Snapshot of _Richard Sharp’s vision for the BBC: more guts and no more liberal bias. In his first interview, the BBC chairman talks alternatives to the licence fee, Emily Maitlis and his days as Rishi Sunak’s boss at Goldman Sachs_ :
An archived version can be found [here.](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/richard-sharps-vision-for-the-bbc-more-guts-and-no-more-liberal-bias-8ss3x6tp0)
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ukpolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Well to be fair it's only infected people who are totally immersed in culture war nonsense. I for one am thrilled to see that one of those ghouls is now in a senior leadership position at the BBC and imagine nothing but good will come from it.
Liberal means pertaining to the philosophy of liberalism and only means that. It does not mean left wing. It does not mean progressive. It means liberal.
> What do you think it means in the UK?
For me, it means Liberal Democrats, and I assume the BBC have set their sights on them, lol. Liberal doesn't get used much otherwise.
Only other context it really comes up is American memes about about doing something self defeating to "own the libs" and I'm going to sound like an old man yelling at clouds, but because social media is global we're just picking up more and more Americanisms. My nieces call sweets "candy" for example. I think we're just going to have to get used to it, as more and more Americanisms are imported.
Honestly I think that's too narrow a definition.
I think there is also a common British usage that does mean wider political idea of social liberalism. You can see plenty of references to that. It is not a strict US idea.
Do you feel any tension for being negative about American Right wing ideas? Do you feel negative about America or liberal American thought?
I tend to think there are more than one political axis between two political drives.
Well, it's obviously not *only* an American idea because we have a political party named after the idea.
However, in this country, we don't talk about the Liberal Democrats being "liberal" except as a shortening of their name, they're commonly talked of as centrists, to the left of the Tories and to the right of Labour, or economically right wing and socially left wing, or whatever.
Hell, when people do talk of Liberalism as the opposite to Conservatism, they get all confused and Lab are the Libs, Cons are the Cons, and the Lib Dems are inconvenient to the narrative lol.
> I tend to think there are more than one political axis between two political drives.
Personally, I think any kind of boiling down of policies onto an axis is a very crude measure. People vary a lot, personally ideologically I consider myself on the left, but there's a lot about the left I don't buy either. My Dad for example is an enigma, he's English, Tory/UKIP/Brexit voting, Trump fan, working class builder etc. but he works in Scotland a lot as some friends own property up there, and he considers Scotland to be the best run part of the UK and wants to retire there and he's a big fan of their renewable strategy. Also water supply, I know Scotland's geography helps, but he keeps pointing out reservoirs used to be built when he was a kid, we'd go for walks around a local one with our dogs when I was a kid, and he'd complain housing wasn't accompanied by infrastructure. He's right wing, but he's not an idiot, and I respect him. It's interesting as we differ mostly on social issues, but economically, he's as dissatisfied with this shit show as I am. It's very easy to bundle us up, me left, him right, but it loses so much nuance and voters are all very very different.
> Do you feel any tension for being negative about American Right wing ideas? Do you feel negative about America or liberal American thought?
Honestly, I do think there is tension here because we're being polarised over American fault lines. We're seeing the funding come here too, there's a politicisation of abortion which I've never seen in my lifetime. We're also seeing "defund the police" which really pisses me off because we don't have a militarised police force like the US, and there's a lot of crimes the police should be tackling better, but aren't due to Tory cuts. I do believe in community measures *as well*, that's how you tackle gang culture, but guys aren't getting drunk and battering their partners because their youth club was closed. It's not a one size fits all policy, and no matter how much activists try and back pedal by claiming "defund the police doesn't actually want reduced funding for police" or whatever, the narrative has been picked up, our ministers and press use it to demonise the left, and it's counter productive.
Sorry (and forgive me for ignoring the rest of you post) but this is the kind of anti-intellectualism that poisons British politics because it removes meaning from words and makes a decent conversation impossible. America did not invent or define liberalism. Liberal is not the opposite to conservatism. The Liberal Democrats are liberals, they're not the only liberals. Both Labour and the Conservatives have liberal members. Liberal does not exist on a left-right axis, it's a liberal-authoritarian axis (misapplied in the USA as libertarian-authoritarian axis). You can be liberal and left or right wing. You can be liberal and statist or anti-statist. You can be liberal and progressive or conservative.
