asking whether you would pay 25p extra on your bus fare to get said conductors back. Unsurprisingly, in a hypothetical, people went for the option that made them look good. The Pullitzer Prize is in the post.

Third on the hit list we had usually entertaining Ade Edmundson do a piece on just where our luggage goes at the airport. The report’s content was about as interesting as reading the latest issue of “Beige Magazine” on a train from Slough to Milton Keynes which couldn’t even be livened up by Edmondson’s natural sense of fun. No wonder he looked to be in a rush to get the hell out of there at the end of his piece.

Finally, Stanley Johnson, father of Boris (boy could you tell that) did a hidden camera experiment with an old fella parking his car badly and asking for help which was to investigative as Boris himself is to speech making.

You’ll notice that my description of each of the reports is getting shorter and shorter and, to be quite honest, by this point I’d lost 99% of my interest and had started to watch the clock ticking toward 9 o’clock so I could turn over and watch some Nick Robinson talking about taxation which might well tell its own story.

Interspersed with all these reports were more opportunities for Knowles to rant badly, for Bradbury to make an occasional decent quip and for Williamson to shout out nonsense from the sofa on the stage. It all felt like a really bad episode of Watchdog meets every single episode of The One Show bundled up with a lovely feeling of the BBC reaching out an olive branch to the Daily Mail with tales of local council spending and ridiculous health and safety stories

It’s not that it’s not very good, it’s just really, really, REALLY boring. If you want to make a show about current affairs, you would hire journalists to make the reports. If you want to make an entertainment show about issues, you hire well known faces to make films. ‘That’s Britain’ can’t seem to decide what it wants to be and ends up being neither. Which makes it not very good as well as boring come to think of it. And that’s what’s annoying me ‘That’s Britain’.

Fresh Meat @ 10pm Wednesdays, Channel 4- 8 out of 10 (series review)

British sitcoms set in and around university life revolving around the escapades of students are few and far between. Unless you count The Young Ones. Or to an extent Rising Damp. Or recent attempts like the woeful BBC3 attempt Off the Hook and E4’s not much better Campus. Ok, so maybe a few more examples there.

Anyway, the latest attempt at making only the second ever decent British sitcom centred on student life (stick that on a trophy BAFTA) looked promising when it was announced Fresh Meat was from the creators of Peep Show and starred the next generation British acting talent including Greg McHugh, Zawe Ashton and Kimberley Nixon.

So, was it a Richard the Third than Geoff Hurst? (See what I did there? Eh? It’s overused, outdated student slang for a Third and a First, dolt.)

The show revolves around six students (plus on mystery occupant who doesn’t appear until the last episode of the series) thrown together into a flat share for their first year at university and their various escapades, naturally involving drink, sex and all-nighters writing essays due in the next morning.

Early on, the show struggled to justify its hour (including adverts) length as the gags failed to come through consistently enough and the development of plotlines was as slow as the queue for start of year course registration. As an aside, are these university jokes working for ya? Like I care, they’re going to be a feature of this review.

However, like the member of the opposite (or same) sex on your first night out in Fresher’s week that looks better and better as the night goes on, Fresh Meat began to improve around the mid-series point, starting with wonderful Student Demo episode where the laughs kept on flowing and the story arcs began to advance.

The show certainly suffered from Channel 4’s decision to run the four episodes of Top Boy on consecutive nights, leaving the finale of Fresh Meat to air some two weeks after the penultimate episode meaning that momentum was lost somewhat with a quick Wikipedia reading required to recall the plotlines, a similar process used when writing an essay after attending all the lectures on the subject hungover.

Elsewhere, many of the complaints about the show have been centred around whether it is an accurate portrayal of student life. This isn’t really the point as of course you need to heighten the drinking, drug taking and sex as that is where the laughs come from. The important thing is that it has a firm basis in reality with regard to situations like casual sex, fancying the people you live with, drinking and studying, last and maybe least. Furthermore, even the exaggeration for comic effect isn’t overly used as none of the characters get off with someone (randomer or otherwise) every night and the characters are more often seen watching TV than drinking, a familiar enough experience for anyone who is/was at university.

