Publicly funded services are harmful if they are turned into weapons by reactionary biggots.
That classic leftist thing where you celebrate the imminent privatization of a publicly funded body. I'm sure they'll be a lot less transphobic when they're owned by the Sun or McKinsey or whatever and the institutional cachet of the BBC brand won't be used to even further embed TERF ideology into the media ecosystem of hell island. I'm not gonna defend the BBC (because it's a deeply compromised mouthpiece for imperialists and scum), but this is a really short-sighted analysis of a certified Not Good thing.
There's a fine line between criticism (which leftists, particularly Marxists, have a knack for) and contrarianism. The online left tends to stomp right on it a lot, comes with the territory.
If we're talking extending logic, the logic of the OP is that we should dismantle social services because they're used as a cudgel by the right against "welfare queens".
And yes. The business of revolution is to look at what is with discontent, to say "why is justice not present here?" and to act accordingly. Observe the horrors that surround you and be radicalized, and use your observations to radicalize others into the revolutionary struggle.
The Democrats are not a publicly funded entity, they are explicitly a corporate tool beholden entirely to the interests of capital. Forever and always, this is how it is. They are not established nor guaranteed by any sort of publicly governable body of law, they are a body of donors with a fan club. That some of them pay lip service to social good is an aberration, not a goal.
Also, I don't know where this "never feel good about anything" thing you keep saying comes from. I'm saying "don't be happy when publicly funded bodies are gutted in order to be replaced by yet one more ad-funded capitalist mouthpiece", and if you can't see the difference between those two ideas then I implore you to read theory. The BBC is not good, because the governments running it have been horrific, but the thing that the BBC is (a state-funded media organization at least nominally beholden to the public rather than to corporate interests, and which produces more free content than just the absolute shit "news" coverage) is good, and the situation will be materially worse (for Brits, anyway, though I could see a reasonable argument that it would better for colonized peoples [at least until the Baz Broadcasting Company replaces it with 24-hour immigrant panic]) when it dies.
Despair or radicalization. These are the choices. One is easy, the other is hard. It's not called "the struggle" because it's easy to do, it's because you are locked in combat with forces which seek to obliterate you at every turn (and they often succeed because they have the weight of arms and empire behind them).
The BBC have alienated a lot of people who would have fought for it to appease those who were always going to try to destroy it.
They lost me back during IndyRef. The amount of Westminster neo-colonial finger wagging was appalling and a real eye opener.
I was going to chime in with a similar take on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
The Tories and their Lib Dem/New Labour comrades have successfully alienated those people through governance changes that have destroyed the little editorial independence that existed in a post-Hutton Report world.
Back in 2010, I gave the corporation 10 years before privatisation and assumed it’d be done to a chorus of dismay. I should have given the Tories more credit than that, they have more time on their hands and are really fucking good at this sort of thing. Just wait until people complain about the wait times for the NHS in the next couple of years, and the Tories start making it easier to find “alternatives” with state-subsidised private health insurance…
BBC was once a part of our lives. Yet after their pedophile cover ups, failing to cover child grooming gangs, failing to call out the #charliehebdo murderers but acting like cowards and openly being biased again those whom voted Brexit. They are not representative of the British people.
BBC twists Reddit user's words
BBC pretty much ignores Telford child grooming scandal (BBC defends pedophiles, remember?)
BBC news has always been an imperialist bum rag and has recently taken a hard turn into bigotry, but the rest of what it produces especially its documentary and educational content is leagues better than what the vast majority of what corporate media is putting out in the anglosphere.
After it’s gutted, what replaces BBC news will not be less imperialist, or less of a reactionary weapon. The real effect of this bill will be to remove any hope of salvaging BBC news if a socdem/leftish government ever comes to power, the loss of all the educational and documentary content it was in the public interest but not maximally profitable to make and (the reason this is happening) letting capitalists make billions in the process of destroying the last free to air TV channel in the UK that doesn’t assault its viewers with advertisements.
I don’t see anything to celebrate in that.
The sitting government has an enormous amount of power over the BBC, that the Tories have been in power since 2010 is the main reason the BBC has spent the last 12 years getting increasingly reactionary.
The Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport directly appoints four of the 12 BBC Board members (its highest governing body), and writes its corporate charter, which, along with its funding must be re-approved by the sitting government at least once every 7 years.
The Tories aren't cutting the BBC's funding and airspace as some method of control, they already have full control of the BBC, they're doing it to make money and remove competition for Sky & ITV, and by selling it to reactionary capitalists ensure that the BBC (or at least whatever's occupying its airspace) will be reactionary and anti-labour even if they lose power, which is not the case now.
It's been like this all day. People are really pissed if you don't care about Murdoch owning pedo-news in the proper manner
I don't agree that it shouldn't be privatised.
"It" being the news and political programming.
I think we're actually better off if the state is banned from "journalism" on these topics. It won't stop them doing it through their private news sources but at least those won't have the legitimacy or respectability publicly owned things get. Public ownership of a tool for propaganda appears to hand the bourgeoisie a great weapon, one that would be nice if we held it but we don't.
Nothing BBC says is real either, so really it just puts everything on the same page
:yes-hahaha-yes-l:
:sicko-yes:
With labour leadership being openly transphobic, there's not even a viable political alternative.
Is it actually going? As an American, when I hear that a public service will be defunded in 5 years, I think, "Oh, did they just pass a spending bill for it?"
:trans-uno:
edit: we really do have an emoji for everything!! best site on the internet :duck-dance:
-
Follow this link to declare you no longer need a license. https://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/cs/no-licence-needed/about.app
-
Cancel your direct debit.
-
Defund the BBC. Don't fund pedophiles. Post a reply if you defunded the BBC.
-
I don't live in the U.K., which is probably part of why I have no strong feelings one way or another.
If it's overall a bad thing, it sounds like they have 5 years to do something about it?
I'd go a step further, by putting a 5 year timeline on it the Tories are in effect offering the UK's corporate media a deal.
"Get us elected again", they're saying, "and we'll sell you the BBC".