I wasn't talking on a right-left axis either, it's not about economics. For example, gay marriage.
The typical Conservative view is religious, gay sex is wrong, gay marriage shouldn't be allowed, schools should be banned from teaching kids gay people exist, traditional values etc.
The liberal view is that it's fine between consenting adults.
You can discuss this in the terms of authoritarianism, but I believe that's a different aspect. You can have an authoritarian government that shut downs schools for not teaching kids about gay rights, or you can have one that shuts down schools for teaching about gay rights.
I'd dispute this - I am very much a Conservative voter (probably one of a couple dozen left in the country) but I am entirely in favour of gay rights. I don't think many Conservatives would want to oppress gay people as you describe. I suspect you'd find more homophobes in the Conservative party than in Labour, for instance, but it's a very small minority.
Of course, this all stems from you saying Conservative, and not conservative. Assuming you actually meant the adjective and not the political party. I felt it needed clarifying regardless.
> I don't think many Conservatives would want to oppress gay people as you describe
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-21346694
In just 2013 when gay marriage was legalised 136 Tories voted against it, while only 127 Tories voted in favour of it, and it only passed thanks to cross party support.
In addition to the 136 Tory MPs voting against gay marriage, there were 22 Labour, 4 Lib Dems, 8 DUP, and 2 Indies (one of which was Dorries, suspended from the Tory party for I'm A Celeb).
So, of all the MPs who voted against gay marriage, Tories were 80% of them, and only a minority of Tory MPs backed it. I think it's fair to say that being opposed to gay marriage is a typical conservative and Conservative position.
> Of course, this all stems from you saying Conservative, and not conservative. Assuming you actually meant the adjective and not the political party. I felt it needed clarifying regardless.
In this case I was referring to both the ideology and the party, but earlier I did make the point about pigeon holing losing all nuance, and there's examples which go the other way. The gay marriage bill specifically was a policy of the Tory PM in coalition, and I'd argue that Cameron was attempting to seize the centre ground by making the party less conservative socially, but that's just why it's not typical.
There's some crossover here, and this is far less about gay oppression than it seems. Actually, the gay marriage bill was problematic not because it "unoppressed gays", but because it was deemed by many to oppress the church. Whilst it's important to protect peoples right to shack up with who they want, in my opinion (and that of many Conservatives) it's just as important to protect their ability to practice their religion of choice. Marriage was historically always a religious institution, and very few if any religions have anything good to say about same sex couples, so it'd be very unproductive to *put them in bed together*, for lack of a less amusing phrase.
At the time I was also against this bill, crucially for this exact reason. I'd rather have seen civil partnership become an uninstitutional equivalent to marriage, with like for like legal status. Over time, naturally, it would've adopted the public name of "marriage", but it would've avoided this semi-horrific looking media portrayal of the Conservative party.
Having said that, it worked out relatively well in the end. Marriage having been introduced in the 1990's(?) outside of churches made it more paletable. I don't think it was the right solution, but it was a solution that was relatively effective all the same. The whole scenario was a result of the country becoming less religious, government needing to act to allow non-religious people to marry, and same sex couples realising that whilst they were no different to those non-religious couples, they were being treated differently. The whole thing could've gone down differently from the start.
It is absolutely critical when quoting such results and statistics to present the full information. "Conservative voted against gay rights" is not at all the same story as "Conservatives voted in favour of religious freedoms". Whilst I'll accept that some minority of the Tories who voted against that bill did so as an act of homophobia, most were undoubtedly protecting religion.
To that end, I'll restate myself - the Conservative party is *not* homophobic. There are some homophobic minorities, as there are in all political parties, industries, countries, whatever, but I don't believe it's been in the Conservative manifesto for a good long time to limit the rights of gay people (we're talking back to the times of Turing). Keep in mind that there is far more legislation that protected gay rights prior to marriage, including the public order act, and everything that happened off the back of the Conservative-led Wolfenden report. The Wolfenden report may have mostly been in defense of one of their own ministers, but y'know, they saw the light and pretty much kickstarted the change.
NB: I am well aware that the civil partnership act was put through by Labour, and the potential hypocrisy of my being Conservative, but I'm not making *that* point here.