A handful of the characters are pretty lazy stereotypes in their origin; the standard “we all knew one of them at uni” types. There is the up himself posh twat (JP, played surprisingly well by Whiteall albeit in a role built for him), the fake new-world kinda girl who is trying to reinvent herself (Oregon/Mellissa played by Charlotte Ritchie), the shy, young bloke (Kingsley portrayed by Joe Thomas basically carrying on his role as Simon in The Inbetweeners) and the uber-nerd Howard (McHugh). However, the characters are given enough substance to make them indie pubs as opposed to boring Liquid/Oceania generic products. Yeah, that comparison definitely works…

Elements of Peep Show can be found in two of the main characters make up. JP is the classic Bain/Armstrong character of a person who thinks he is higher up the social strata than he actually is and finding himself often screwed over by the people he sees as cooler than him in his attempts to impress them.

Meanwhile, Vod (played amazingly by Ashton) is the female version of Peep Show’s Super Hans; drug and drink addled but with her own set of sound morals. Refreshingly, she gets all the best lines in the show (along with Howard) as it is rare to see such a strong female lead in contemporary sitcoms.

However, it is the secondary characters that really stand out from Howard’s brilliantly socially psychotic on/off friend Brian, the mysterious “invisible” housemate Paul Lamb (although the cause of his absence is a bit of a letdown), the male Professor Shales for playing the part of pervy, exploitative lecturer to perfection, the female Professor Shales and her reasons for allowing her husband to have an affair with Oregon and JP’s even more exploitative posh mates, who are upper class versions of the male Only Way is Essex vessels; cocky and making up their own words.

As well as boasting, eventually, a strong series of story arcs (basically three stories; Kingsley and Josie’s relationship, Vod and Oregon’s friendship and JP’s issues), there are a number of memorable comedic scenes including JP getting emotional after his Dad’s death with Oregon’s dying horse whilst off his face on LSD, Kingsley and Josie’s confrontation over their deal to ‘cure’ Kingsley’s virginity at the student rally and the academic’s dinner evening at Oregon and Professor Shales’ flat which descends into sexually frustrated bickering.

Fresh Meat is certainly worth the extra series it has been granted (which will air next September, aptly) as the potential is there for a memorable, if not classic, example of British sitcom; well scripted, well acted, tightly directed and with sets that are lovingly made down to the last detail. The potential is certainly there as the show has demonstrated it can mix gross-out, awkwardness comedy mixed with almost touching sensitive scenes, particularly (and bizarrely) the aforementioned JP finding out his Dad died scene and Vod sticking up for JP in the final episode after he has been conned by his upper class “mates”.

And with each of the three story arcs left unanswered after last night’s finale, I find myself not being able to wait to see what the conclusions are which is a rarity for me with any sitcom.

You can catch up on Fresh Meat on 4OD http://www.channel4.com/programmes/fresh-meat/4od#3256081

A fallacy in Higher Education; a personal story

The figures released today showcasing just how bad youth unemployment is in this country should come as no surprise really.

When there are a lack of jobs in the market anyway due to economic issues, it will always be the youngest who suffer most as they are the ones with no experience in the workplace. When it comes to a choice between “experience” and “enthusiasm” on a CV, an employer is bound to choose the former as they can dive straight into work without being given any training, thus easing the transition from one employee to another.

It makes sense as an employer to do that but try telling that to anyone of the 1 million or so young people out of work right now.

The stock image on any TV news report when it comes to stories regarding youth unemployment is a shot of a Job Centre Plus with aggressive looking people wearing tracksuits outside it, maybe smoking a cigarette or sticking a hand down the front of their trackie bottoms.

But this is a false image; this is a problem across this generation regardless of qualifications gained. I know many people who graduated from university with me this year who are struggling to find a job, let alone a career-based job that there degree course was geared toward and I equally know that people who left school at 16 (thanks to the magic of Facebook) are struggling to find work.

