BBC and the Big Society
And so it begins. Another call for the BBC's licence fee to be scrapped, this time from the glorified wanktank of the Adam Smith Institute. (Why they didn't simply dig up Adam Smith's corpse and skullfuck it instead is beyond me - it would have achieved pretty much the same outcome without having to publish so many neoliberal 'papers').
As ever, the Beeb steadfastly covers the story, like a turkey writing a particularly unbiased article about Christmas dinner suggestions. (It's to their credit that they do so, of course, though just for once I'd love them to do a spectacularly partisan article or report sticking two fingers up to the critics.) They'll probably do a Have Your Say on it as well They've even done a Have Your Say on it as well, so that a few chimp-brained fuckknuckles can say "Wurgggh, I hate the BBC, cut everything! I don't like the fact that the BBC is running a forum where I can say that the BBC shouldn't be running a forum" and so on.
Here comes Big Society. Big Society was one of David Cameron's most feeble and hard-t0-sell policies during the election campaign, but like any bad boss who thinks they've had a good idea, he won't let it go. That swimming pool that's closing down? Labour spent too much, you can run it for yourselves if you like, for no money, seeing as you've got nothing better to do. That youth project that's closing down? Labour spent too much, you can run it for yourselves if you like, for no money, seeing as you've got nothing better to do. And so on.
Do it yourselves, or it won't happen at all. Of course, people are very accepting of the need for cuts - that argument appears to have been won, rightly or wrongly - and so an awful lot of them are going to happen, needlessly or not. People seem willing to take the bad medicine in the hope it's going to make them better. Whether it will or not remains to be seen.
And so to the BBC - a state-funded broadcaster who dares to provide programmes, news and things that people like, with a world-class reputation. And which is, therefore, next in the firing line. Of course, the neoliberal Coalition aren't behind this latest report, but no doubt we'll see a trickle over the coming weeks and months. A campaign is being prepared.
It might be too cynical to imagine that this will be not entirely unadjacent to the feverish campaigning for David Cameron conducted by the BBC's commercial rivals during the election. I think it's probably the case that the shock doctrine Coalition don't like the BBC anyway - it smacks of big state and not big society, and therefore it must be shown to be wrong. A successful BBC, or NHS, or anything, means that state funding is capable of being the right solution - this isn't a question of what works and what doesn't. It's a question of blind belief in a particular type of solution - the 'big society' neoliberal solution.
Of course we don't need 'big society' to step in where broadcasting's concerned. I don't think the Tories will close down BBC1 and say that we're more than welcome to have a bash ourselves, if we like, so long as we're prepared to pay for all the programme-making ourselves. But the arguments will begin.
The 6Music and Asian Network debate was just the start, though that was a self-inflicted wound that meant the BBC was itself buying into the 'cuts are inevitable' narrative. But now the whole operation is going to be put under the microscope - not just by the likes of the Adam Smith Institute - although they will of course be the kind of people only to happy to provide the justification and the relevant ammunition - but by the BBC's direct competitors in the media, the people who really have something to gain from their popular and much-loved rivals being broken up, or sold off, or made into a subscription service, or whatever.
The arguments are beginning now, and they're only going to get stronger and louder. If you do like the BBC and don't mind how it's paid for - and I don't remember any political party campaigning very much about this at election time - then you're going to have to get ready to fight for it. Big Society means things like the BBC and its funding method must be seen to be obsolete, outdated, unnecessary... if you disagree, you must be ready to challenge these assumptions.
The first place to go might be that BBC Have Your Say discussion, then. It's already filling up with dozens of commenters who say they don't want the BBC to be funded by anything other than subscription, and they don't even watch the TV anyway. Is that what you think? Maybe it's time you made your voice heard, too.
HYS backlash: it’s been coming
Sometimes it takes a friend to tell you something that you need to know - when you're walking around with paint-stripping body odour, or your flies are undone, for example. Your enemies won't tell you because they'll be chortling at your misfortune, and everyone else just will be too polite to tell you - but will look down on you all the same.
