How About 'No'!

BBC News should be on streaming sites and social media to justify a new universal levy, the head of the corporation has said.The BBC is predominantly funded by the £180 annual licence fee, which is currently under review. Director-general Matt Brittin, the former head in Europe of Google, believes the corporation is 'held back' by the fee, which is 'no longer fit for purpose', and has suggested a household levy could be an alternative funding option.

So, to combat the fact that fewer and fewer people are paying for your service (legitimately or not) you want to force everyone to pay for it instead by putting it on general taxation? Congratulations on beating big Hollywood stars, young socialists and trans men to the top of the entitlement charts.

He told the BBC's Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg programme: 'What we need to look at is the current model. 'You pay the licence fee if you watch live TV or you're on iPlayer. I'd like to see reform that allows us to be where audiences are. 'I think BBC content should be on Netflix, on YouTube, on TikTok, on Spotify, and Instagram, and everywhere where audiences are. 'Particularly news, actually, which I think is part of disinfecting misinformation. It's our job to be everywhere.'

The BBC claiming to be against misinformation is a sick joke. 

Mr Brittin clarified that the universal household bill is just one of a number of ideas that are being discussed during the renewal process. He said that the model has been used in many other countries to fund public media and would ensure a level of fairness.

Are you considering a subscription model, so those who want your service can buy it? That’s the fairest option, surely? 

And when asked why everybody should pay the proposed charge, Mr Brittin said: 'Ninety-four per cent of households every month are consuming BBC content. That's incredible, yet only 80 per cent are paying. 'So there's a fairness issue there in terms of how we fund the BBC and I think that the principle is if we want a BBC that's for everyone, then it needs to be funded by everyone, and how you get that modernisation is critical.'

I'm not as hopeful as Longrider that the green paper conclusions will be heeded in the face of such rapacious entittlement. What say you, Reader? 

Narrator: 'It Can't'

Certainly not if it listens to people who write to the 'Guardian':

Your youth unemployment editorial (18 September) sees the crisis clearly, but reaches for the wrong tools. Placements, apprenticeships and work coaches cannot conjure jobs that do not exist. We need macro solutions to macro problems. Youth unemployment is not a crisis of skills or geography. It is insufficient government deficit spending. There is not enough money circulating to employ everyone who wants to work and that is a policy choice, not an accident.

O..kay…. 

Macroeconomists divide the economy into three sectors: government, households and businesses, and the rest of the world.

That’s four sectors, isn’t it? I mean, I’m not too good at maths but…

One sector’s spending is another sector’s income. Put simply, government spending is income for the non-government sectors.

With the UK running a persistent current account deficit, money flows continuously abroad.

 I hesitate to encroach on Tim’s territory, but this doesn’t sound right even to me…

Indeed, unemployment has long been used deliberately as an inflation management tool. As the US economist Stephanie Kelton notes, orthodox economic policy assumes that a certain amount of unemployment is necessary.

So what should Labour do? Not pay employers £3,000 to hire someone that the market won’t touch (an admission that demand is absent), but become the employer directly. A job guarantee, publicly funded and locally administered, would offer anyone a job at a living wage doing socially useful work.

Who decides what constitutes ‘socially useful’ work? 

It is not welfare. It is work.

Simon Ripton Co-founder, Resilient Economy CIC

But not all their readers are insane: 

It doesn’t take a graduate qualification in economics to see that Rachel Reeves’s increase in employers’ national insurance contributions has reduced their ability to take on new people. She has also created a timebomb – as, by reducing the number of new people getting jobs, she has also reduced the number of people able to start paying into pensions.

Susan West Quorn, Leicestershire

What pensions? They won’t be worth claiming if Bodybags isn’t kicked out of No 10! 

Tweet Of The Month

And it's a bumper crop again!

Blog Comment Of The Month

Spotted at Samizdata:

Post Title Of The Month

Longrider on Ring doorbell cams:

Quote Of The Month

Tom Paine reminisces on our finest generation:

"My father’s father was funny too – on a good day. When a friend asked if he was “norry” (local dialect for bad-tempered) because of his injuries, he cheerfully replied that no, he had always been norry. His main problem with being crippled (he loathed the euphemism “disabled”) was that it stopped him playing sports. He had played football for his town, cricket for his county and table tennis (“don’t call it ping-pong”) for his country. Losing the ability to play was a serious blow to his competitive nature."

Post Of The Month

 Nick Drew from Capitalists@Work takes a fortuitously timed trip.  

AKA The 'Do Your ******* Job Right' Law....

The NHS is expanding Martha's Rule to all hospital emergency departments in England to help patients and families challenge staff and seek a rapid review of their care if they want. It is named after Martha Mills, who died aged 13 in 2021 after developing blood poisoning, or sepsis. Her family's concerns were not listened to, which later prompted her parents, Merope and Paul, to change that culture by creating the rule.

Good luck changing a culture that sees one’s customers as an inconvenience at best and irrelevant to getting paid at worst.

Patients, loved ones and staff in A&E units will be able to call a dedicated phone number to trigger an urgent review if a patient's condition is deteriorating and they are concerned this is not being taken on board.

And be on hold for half a day, before getting it answered by someone for whom clear English is an unrealised ambition? 

