BBC EMPLOYEES REPRESENTED BY THE NUJ, BECTU AND UNITE, are set to blackout our screens when David Cameron makes his conference speech next week. The unions are calling out ‘our members’ to protect their golden pensions that the license fee payer has subsidised. The timing of the series of strikes is however, ‘purely coincidental’ according to Ian Pollock, a junior journalist at the BBC, and a member of the NUJ, who seems to be the spokesman for his union on the forthcoming suicide.
Many of the BBC’s most famous names have decided to put pen to paper to write a spirited defence of free speech and impartiality at the world’s greatest self-regarding broadcasting institution. The likes of Huw Edwards, Jeremy Paxman, Jim Naughtie, Nick Robinson and Jon Sopel have all signed the following missive:
“Dear all, [the unions]
We would like to raise our serious concerns about holding a 48-hour strike during the Conservative party conference including on the day of the prime minister’s speech – it risks looking unduly partisan – particularly when none of the other party conferences have been targeted.
Impartiality is the watchword for the BBC’s political coverage, and we would not wish to give a misleading impression that this is something we no longer value highly.
This is no comment on the proposed retrospective changes to the pension scheme which has caused widespread anger in the BBC, not is there any disagreement with the principle of strike action.
However, we are clear that the choice of strike dates is counterproductive.
We understand that there have been discussions about this issue at branch level but many of us were unable to attend because we were working at the other party conferences, hence this letter to make our position clear”.
THIS ALMOST CRINGING AND WEAK SPIRITED defence of the journalistic ideal by journalists whose interviewing techniques with politicians often boarder on the ruthless (much to the public’s pleasure): but whose standards have now fallen well short of this paradigm as they go cap in hand to their trade union brethren to plead for absolution for crossing the much sanctified picket line. How any politician can fear these people after such a wilfully insipid offering as a defence of their profession is beyond comprehension.
Where by the way were the likes of John Humphrey, and Andrew Marr? Their names do not appear on the roll call of the BBC’s great and good at the bottom of this correspondence. Were they asked to sign this pitiful communiqué?
The BBC has always had a Left of centre bias, just as every public service institution will always have to have in this country. The private sector is often seen as the sector that harbours the greedy capitalist by those working in the public sector.
This is especially true of one Ian Pollock, the NUJ representative mentioned above. It is to the likes of him that our crème de la crème of BBC journalism addressed their letter; a letter which invoked the following response from Mr Pollock:
“Hi,
According to the records of the London BBC branch…11 signatories do not appear to be members of the NUJ.
Taken alongside the recent 9-1vote for strikes it is clear where the concerns of the vast majority of NUJ members lie; with their pensions and not with any temporary inconvenience to day-to-day broadcasting.
In addition, the points you raised have received almost no support ag recent union meetings.
Your letter therefore conveys a tiny minority concern.
Frankly, I do not take kindly to non-members trying to unpick democratically taken decisions of the NUJ.
There is a simple fact that you appear to be overlooking: the other political conferences would have been too but fell without our scope because of the long-winded niceties of calling strikes.
Not one NUJ member anywhere, to my knowledge, has suggested we target the Tories ‘because we don’t like them’. They simply happen to be in the first line of any number of high profile broadcasting events.
If you have any better tactical suggestions for conducting the strikes then all NUJ representatives will be glad to hear them.
But I tell you that taking Shaun the Sheep cartoons of the air will not cut the mustard.
Ian Pollock, NUJ BBC London. Branch chairman”
I ALMOST ADMIRE COMRADE POLLOCK after reading the plea from the BBC’s finest that sought to butter him and his ilk up within broadcasting house. At least Ian Pollock submits a far more sterner and convincing defence of his and his union’s position than did the signatories of principled journalism who sought to appeal to the likes of comrade Pollock.
I am not a supporter of the BBC. It is a publicly funded institution, which means that no matter what the political proclivities of those forced to pay the license fee - like any other form of taxation – they are forced to pay on penalty of a fine or imprisonment.
Yet even the current Director General has had the grace, in the light of a conservative government, to admit that the corporation has been, in the past, an organisation with a Left-wing bias.
Like Ed Milliband, who hopes to sweep away much of New Labour’s ghastly past by admitting its many failures; so the BBC’s Director General Mark Thompson hopes to do the same for the BBC. Thomson’s mistake however was to attribute the Left bias to the past, while proclaiming that the BBC today is a different beast altogether.
But then comes Ian Pollock and the NUJ, Bectu and UNITE to pour cold water over such a claim; but it was, after all, only a claim made to try and secure further increases to the licence fee.
If the BBC unions fulfil their promise to disrupt the Conservative party conference next week, then both the government as well as those license fee payers who resent their compulsory payments will be drawn ever further towards choice rather than pressure.
I have been, at 60, a life-long supporter of the Labour Party, but at the last election I fell afoul of Cameron’s rhetoric, just as I had done with Wilson, Callaghan, Foot, Kinnock, Smith and Blair – but Gordon Brown was, however, the final straw for me.
THE BBC, IF IT IS AS popular as it claims to be, should manage quite well without the compulsory payments demanded by the state in the form of taxation. If the BBC is as well-liked and as renowned throughout the world as she advertises herself as being, then why should she be supported through taxation?
The BBC should once and for all be set adrift to either survive or sink. If the broadcaster wishes to continue then it must be made to compete with pay-per view channels like Sky. The BBC must become a pay-per view channel.
The BBC’s reputation has never been tested in the commercial world. So any claim it makes for itself is pitiable, unless it invites freely given subscriptions rather than a compulsory licence fee.
Under such a system the likes of Ian Pollock would be without any kind of influence. He would be nothing more than what he is, a local branch chairman of a trade union, emboldened by his pigmy status as a London branch secretary of the NUJ.
No comments:
Post a Comment