And it's from the position of being a massive fan of the BBC that I have to question the relevance and value of Have Your Say. Not because I don't think people should have their say - they should - but what does the current format achieve, other than being a great big jam sandwich next to an anthill? What does it do, other than give undue prominence to the views of bigots? And at a time when the BBC is going to have to justify every single piece of its output, how is our public discourse improved by having discussions which frequently get overwhelmed by extreme and offensive views?
Let's get one argument out of the way to begin with. Let's not imagine that people's freedom of speech is only represented by their ability to type whatever they want on the internet, and more specifically on a BBC forum. It isn't. No-one is clamping down on anyone's freedom of speech by denying them 'the right' to be offensive and deeply unpleasant. There is no right for people to use taxpayers' cash to spout views that make other people upset. And Auntie would not be being a massive evil censor by denying them that 'right'.
The question in the particular instance I mentioned earlier isn't awfully offensive, in my view. The debate, when taken in isolation and ignoring the context of how HYS is regularly taken over by views that you could consider to be bigoted and prejudiced, isn't either. But you can't ignore the context. The context is one in which people seek an opportunity to Speak You're Branes - and often come out with complete tosh.
You might say to me, look, it's not for anyone to decide what's tosh and what isn't, and who are you to come in and save the world? What you find offensive might not be offensive to others; what you find intelligent might be offensive to others. But that's half the story, because there is always editorial control. As soon as you stop people from swearing, or being off-topic, there's editorial control. As soon as you stop people using certain derogatory terms, that's editorial control. As soon as you decide that certain sentiments are too unpleasant to be broadcast, that's editorial control.
We don't live in a world without editorial control - and this blog is no different, by the way. I decide what comments are published, which can be a pain when there are a lot, but I prefer it that way. I let myself down on one occasion when I had a lot of comments about one particular columnist (you can probably guess who) and someone said they should be kicked to death for being a necrophiliac. Pressed for time, I let the comment through without checking, but luckily found it later and deleted it. I wouldn't be happy with having it on here - that's my decision. It's no use pretending my personal weblog is some big chalkboard for everyone else, and nothing to do with me, because that's not the case.
I know there are some who advocate everyone being allowed to say whatever they like all the time, but I'm not quite of that view. I wouldn't want someone to call my mum a whore, or say I was a paedophile, for example. I think most people wouldn't. Freedom of speech does not trump everything else, in my opinion. Which isn't to say that if one person is offended by something, it should be banned straight away - there are degrees of these things, and it's not an 'all or nothing' situation. Alongside the right to speak your mind, there's also the right not to be offended - not just by private individuals or companies, but especially from organisations we are funding through taxation. Similar issues were raised when Nick Griffin turned up on Question Time, but it was right to put him on. BBC HYS is different. It is like the panel is made up of five Nick Griffins, with another 200-odd in the audience.
Which brings me back to Auntie, and Have Your Say. It's sad, but I don't think the Great British Public can be trusted to have a balanced debate on these issues when it's a self-selecting sample. That skews it and makes it not only unrepresentative but misleadingly unrepresentative. It's not up to those who don't want gay people to be locked up, left to die on islands or killed to go onto the BBC HYS and counterbalance the more vile views on the discussion, because by the time many of these debates have got going, they've already been piled on. Remember when someone shouted "Bundle!" at school and everyone crushed the poor bastard at the bottom of the pile till he couldn't breathe? That's what happens when there's a new HYS question. It's kind of already happened by the time the itchy-fingered bigots have piled on via their keyboards. Any halfway reasonable voices are already behind the curve.
This has been coming for a long time. I don't know what the solution really is, but it's not like today's question came out of the blue. I feel sorry for those people firefighting with the HYS moderation, because it must be a tough job - like those people who screen out the slightly more ripe contributors from radio phone-ins or stop complete lunacy from appearing in newspaper and magazine letters pages. But HYS is like a phone-in where quite a lot of the nutcases have been allowed on air, or a letters page where the green crayon submissions have been waved through. It doesn't quite work at being balanced, or representative of the readership.