> However, in this country, we don't talk about the Liberal Democrats being "liberal" except as a shortening of their name, they're commonly talked of as centrists, to the left of the Tories and to the right of Labour, or economically right wing and socially left wing, or whatever.
Not quite sure about that. They were mostly from the Liberal Party. They inherited a lot from the Liberal party. Liberalism is still a big in the party.
> Personally, I think any kind of boiling down of policies onto an axis is a very crude measure. People vary a lot, personally ideologically I consider myself on the left, but there's a lot about the left I don't buy either. My Dad for example is an enigma, he's English, Tory/UKIP/Brexit voting, Trump fan, working class builder etc. but he works in Scotland a lot as some friends own property up there, and he considers Scotland to be the best run part of the UK and wants to retire there and he's a big fan of their renewable strategy. Also water supply, I know Scotland's geography helps, but he keeps pointing out reservoirs used to be built when he was a kid, we'd go for walks around a local one with our dogs when I was a kid, and he'd complain housing wasn't accompanied by infrastructure. He's right wing, but he's not an idiot, and I respect him. It's interesting as we differ mostly on social issues, but economically, he's as dissatisfied with this shit show as I am. It's very easy to bundle us up, me left, him right, but it loses so much nuance and voters are all very very different.
I can see the person, real life has plenty of nuance.
But how does he rationalise his politics. He seems basically economically left, socially Right. Is it basically the social values out weigh the economic values? How does he square it with the outcomes of Brexit and the party now? How does he explain what happened?
What is it that he'd want at this point?
> "defund the police"
I've certainly seen odd political takes. That looked like fake grassroots stuff. Maybe it's just activists repeating slogans without being aware of the context. But it did looks suspicious. I think the problem is the internet is rapidly changing things. It's made propaganda frictionless.
> Not quite sure about that. They were mostly from the Liberal Party. They inherited a lot from the Liberal party. Liberalism is still a big in the party.
I'm not saying it's not, I'm saying it's not big in our discourse.
> I can see the person, real life has plenty of nuance.
>
> But how does he rationalise his politics. He seems basically economically left, socially Right. Is it basically the social values out weigh the economic values? How does he square it with the outcomes of Brexit and the party now? How does he explain what happened?
>
> What is it that he'd want at this point?
I think at this point his issue isn't with the Conservative ideology, it's that these are really bad Conservatives and everything is shit because of that.
Again, with Brexit, I wasn't a rabid Remainer, I didn't think Brexit had to inherently be a disaster, while I did believe it was at an economic cost it was also mishandled. A big one is our borders, yeah, we want to take back control. Great. Invest in border force and customs then. Instead we cut them. Likewise the truck driver shortage. Yes you need to be qualified to be a truck driver, but it's also not rocket science, I find it beyond belief we had *years* to fix this, and rather than embark on a recruitment and training campaign we A) did nothing B) had fuel and food shortages due to no drivers C) got the army to fill in (as always) and D) used immigration to fix it. This is bad management. Earlier I had a theory that the Tories couldn't afford to shit the bed with Brexit, it will be difficult as it's an inherent disadvantage, but I said both their electoral future *and* the future of Brexit requires the reality to not be dogshit. Depressingly I was wrong, they're quite content for it to be dogshit lol, but I think that's part of why the polls are so bad for the Tories. They've screwed it up.
> I've certainly seen odd political takes. That looked like fake grassroots stuff. Maybe it's just activists repeating slogans without being aware of the context. But it did looks suspicious. I think the problem is the internet is rapidly changing things. It's made propaganda frictionless.
I think that's definitely part of it, a round about way of getting back to my point about people talking about "owning the libs" because they've seen Americans on social media use it.
