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Jesus I despise Brexit.
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grufty jim
grufty jim
1978 posts

Re: Jesus I despise Brexit.
Oct 21, 2018, 21:29
I've been quite appalled by BBC News lately. I'd long been a champion of the beeb as an institution (for all its many and varied faults) but it has shifted quite dramatically over the past few years.

I lived in the UK for quite a long time and would often find myself defending the BBC and NHS when British people would complain about them... "They're far from perfect", I'd acknowledge, "but you've no idea how much better they are than almost everywhere else on the planet".

Something has gone terribly wrong.

I'm not for a moment suggesting the BBC was ever some radical organisation telling truth to power no matter the cost. It was far from that. The BBC has always basically been a reflection of the Old British establishment. Which means it was conservative (small 'c'), prudish, mildly repressed and repressive... all of that stuff.

But at the same time it was utterly resistant to the influence of commercial pressure. The licence fee gave it an independence from the encroachment of capital that no other major news organisation had. And because the values it reflected were rooted in a faded memory of the late 50s / early 60s they were dated and problematic, sure, but they were also a known quantity. And they were not subject to the fickle politics of the day. That's completely changed. The BBC editorial slant has taken some very odd twists and turns recently.

As an outsider looking in (but an outsider with a *lot* of British friends and one who knows the UK very well), the past 4 years have been a bit like watching the UK go mad. And instead of remaining that steadfast conservative bedrock it had always been, the BBC went mad right along with the rest of the establishment (and half the people).

It's very sad. Once you lose something like the BBC (or the NHS) in this modern world... the chances of getting it back are probably on the low side.
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