There's also the issue of the BBC brand. Is it enhanced by such bigoted and offensive views being broadcast, all in the name of lively debate? Do we learn anything from these discussions? Or are they all too often being taken over by people with a particular type of mindset? If so, is that such a good thing, or are our tax pounds - which I happily contribute to the wonderful and generally sparkling BBC - being used to fund a misleadingly unrepresentative broadcast of poisonous and offensive opinions? And if that's the case, what is to be done?
*update* Now the title of the debate has been changed to "Should Uganda debate gay execution?"
BBC Have Your Say: Genocide, why not?
The question asked is the family-friendly public-service debate: should homosexuals face execution?
Chris in Guildford agrees that this should be imposed in the UK. He also says that gay people should be taken away to a remote island to die out.
That's my licence fee paying for him to say that and have it broadcast nationally. And that's the most recommended comment. Oh, how proud I am of the BBC, and the British public, right now.
*update* That comment has gone now, which is something I suppose, although it did pas through moderation in the first place, despite appearing to break the house rules on homophobia. This one is still there, to keep the state-funded hatred going:
BBC Have Your Sieg Heil
The Swiss, as we know, have made a bold decision to be known for more than just cuckoo clocks, chocolate, Nazi gold and banks: now they want the world to see them as racists as well. The decision to ban minarets would strike any right-thinking person as ultra-nationalist at best, straightforwardly racist at worst. Well, you'd think so, but then you, my friend, haven't read the BBC Have Your Say discussion on it...
These are the most recommended comments, by the way - and it keeps on coming.
It always amuses me when the BBC is portrayed as a leftist institution when it's more than happy to allow this kind of debate to be swamped by the far right*. Well I imagine it's not more than happy, but what can you do? There are a couple of possible reasons for this: perhaps the vast majority, the 'silent majority' of people who read the BBC's news content, are extreme nationalists who hate Muslims of all shapes and sizes; or perhaps, just perhaps, ultranationalist groups target discussions like this in order to make their poisonous views seem more popular than they actually are. You can believe what you like, but if the views on this discussion are really representative of the majority of people in Britain then it is me, not them, who feels like a stranger in his own country and wants to leave.
SudaNim's comment sums up the classical 'oppressed white man' myth: that somehow, despite having all the advantages in life, white men are actually the ones who are most discriminated against. Chris in Nottingham brings out the textbook "If you don't like it then you can get out" attitute towards minorities so beloved of racists everywhere; and DaMuttzNutz produces the standard "Islamification aaargh we're all gonna die!" though I would have given bonus points for the use of 'dhimmitude', which I'm sure will turn up in the discussion somewhere.
Here's another argument you'll see time and time again: that because Saudi Arabia does something, we should be just as vile as them. But I don't think Saudi Arabia is really a nation whose values anyone should aspire to - is it? If Switzerland wants to be the Saudi Arabia of Europe, then it's more than welcome to. But I don't think it's a good argument to say "Islamic countries can be really repressive, therefore we should be just as repressive, out of spite" - that isn't the kind of society I want to live in. I don't want to live in a country that's taking part in a reactionary anti-freedom pissing competition.
And on, and on, and on it goes. A simple two-word comment like that gets voted positively by 54 people, but where are the opposing views? 4 pages in and still no sign of them... does everyone in the world really think that minarets are a terrible thing and that because there is little religious freedom in the Arab world, so that policy should be extended across Europe, and that's a good thing? Is that what we really think?
Oh, hang on:
But that's a mere island in the discussion, a mere moment in which another voice is raised, only to be squashed by the shouting of others.
