Letters - Thursday, January 27, 2022

Re: It would be a big loss if we lost BBC (Your Say, January 24). My views about the good old BBC are somewhat at variance.

The BBC has become an anachronism, bloated and fat, as it continues to gorge itself on public money, with the never-ending repeats.

It is also manifestly apparent that is increasingly becoming woke, with its virtue signalling!

There is too much waste, especially on salaries. What Gary Lineker earns is the stuff of legend. On outside broadcasts, the BBC use far too many people, as opposed to other broadcasters. And why do they even bother with Eurovision? Another jolly for the Beeb, at our expense.

The bias at the BBC is staggering beyond belief! Their coverage and reporting of Brexit was disgraceful and it was done without shame. Pro-EU, anti-Brexit, pro-Labour and anti-Donald Trump. How often did you hear the phrase “In spite of Brexit?”

Question Time, which used to be a serious programme for balanced debate discussion, gradually became a hot house for lefties and anti-Brexit supporters. The BBC’s definition or idea of a balanced audience was to have a panel that had four of them pro-EU, with one lone voice, daring to stand in the face of ridicule in the face of a partisan, hostile audience.

I have not watched QT for nearly three years now. The BBC have become obsessed in box-ticking, diversity and steeped in political correctness. Their so-called comedy is left wing and has been sanitised to the extent that is not even remotely funny. Bereft of ideas and imagination on what really makes people laugh, over Christmas the BBC resorted to showing Morecambe and Wise shows from more 50 years ago!

The BBC has lost a lot of live sport over the years. Test Match cricket, the Grand National, Ryder Cup golf and the Boat Race are just a few examples. Admittedly, the BBC have lost out (due to money) to the likes of Sky and other TV networks.

Does the BBC really need all those radio stations and the likes of BBC 3 and 4?

To be fair to the BBC, they have in the past produced some good programmes, worthy of the licence fee. But they have also churned out a lot more dross.

I cite a recent example. On Saturday, January 22, there were – The Weakest Link, celebrity edition; The Wall Versus Celebrities; Pointless Celebrities and The Wheel, where another seven celebs take part. Need I say more?

If this is the best that the Beeb can do, then maybe it is time to scrap the licence fee? As far having a national state broadcaster is concerned, they have to do better than this. If they can’t, then it is time to let them go.

In a nation where there are hundreds of TV channels to choose from, is it really fair that people have to pay a fee to watch any of them, just to subsidise one outdated broadcaster? The BBC is no longer fit for purpose, it is supposed to be impartial and report without favour or bias.

It doesn’t!

It’s time to have a clear out, reform the BBC, and for it to take its chances with the other commercial television companies.

Will Heyes

via email

SOCIETY

End of the signature

What is happening to the integrity of the personal signature?

A signature should be distinctive, as difficult to copy as possible, and at least be capable of producing the response of Warden Barrowclough in the TV comedy Porridge: “Well, it certainly looks like mine”.

However, nowadays, we are increasingly asked to ‘sign’ with the end of a finger on the glass surface of a tablet (an unhygienic practice in itself).

Try as I may, I cannot produce anything other than an anonymous wavy line, which I could not recognise as mine a few minutes later, let alone at any future date.

What worth or legal authority can these scribblings have?

I assume that eventually technology will come up with something more secure, for example, use of a fingerprint, but for now the only solution that I can come up with for me to regain any control is to do what many people had to do in days of yore and make a spidery looking ‘X’, followed by the printed words ‘C. Ball. His Mark’. That is assuming that the doorstep delivery person will hang around long enough for me to do so.

C J Ball

via email

GLOBAL POLITICS

Russia, China are right wing

Neither China or Russia are now communist, as both accept that there does not have to be common ownership of everything. They have actually been transformed into something quite different.

What both seem to believe in is the total subservience of everybody and every business to the state.

This is the ‘National Socialist’ model – not the communist model.

They have both, in effect, become right wing totalitarian single party republics.

The trouble with dictatorships of this kind is that historically they have to justify their existence, and frequently do so by getting their people to unite against a common enemy – real or imagined – and this has often led to ‘unnecessary’ wars.

Paul Andrews

via email

POLITICS

Attack on Government

One doesn’t have to be an expert to see that union leaders being against workers getting back to their places of employment is absolutely nothing to do with their health and safety.

Like most other things that have occurred during the pandemic, it is just a thinly veiled attack on the Conservative Government.

Paul Morley

via email

POLITICS

Schoolchild behaviour

Is it only me who is disgusted by the behaviour of many opposition MPs at Prime Minister’s Questions?

Watching the latest debacle, I was shouting at the TV.

There are many economic and other serious problems for Parliament to discuss.

Surely we are entitled to expect more grown-up behaviour from our opposition parties rather than the schoolchild behaviour we are seeing at the moment?

Hilary Andrews

via email

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