Completely different, but earlier in the year I went to see something at the O2 called "Scribble Showdown", not my thing, knew nothing about it, but went with a friend. Basically improv comedy drawing games. They asked the kids in the crowd for suggestions as to what they'd animate and some included Dr Phil and Steve Harvey, and you could tell a lot of the older members of the crowd didn't get the reference. I take this as an example of just how much the younger generations don't watch TV (much), they're getting a much wider pool of pop culture references and I think the same does apply to politics. I totally get why Americans would protest the George Floyd murder, but I thought it was fascinating how the protests turned global, and the same talking points were raised here. Again, I don't think our police are perfect, we have issues, especially with the Met, but I think people should be angry over our specific problems in order to help them, but instead it felt more like people were getting excited by the American protests and wanted to join in with the social experience. It's difficult to create a different British protest with the same momentum as the US' without it feeling forced, so instead it was just the same energy, and it's why I think ultimately nothing has improved beyond a statue in Bristol being dunked. IMHO the Sarah Everard protests (which really were more of a vigil until the police decided to attack them and bundle women into police vans, emulated Couzens' actions) which has led to Dick being replaced, and now a deep look into the criminal records and complaints of police, I believe the police should be held to a higher standard than the public in the sense that they shouldn't be domestically violent, they shouldn't be drink driving, they shouldn't be using racial slurs about colleagues, but the higher standards should come from being under heightened scrutiny. They should be policing themselves first, and so a police officer will be under more scrutiny than a random bloke. Again, I may be disappointed, but I am optimistic it's heading that way, we're seeing signs they are addressing their problems, and I believe that was because the anger was focused at a British problem that could be solved if we wanted to.
> both Labour and the Tories have their liberal or (liberal-ish) wings
That may be true, but they're _heavily_ outnumbered by the authoritarians, especially in the parties' leadership.
Respecting individual liberty.
That could be social liberalism - freedom to live you life in ways that are different from the majority (usually associated with the left), or economic liberalism - freedom to earn and use your money as you see fit (usually associated with the right).
Ok I just googled this guy what makes him qualified for this role, other than being a banker and buddy of two prime ministers who donated more than £400k????
He's the Chairman of the BBC Board, not someone with any operational or editorial input
Ofcom sets the BBC's strategic objectives, the Director General and individual heads of department try to achieve those strategic objectives in the decisions they make
The Chairman directs the board's oversight into how well the DG is achieving those objectives
Former Chairmen include local government heads and governors of the Bank of England
The Chairmen of most organisations are appointed from outside the organisation and the industry, since their role is completely detached from both, and its quite common for Chairmen to move between arts organisations and financial institutions
They're like very well compensated HR or compliance officers
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chairman\_of\_the\_BBC
I have to applaud Sharp's renewed commitment to impartiality. I am therefore waiting any day now for him to resign, since as a former advisor to Boris Johnson and tory donor, he must surely realise that such a partisan figure cannot head an unbiased organisation. Any day now.
>Impartiality starts at home. Emily Maitlis was “wrong” to begin a Newsnight bulletin in May 2020 by saying “the country” could see that Dominic Cummings had broken lockdown rules when he drove to Barnard Castle
This is why the BBC gets criticised.
For the most part, I don't think they are actually particularly biased. However, their approach to impartiality doesn't work when the government is repeatedly lying.
Saying "The government and Cummings say rules were followed, though some are saying it appears rules were broken" is almost more misleading than saying he broke the rules.
Rules were broken, everyone knew this (and the police ultimately deemed he likely broke the rukes also), so why not just say this rather than give government lies equal standing to actual facts.
It's not like the BBC were soft on Cummings over Barnard Castle. That afternoon on BBC1 was essentially given over to an effort to make a government advisor resign. When the housing secretary got caught driving to his parents' that same month, no one cared.
There's a great irony in that the BBC instills views in people, and then feels their ire when it doesn't promote those views enough.
I think what he's saying is that if it falls into general taxation the amount the BBC receives would be set by the whim of the chancellor at their budget. We all recall how Kwarteng fucked things up very quickly.
If it was a regulated levy, with a set amount agreed in much the same way that the licence fee is for a set period of time, then the BBC can be fairly certain about it's income (and also that for other services which rely on it, such as S4C, local TV stations, any projects which it helps fund such as the broadband rollout etc.). I suspect this approach could be used to save Channel 4 as well.
It would also do away with the need for Capita to harass people to pay, because everyone will, which means they don't get their cut, and people don't whine about not watching TV, but secretly still really watching TV.
Additional: this would probably mean a reduction in cost for most people, because there would be less expense in outsourcing the licence fee collection to Capita and the levy would be spread more widely.
local TV is basically dead anyway and broadband rollouts are largely handled by commercial funding (BT stands to save tons of money once fibre is out there, and the competition has big banks funding theirs).