I'm always left wondering what these debates actually achieve. What does this debate achieve, other than portraying westerners as idiots and racists? What does this do for anyone, except giving racists a place where they can congregate together and spout their angry invective? What have we gained from this, other than hearing that a lot of people think Europe should be more like Saudi Arabia, somehow, for some reason, or think that other cultures should not be allowed freedom of expression? Now I understand that's a perfectly legitimate viewpoint to have, vile though it is; but why are the BBC providing debates that are a touchstone for these extremist thoughts? This is just the sort of way in which the ultranationalist far right will claim it's actually in the majority or represents the real views of people.
Forty-seven per cent of people in Switzerland, you'll remember, voted against the ban on minarets. Yet you'd be hard-pressed to find 47 per cent of BBC Have Your Say correspondents who feel that way. So it's not even representative of Switzerland, the country which imposed the ban, let alone Britain, or let alone the wider community in Europe or reading these debates across the world. Again, you have to ask: what does this do, apart from over-represent those who hate, those who are prejudiced, those who want to cause division and those who want to drive out minorities?
* No, racists are not extreme left-wing, no matter what kind of "Aha, but National Socialists, weren't they, eh?" sophistry you try and pull out of the bag.
So how popular are the BNP?
And are we any nearer to finding out after last week's Question Time?
If you read the BBC's Have Your Say, for example - and I don't recommend you do if you're in easy reach of breakable objects - you'd be forgiven for thinking that everyone in Britain (especially people who live in ENGLAND, NOT EU) welcomed Griffin's delightful presence as a fragrant rose among the thorns. This post at Speak You're Branes contains a startlingly brilliant comment from a HYSer:
In the famous book “to kill a mockingbird” Atticus Finch tells his kids, bravery is not a man with a gun in his hand, but someone who knows they are going to be beaten before they start, but still goes ahead. Nick Griffin knew he wouldn’t get a fair hearing and would be raked over the coals. But he went ahead and aired his views, that makes him brave in my eyes and thats why I am voting BNP next election
Yes, that's right. If you are in any way familiar with the book or film you might be forgiven for finding a comparison between Nick Griffin and Atticus Finch a sliver on the bewildering side. As ever with these matters - as I did the other day with a comment of tremendously convincing verisimilitude - you encounter Poe's Law. How can you tell whether it's a kosher nutjob or just a clever spoof? Tricky. I veer towards thinking the Finch comment is spectacularly ignorant and unknowingly ironic, but I could be wrong.
Alex makes a vital point about how the over-the-top reaction from the BNP supporters on HYS puts other discussions on there into focus:
It’s actually rather reassuring, to see a party almost unanimously inducing massive, racist erections in HYSers, when we know only a fraction of the population would ever actually vote for them. It’s almost as if they’re just a small group making a lot of noise, who the majority of us disagree with, but stay silent because we don’t think they’re worth bothering with.
It tells you a lot about how extremists can create a Wizard of Oz style representation of much more support than they really have. You'll see it often in web discussions on a variety of subjects, and this one is no different. If you read HYS every day you might be under the impression that no-one in the UK supports Labour, that everyone is obsessed with immigration, that everyone hates political correctness and longs for the days of the Black and White Minstrel Show, that everyone is 'fed up'.
Web-savvy folk, as we all are pretty much nowadays, know to take it all with a pinch of salt. The internet has made us all more sceptical, and that's a good thing. Your first experience of the internet might be a pop-up that tells you you've won a prize, or an email that tells you you've come into a Nigerian fortune, and you begin to learn that pretty much everyone is going to bullshit you. I think this is a good thing. It makes you on your guard. So that when you see a messageboard full of HYS types loving the attention for Nick Griffin, you don't think: "Oh my goodness. Everyone is suddenly in love with the BNP. What on earth has happened?" - you think: here we go then, an infiltration.
If that doesn't tell us how much support the BNP has, what about polls? The shock figure from the weeekend was that 22 per cent of voters were considering voting for the extremists. Really? Well, not quite. A couple of interesting things have come out of these figures, which were initially reported as showing a huge boost for the much-hated ultra-nationalists.