For myself, training as a journalist and graduating with a 2:1 degree and a full set of NCTJ prelim qualifications would, from the outside world, look like the perfect recipe to jump straight into a newspaper career. Add in work experience stints at four local papers, a national magazine, writing for an online blog (plus my own blog) and an editor’s position on my student newspaper under my belt, I couldn’t be possibly more appealing to an employer.

However, throughout my time at university I was constantly told by my lecturers that you would need an awful bloody lot to stand out to employers in the field of journalism and I am very thankful for this advice as, after graduating, it helped me come to terms with one of the great fallacies of Higher Education and indeed of education as a whole in this country; get yourself a degree and you will get you the job you want. It’s the ‘fact’ that gets people going to university.

Quite simply, there is no guarantee of this. The reasons behind this are numerous and won’t be explored here but they include a sagging job market and huge student numbers in the 21^st century.

I find myself currently working at a supermarket for 30 hours a week and, whilst not exactly being happy about the situation, I will never ever complain about it as it is a job and a source of income which, as today’s figures show, makes me very lucky.

Furthermore, it has allowed me to buy a car and go travelling for a month and might even make me more grounded if I do manage to get the job I want.

Lastly, it gives me the impetus to keep searching for the career job that I want as if I have a crap day, it makes me want to get out of the place even more and give me more of a reason to fire off that CV again or send another email or make that phone call that might just open up the door.

Do I feel as if I am overqualified for the job I do? Yes, a little bit, particularly when I get a dirty look from a customer as if I’m a piece of dirt that won’t come off their shoe but that’s part of the game and part of the job and I know that.

But I am one of the luckier ones (the luckiest ones are those that have a job in the field they want but, as with any luck, they’ve earned it) and I’m sure many young people, graduate or otherwise, would be happy with having my job right now.

The problem with poppies

It’s probably poor form to bad mouth any aspect of a charity, even the ones that want to save really ugly animals that eat people (da da do de do da do, joke) but here we go.

I’m all for the Poppy campaign for the Royal British Legion has the charity itself does great things for the elderly and victims of wars but, in my opinion, the campaign has been somewhat bastardised by needless flashiness most exhibited on primetime TV.

What makes the Poppy campaign wonderful is its simplicity on two levels.

The first is the understated nature of displaying a poppy. Those who wish to use a poppy as their mark of respect for soldiers can simply put it on their clothing (incidentally, those who don’t wear poppies do not automatically lack this respect, in the same way laughing at someone’s misfortune doesn’t mean you don’t care for their wellbeing).

And the second is the actual poppy itself consisting of a simple couple of pieces of basic coloured paper, two types of plastic to hold it all together and a pin, if you remember to get one that is due to the whole H&S bollocks about not being able to take one and having to ask for it.

But in recent years, a booming new market in flashy showy off poppies is booming which started out on TV but has migrated itself to everyday life now.

Go across any terrestrial TV channel in the evening and I can guarantee that at least half of the poppies on display are sparkly or stupidly large or made out of multiple pieces of complex fabric or even bloody crystal-encrusted ones last year. It’s probably only a matter of time before a poppy is produced using Heston Blumnethal methods of construction.

It seems somewhat self-defeating to produce flashy, show off-y poppies when the beauty of the product and cause lies in its simplicity.

Obviously, if the proceeds of these poppies go to the fundraising campaign it doesn’t really matter as all the money that is raised is worthwhile. It’s even been argued that the flashy new poppies have boosted the fundraising for the Royal British Legion by way of extra exposure and appeal to a younger market.

But it’s a pretty sad state of affairs when a charity has to almost reinvent itself to keep the campaign relevant and cutting, particularly when the Poppy campaign has an effective captive market (if you’ll excuse the quite horrible use of that particular phrase there) at the beginning of November every year for a cause that is so important.