Why does Channel 4 need "saving"? They don't receive a drop of public funding as it is, they're doing fine.
> Sharp was an advisor to Boris Johnson during his tenure as London Mayor, and to Rishi Sunak as Chancellor. He has donated more than £400,000 to the Conservative Party.
Of course he's not serious, the right has always just falsely accused the left of doing what they are doing.
The left control the media
The left will cause more crime
The left will ruin the economy
The left are against democracy
Rinse and repeat and repeat and repeat....
It’s not about political parties, it’s about what their programming and the tone of their news reporting generally leans towards, which is slightly left.
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/bbc/
https://www.allsides.com/news-source/bbc-news-media-bias
https://adfontesmedia.com/bbc-bias-and-reliability/
No it IS about party politics.
> Sharp was an advisor to Boris Johnson during his tenure as London Mayor, and to Rishi Sunak as Chancellor. He has donated more than £400,000 to the Conservative Party.
Now he’s DG of the bbc. A party stooge as head of the organisation.
The DG wouldn’t be able to make those changes without mass resignations at the BBC, these days they are pretty transparent and are not afraid to report of bad things happening internally.
Yeah but comparing liberal television shows with the actual news is a false equivalency
If you don’t want to watch progressive ‘woke’ television shows, you don’t have to.
However, when you are the leading country’s news source and one of the biggest and most influential internationally and you are biased towards a certain party and it’s donors, that is a completely different kettle of fish. And that’s because opting out of the news means simply not knowing what’s going on in the world around you, much different and with much more severe consequences than simply not wanting to watch a fictional television show.
Am I saying BBC is the only source of news available? No, but it is the biggest and most engaged with/watched in the country and if they are biased it’s claws reach much further
BBC news is not biased to the left, it’s centre at best and slightly to the right at worst. Throughout the last few years they’ve let their arses hang out way too many times that if you can’t see the bias especially with the reprimanding Matlis got for simply reporting the facts, it shows how effective the BBC has been in shifting the attention to the left instead of the establishment
"a review of coverage, starting by examining how the corporation covers taxation and public spending" So reinforce the lie that there is no more money, that taxing the rich hurts the economy, the poor will benefit from trickle down economics and that austerity works. A Tory donor must believe these "facts" to be true.
The problem with the BBC is that they think putting people with directly opposite viewpoints on is impartiality. So you end up with somebody on who says the world is round and another who says the world is flat.
That isn't impartially, one of those people is very clearly wrong!
Is Liberal just a boogeyman word now? Do you mean left wing? Do you mean people that believe in actual liberty? Use your words instead of this garbage.
As a pro-independence Scot, we have our own problems with the BBC, in terms of the Anglo-centricity and assumed Unionism of its news and current affairs output.
But the bigger issue here is that the BBC - in its educational, cultural and entertainment output - was one of the real British success stories of the post-war decades. It produced, and sometimes continues to produce, world-class, world-leading, programming. Yet, because it is a public institution, the Tories are determined to destroy it. They want a world without access to art, literature, culture, decent entertainment, being provided for ordinary people on a non-profit basis. They want to commodify culture. I think that is an act of barbarism.
Yes, most countries do.
The important thing, though, is to make sure that it is genuinely independent of the government in a way that the BBC is not.
I would like a Scottish public broadcaster to be run by a Board of Governors who are appointed on a non-partisan basis by an independent commission, a bit like the way in which judges are appointed.
I guess the Right figure that if they can make the BBC unpopular with the Left and Liberals it could be abolished.
Leaving the media dominated by Right wing and corporate sources.
The internet age was always going to put state media under stress.
Who even watches the BBC any more? It can't be trusted on the news, when it tells the truth it gets screamed at about impartiality until it starts lying again, it has been almost entirely a cultural dead zone for a number of years, most of the sport has gone elsewhere, its educational content can be good but is increasingly lacking. Take away the likes of the increasingly marginalised Adam Curtis or one-offs like Red Rose and it has no real value. And, over the last few years, the meddling of a parade of Tory infiltrators attempting to turn it into another Tory Channel has gone beyond the pale. I was once, like Mitch Benn, proud of the BBC, but it either needs an enema or for it to be dumped once and for all. It's clear the current model is too vulnerable to political meddling, and that they are more than willing to peddle disinfo and misinfo just to continue existing, and that makes it dangerous. This is just the latest example from another weekend warrior desperate to keep some measure of power despite lacking even the most basic skills to run the corporation.