Firstly, as Lancaster Unity among others has pointed out, there have been claims by some at the BNP that they are actively taking part in YouGov, partly to skew polls and over-represent their support, but also to get some much-needed funds for BNP coffers.
This also needs to be treated with caution. Who knows how many BNP types are really taking part in YouGov and whether they're having a significant impact? As we saw with the release of the BNP list the other week, 100,000 had been added to member numbers with the possible intention of overstating membership - they would appear to want to seem bigger than they really are. On the other hand, though, if that scenario were true then it could have the danger of misrepresenting BNP support and possibly creating a bandwagon effect by making them appear more popular and less marginalised. If such polls were skewed - and it's probably easier to do than hanging around shopping centres waiting for people with clipboards - then that might create a false impression. But at the moment all we have are claims by some BNP people to be trying to skew polls, and no evidence they have.
Secondly, as Sunny wrote at Liberal Conspiracy yesterday, the full details of the YouGov poll - beyond those happy headlines for the BNP - are a little less frightening:
Only 11% of the public have a favourable impression of the BNP. Positive feeling towards the BNP has in fact fallen over the last 10 months.
And the poll also vindicates the BBC for the way it handled Question Time, with a significant increase in the number of people (over 11%) saying the BBC was right to invite him.
So according to the very poll which initially led to stories claiming the BNP had a worrying level of support, support for the BNP has actually fallen. It's not surprising to note how that bit didn't get as many enormous headlines as the "22% of people might vote BNP" (although 15% say it's only a possibility) figures.
So how popular are the BNP really? It's hard to tell at the moment. The next time we know will be at election time. But in the meantime, it's important not to overstate the threat, while at the same time recognising it is there.
*update* Liberal Conspiracy has more and has asked YouGov for a response.
A classic of its kind
I often wonder if people on the BBC's Have Your (Reactionary) Say messageboard are kosher carpet-thumping little Englanders foaming at the mouth like a can of recently-shaken warm lager; or whether they're simply Mike Gigglers collaborating in a huge mass participation art installation in order to represent the most insanely reactionary and bile-filled views as being the most popular ones in Britain.
I'd always like to think the latter. I'd like to hope there's a secret club to which I haven't yet been invited, who meet up once a week to chat about tactics and how they're going to make something really unimaginative, foam-flecked and dimwitted be voted to the top of the pile. In my mind it's an ironic OuLiPo-style artistic collaboration between self-styled Bohemian artistes, all designed to subvert the medium of internet commenting and messageboards. If Joe Orton were alive nowadays you just know that Edna Welthorpe would be turning up on these messageboards all the time, sucking everyone in.
And then you read this comment, in response to the innocently titled discussion "What can be done to tackle child poverty?"
And you think: No. They really must be fucknuts.
Depressing.
The disconnect
What do you think that Mail and Express readers think of their newspapers describing the BNP as 'extremists' in articles today?
Mail:
Express:
You'd expect scenes like these with the Mail and Express, of course, given the line they take with immigration and race stories. But it's not just those newspapers, of course. As ever, BBC's Have Your Say poses an innocuous question and attracts the usual storm of faeces:
(God, wouldn't you hate to put questions up on the BBC's Have Your Say messageboard? "What do you think about cheese?" "IT'S ABOUT TIME THIS DISCREDITED GOVERNMENT LISTENED ON IMMIGRATION"; "Do you like the smell of pine trees?" "THIS CORRUPT BUNCH OF ROBBER MCCLOWN WILL BE KICKED OUT, BRITAIN HAS SPOKEN, I AM GOING TO VOTE BNP IN FUTURE" and so on and so on forever. I'd last about five minutes, I think.)
As I always say, the BNP and its fans are good at piling on to all forums to create the impression that they're more popular than they actually are. If they were as popular as they appear to be from Daily Mail story comments, for example, then they would have got many more than just two MEPs last night. But they didn't. Yes, nearly a million people voted for a racist party last Thursday, but many, many millions more didn't. We are many; they are few. They'll always vote; we need to as well.
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