What patriotism means to me

The news today that the English Defence League had scaled the headquarters of football’s governing body, FIFA, in Zurich over the dispute regarding whether or not the England football team can have poppies on their shirts in the game against Spain this weekend got me thinking about patriotism and what it means to me to be both English and British.

Firstly, that the EDL, a group that is based on anti-immigration and anti-Islamism, should associate itself with the Poppy campaign is both horrific and illogical. The Poppy campaign, as part of Remembrance Day, is designed to honour those who fought in wars for their country, particularly World Wars 1 and 2.

Lest we forget, people from across the British Empire fought in those wars, from the West Indies to African colonies to the Indian Raj. It seems illogical to me to be able to reconcile a firm anti-Islamism and anti-immigration ideology with a full commitment to the idea of Remembrance. But, hey ho, whoever said you needed to have logic to make a statement.

Anyway, this led me on to thinking what my problem is with the way English patriotism is displayed. By extension, this can also mean British patriotism due to the way England dominates Britain as an idea.

To me, English/British patriotism is displayed in an aggressive manner through something of a superiority complex. In my opinion, much of what constitutes this type of patriotism is a “we’re better than you” expression such as continual references to the various wars with Germany and France, for example. Perhaps this comes from the fallout of having an Empire and Britain as a whole needing to find a new place in the world.

It is probably for this reason why English people are so in need of sporting success to justify this superiority complex idea of patriotism; winning a World Cup in any sport means we are better than everyone else at something and therefore makes the approach correct to an extent.

This almost jingoistic approach is a source of danger in my opinion as it is a slippery slope from thinking your group of people is better than another to forcibly imposing it, particularly when the power to do the latter gets granted to the former group.

I should probably explain at this point that I am fully aware that being proud of the country where one was born is a little bit ridiculous as it is pure luck that one is born on one particular piece of soil that belongs to the fictional notion that is the state and then growing a love for that fictional notion.

However, that said, as a human being, I enjoy the idea of being connected to other people I don’t know in a group in which we have a shared history and culture. I also believe that this culture is constantly evolving with new people adding their own values and beliefs into the system we all share.

In relation to this, I do quite like being British due to the contribution Britain has made to the world in the form of ideas and art and science and so on. I like the idea of having a connection to the people that developed these ideas, however a tenuous connection being born in the same geo-political borders is.

I find it harder to be proud of being English as to my mind there is nothing truly English aside from sporting teams. The dominance of Britain by England has left a dearth of genuinely English concepts.

I’ve a great love of the type of patriotism that seems to be widespread in countries such as Scotland and Wales where patriotism is expressed through a devotion and love of one’s country rather than gaining pride through comparison to another country.

The Welsh and Scottish pride (as I perceive it) in their landscape, their language, their appreciation of their past and contemporary contribution to the arts and to science and so on is something I genuinely envy.

But, there is no reason why the newly forming English patriotism cannot be like that. The loudness of the campaigns by a small group like the EDL (lest we forget, they have very few members who are coached to rallies in different cities to present the illusion of being a larger group) needs to be silenced to allow a true patriotic voice to shine through over the current jingoistic rhetoric.

There is no reason why an English patriotism cannot develop in the form of its Scottish and Welsh counterparts with a focus on the beauty of the English countryside, the wonder of the English language, the contribution of people like Chaucer, Shakespeare, Byron, Wordsworth, Austen, Newton, Wren and so on. Obviously, Welsh and Scottish patriotism is so strong due to their historical suppression from which well the English cannot also draw from but the point remains that it can happen.

Furthermore, the culture that England, in particular of the British nations, has evolved over the last half century in particular is my favourite achievement.

Of all the nations in the world, it has most successfully bred multi-culturalism. I adore the fact that there are a multitude of languages being spoken on English streets, a smorgasbord of international cuisine available everywhere you go and all the other cultural entities that immigrants have added to the culture melting pot of England and Britain.

This is what I am thankful to those who laid down their lives in wars, whatever their ethnicity or religion, for England and Britain; the chance to live in a society that’s brought the world to your doorstep.