The Policy Blender

The BBC is providing a reduced service today as it is being hit by strikes by members of the NUJ, Bectu and Amicus Unions. The broadcaster is shedding 2050 jobs over three years in a bid to save £355 million pounds a year.

Reports that the BBC was riddled with left wingers may have been proved incorrect as it was confirmed that Jeremy Clarkson is still an employee. The organisation does not recognise the allegations of "institutional leftism" reported last week and is keen to make peace with the striking comrades.

It is thought to be planning a wholesale makeover for the corporation. Amongst the mooted ideas are a possible name change from the nationalistic "British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC)" to the more inclusive "Peoples' Broadcasting Community (PBC)" and changing the logo current logo to represent the multi modal aspects if the peeb's output - a large star symbolising the common programming of the PBC and four smaller stars representing the four broadcasting classes: TV; Radio; Internet and Digital Services.


In other news, sales of the Guardian newspaper in the White City area slumped today and pubs around the area have abandoned their usual happy hour. Offcom has reported that the BBC seems to be operating at 850% efficiency without the striking workshy leftie dossers.

excellent article from today's Guardian -


Resume normal service

Leader
Monday May 23, 2005
The Guardian

It is difficult not to have mixed feelings about today's strike at the BBC. On the one hand, how pleasant, for once, not to begin the working day listening to John Humphrys hectoring another politician. And what an agreeable prospect awaits this evening of not having to end it with Jeremy Paxman sneering at one either. Here, too, is an industrial dispute in which the action seems to be only partly about the self-interest of those who are taking it. This is also a strike in which the continuing quality of the service offered to the public seems genuinely to have its part. This is a charge to which the BBC too often opens itself by its bad spending priorities. A current case: the BBC has recently spent a cool £1m of licence-payers' money on new weather forecast graphics that add little or nothing to the quality of service, yet the present job cuts will leave the world's most respected news corporation with just one journalist covering all of Germany, the most important country in Europe. Surely this is madness.
On the other hand, there is very little doubt that the BBC can afford to cut some of its wage costs. In its successive incarnations, the corporation has repeatedly shown a disturbing propensity to generate layers of middle management spread - whether they were the progress chasers and form-fillers of the Birt era or the often supernumerary editors and senior producers of the Dyke years. Greg Dyke was certainly liked by the staff, as his departure showed, but this was partly because the former director general indulged the staff and was a bad planner. This is, when all is said and done, not just a public broadcasting corporation but a week-in, week-out consumer of compulsory taxation from every household in the land. Most people who pay for the BBC earn a lot less than the people who are paid by it - and many of them have a lot less fun too. No amount of righteousness on the picket-line should distract from the truth that the BBC has a duty to trim the fat.

Today's strikers are likely to benefit from more sympathetic coverage from fellow journalists than they give to many less fashionable groups of workers. And they are likely to find their cause promoted for less idealistic reasons by anti-union broadcasting and media rivals of the BBC too. But this is an unnecessary strike. The director general, Mark Thompson, has not made a compelling case for the scale or speed of the 4,000 job cuts. Nor has he shown how they will lead to better programme making. Mr Thompson should get back to the negotiating table and the strikers back to work.

honestly, you lefties and your banning...

:-)

I guess capitalists have all the money - they don't need to strike over how much they're being paid. So, yeah, it's a left-wing thing to strike.

And I never really understood the point of striking over job cuts. Surely if you strike and the BBC continues to broadcast, you're demonstrating how they could manage without you anyway?

But striking saves entire industries - see mining.

Furthermore - I did suggest it was a left wing thing, but didn't say it was a bad thing. Like the Guardian article says, it means no Paxman this evening, and no Humphries this morning. We shouldn't ban striking if we're happy about it. I think they should strike more often - though I suppose I'm a bit miffed that there are lots of people being paid by a license fee I contribute to, and they're not actually doing anything to make interesting and informative TV for me.

And I didn't mean the thing about strikes - Im sure they have their place, and I'm sure the BBC's content and conditions will suffer today and demonstrate the worth of the workforce there, and that their views should be heard.

But I don't mind if they spend this evening running repeats of Blackadder.

I don't think it was striking that killed the mining, Ben. We didn't need the coal anymore (or could we get it cheaper elsewhere, or did it largely run out?). The firefighters and tube drivers struck (or is it striked) and we still have trains and fire engines.

Maybe strikes only work in industries that ten-year-old boys want to join? I can't imagine a racing-driver strike would close down Formula One, nor an Astronaut strike close down NASA.