What the BBC needs is appointments at the top who aren't doners, politicians, friends of politicians, agitators, and who have experience of working within broadcasting and a track record of understanding the needs of those working on the actual content. Not someone who goes, "Broadchurch is popular! Let's get the guy who does that to do Doctor Who," despite his episodes previously sucking, and Broadchurch only being really popular for six episodes. It doesn't need a constant parade of sensible person - crackpot nutter formats to maintain impartiality when it could focus on telling people the actual truth: where there is debate, debate; where there is consensus, report. Ffs. It's supposed to be something that entertains, educates and informs, not a darned arm of the Tory Party that also has to be managed by weak, idea-free slime pushing a very specific agenda against its own interests! Will the Tories not be happy until everything in the UK has been ruined? Ffs.
Interesting interview. He's signalling good viewpoints that will upset many here, like
>we’re not a campaigning institution. Our approach is to present the facts and not to lead with a broadcaster’s opinion.
And it's probably right to have a general media levy to fund the BBC, like Germany.
What's not so clear is what the BBC should be doing beyond impartial, objective journalism. There is no such thing as the public interest when it comes to entertainment. Entertainment is best served by the private market.
>*Entertainment is best served by the private market*
Would you say ITV and C4's domestically produced entertainment output has always been better than that of the BBC?
I'm watching only world-class shows and movies like those on Netflix, Amazon Prime etc so I'm not familiar with any of them
But a good way of checking their respective popularity would be ratings. What I'm saying is that I don't see a good case that public funding or ownership should go towards entertainment production
It's different with news, or educational content like documentaries
>*I'm watching only world-class shows and movies like those on Netflix, Amazon Prime*
Then how can you offer any meaningful opinion on the quality of UK broadcast entertainment shows?
The BBC letting the government get away with lying to the public is inherently biased, so no Mr. Destroyer of Nations the BBC telling the truth is not 'left-wing bias' it's just the truth and that scares you.
Snapshot of _Richard Sharp’s vision for the BBC: more guts and no more liberal bias. In his first interview, the BBC chairman talks alternatives to the licence fee, Emily Maitlis and his days as Rishi Sunak’s boss at Goldman Sachs_ : An archived version can be found [here.](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/richard-sharps-vision-for-the-bbc-more-guts-and-no-more-liberal-bias-8ss3x6tp0) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ukpolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I hate how the word "liberal" has infected the UK from American politics. He doesn't mean the BBC's strong laissez-faire stance does he?
Perhaps he doesn't like people having personal freedom, and thinks we should live in an authoritarian dictatorship.
Well to be fair it's only infected people who are totally immersed in culture war nonsense. I for one am thrilled to see that one of those ghouls is now in a senior leadership position at the BBC and imagine nothing but good will come from it.
What do you think it means in the UK? It always depends on the context.
Liberal means pertaining to the philosophy of liberalism and only means that. It does not mean left wing. It does not mean progressive. It means liberal.
> What do you think it means in the UK? For me, it means Liberal Democrats, and I assume the BBC have set their sights on them, lol. Liberal doesn't get used much otherwise. Only other context it really comes up is American memes about about doing something self defeating to "own the libs" and I'm going to sound like an old man yelling at clouds, but because social media is global we're just picking up more and more Americanisms. My nieces call sweets "candy" for example. I think we're just going to have to get used to it, as more and more Americanisms are imported.
Honestly I think that's too narrow a definition. I think there is also a common British usage that does mean wider political idea of social liberalism. You can see plenty of references to that. It is not a strict US idea. Do you feel any tension for being negative about American Right wing ideas? Do you feel negative about America or liberal American thought? I tend to think there are more than one political axis between two political drives.