The nationwide expansion should be complete by March 2028, after a trial at seven trusts. It is already being rolled out in all inpatient wards.

Questioned whether busy A&E staff might struggle with a sudden influx of calls, Fowler said this had not played out in the recent tests. "Actually people have used it very sensibly," he added. "We've tested it through winter and across this busy summer, and therefore I am not concerned that when we roll this out we are going to be overwhelmed with calls."

No, I don’t suppose you are concerned, you’ve probably got private health insurance! 

Less Edifying Than Two Bald Men Fighting Over A Comb

That's the scrapping goining on in the States right now over an incident at a lesbian bar. Let Arwa Madhawi (Guardian columnist and author) tell us all about it:

Here we go: those shenanigans, reported in a viral story by the Boston Globe, don’t represent us all. #NotAllLesbians.

But, of course, I shouldn’t be centering myself here.

Oh, don’t be modest, sweetie! What else do you write a column for, after all? 

Nor should I be assuming knowledge in a way which reinforces oppressive hegemonic structures. So let me hold space to share the details of everything that has transpired with all you folx reading who have not had the privilege of devouring every detail of the drama already.

Yes, please do, it sounds fascinating! 

The story begins at the Last Ditch Bar and Arts Venue, which opened up last year as a place for “dykes, transsexuals, gender freaks, workers, and their friends”. One of the bar’s key selling points was that it required KN-95 masks (“or better”) at all times, to accommodate the immunocompromised and the Covid-conscious. Well I say “selling points”, but a big issue with Last Ditch is it didn’t do much selling. In keeping with its values, it had an open-door policy, stating that nobody would be turned away if they couldn’t pay the cover charge, including “unhoused people”. This was very generous of them, but also a formula for losing money.

Who could have predicted that? Oh, wait, everybody who lives in the real world, not the fantasy world these people like to live in! And when the inevitable happened…

In order to try to stop hemorrhaging cash so they could continue to pay rent, the venue eventually decided to move to a mask-optional policy. This caused an uproar. A sample comment on Instagram: “I hope your venue gets firebombed for robbing my fellow immunocompromised people of their Saturday plans just to scrape extra revenue from ablists [sic].”

Narcissists are always the most insufferably entitled people.

And from there the story wades deeper and deeper into “surely this isn’t real, surely this is a psyop by rightwingers who want to make the queer community look unhinged” territory.

Speaking for the right wingers, why would we bother, when nothing we could come up with could ever top the average everyday drama you wallow in?

An emergency Zoom meeting was declared and lasted over three hours. A performer called Soe Noire accused Jackie Matellian, the last remaining operator of the venue (the other founders left; one so they could enrol in clown school), of shedding “WHITE THEY THEM TEARS”.

Strange how the ‘be kind’ people always pivot to the things they love to accuse everyone else of, racism, sexism etc…

The bar was not “a safe environment nor interested in revolutionary praxis”, Noire added.

Nope, I haven’t a clue what that means either… 

Matellian, who is working four different jobs in a desperate attempt to pay off the $50,000 loan for the business, was contrite. “There’s conflict, but we just hope that there’s more repair than conflict,” she told the Globe.

Who the hell loaned her the money!?! 

Alas, it’s the conflict (and the lesbians) which has made this story go so viral. It fits squarely into a genre I will call “moderately ridiculous lefty infighting”, which is beloved by sensible centrist authors and the rightwing press.

Speaking again for them, yes, yes we do! 

But while there is a lot of absurdity in the Last Ditch saga, I think it’s worth stressing that it is still ultimately a story about a woman who tried to create an inclusive space where some of the most vulnerable people in society could feel accepted.

Well, I suppose that’s one take on it… 

It’s easy to laugh at all the shenanigans....

Yes indeed! 

...but the world would be a lot better if it had more people like Jackie Matellian in it: kind, well-meaning people who try to live their values.

I can’t see there’s any shortage of them…successful left wing businesses are like giant pandas, and just as likely to survive in the wild without human assistance! 

Narcissists who use a marginalized identity as cover for bad behaviour can find themselves drawn to places like Last Ditch because it’s the only space in which they will be indulged.

Nah, they are indulged at ‘The Guardian’ too… 

Ah, An Advert For A Company Disguised As 'News'....

Are you on the same page as your colleagues, or does their office chatter leave you scratching your head? Experts at instantprint quizzed 2,000 UK office workers about how well they understand each other's workplace vocabulary.

The results revealed that 68 per cent of workers regularly encounter phrases they do not understand.

It's not new, as was foretold in musicals:

🎶Are certain words creeping into his conversation? 

Words like 'swell?" And 'so's your old man?"🎶

Oh, let’s have a look then: 

'Rage applying' – the practice of applying for multiple jobs after becoming frustrated with your current role – was correctly identified by 81 per cent of Gen Z workers. 

However, just 29 per cent of Baby Boomers knew what this was. 

And how many cared? 

'Coffee badging' – showing up at the office just long enough to be seen and grab a coffee – was even harder to decipher. 

Only 21 per cent of Baby Boomers and 34 per cent of Gen X knew what this was. 

100 per cent of the could identify it as a good way to get sacked, though! 

Other phrases that left older generations stumped included 'Bare Minimum Monday', 'Career Cushioning', and 'Quiet Vacationing'.

It's all so tedious, isn't it?