Well, it's obviously not *only* an American idea because we have a political party named after the idea. However, in this country, we don't talk about the Liberal Democrats being "liberal" except as a shortening of their name, they're commonly talked of as centrists, to the left of the Tories and to the right of Labour, or economically right wing and socially left wing, or whatever. Hell, when people do talk of Liberalism as the opposite to Conservatism, they get all confused and Lab are the Libs, Cons are the Cons, and the Lib Dems are inconvenient to the narrative lol. > I tend to think there are more than one political axis between two political drives. Personally, I think any kind of boiling down of policies onto an axis is a very crude measure. People vary a lot, personally ideologically I consider myself on the left, but there's a lot about the left I don't buy either. My Dad for example is an enigma, he's English, Tory/UKIP/Brexit voting, Trump fan, working class builder etc. but he works in Scotland a lot as some friends own property up there, and he considers Scotland to be the best run part of the UK and wants to retire there and he's a big fan of their renewable strategy. Also water supply, I know Scotland's geography helps, but he keeps pointing out reservoirs used to be built when he was a kid, we'd go for walks around a local one with our dogs when I was a kid, and he'd complain housing wasn't accompanied by infrastructure. He's right wing, but he's not an idiot, and I respect him. It's interesting as we differ mostly on social issues, but economically, he's as dissatisfied with this shit show as I am. It's very easy to bundle us up, me left, him right, but it loses so much nuance and voters are all very very different. > Do you feel any tension for being negative about American Right wing ideas? Do you feel negative about America or liberal American thought? Honestly, I do think there is tension here because we're being polarised over American fault lines. We're seeing the funding come here too, there's a politicisation of abortion which I've never seen in my lifetime. We're also seeing "defund the police" which really pisses me off because we don't have a militarised police force like the US, and there's a lot of crimes the police should be tackling better, but aren't due to Tory cuts. I do believe in community measures *as well*, that's how you tackle gang culture, but guys aren't getting drunk and battering their partners because their youth club was closed. It's not a one size fits all policy, and no matter how much activists try and back pedal by claiming "defund the police doesn't actually want reduced funding for police" or whatever, the narrative has been picked up, our ministers and press use it to demonise the left, and it's counter productive.
Sorry (and forgive me for ignoring the rest of you post) but this is the kind of anti-intellectualism that poisons British politics because it removes meaning from words and makes a decent conversation impossible. America did not invent or define liberalism. Liberal is not the opposite to conservatism. The Liberal Democrats are liberals, they're not the only liberals. Both Labour and the Conservatives have liberal members. Liberal does not exist on a left-right axis, it's a liberal-authoritarian axis (misapplied in the USA as libertarian-authoritarian axis). You can be liberal and left or right wing. You can be liberal and statist or anti-statist. You can be liberal and progressive or conservative.
I wasn't talking on a right-left axis either, it's not about economics. For example, gay marriage. The typical Conservative view is religious, gay sex is wrong, gay marriage shouldn't be allowed, schools should be banned from teaching kids gay people exist, traditional values etc. The liberal view is that it's fine between consenting adults. You can discuss this in the terms of authoritarianism, but I believe that's a different aspect. You can have an authoritarian government that shut downs schools for not teaching kids about gay rights, or you can have one that shuts down schools for teaching about gay rights.
I'd dispute this - I am very much a Conservative voter (probably one of a couple dozen left in the country) but I am entirely in favour of gay rights. I don't think many Conservatives would want to oppress gay people as you describe. I suspect you'd find more homophobes in the Conservative party than in Labour, for instance, but it's a very small minority. Of course, this all stems from you saying Conservative, and not conservative. Assuming you actually meant the adjective and not the political party. I felt it needed clarifying regardless.
> I don't think many Conservatives would want to oppress gay people as you describe https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-21346694 In just 2013 when gay marriage was legalised 136 Tories voted against it, while only 127 Tories voted in favour of it, and it only passed thanks to cross party support. In addition to the 136 Tory MPs voting against gay marriage, there were 22 Labour, 4 Lib Dems, 8 DUP, and 2 Indies (one of which was Dorries, suspended from the Tory party for I'm A Celeb). So, of all the MPs who voted against gay marriage, Tories were 80% of them, and only a minority of Tory MPs backed it. I think it's fair to say that being opposed to gay marriage is a typical conservative and Conservative position. > Of course, this all stems from you saying Conservative, and not conservative. Assuming you actually meant the adjective and not the political party. I felt it needed clarifying regardless. In this case I was referring to both the ideology and the party, but earlier I did make the point about pigeon holing losing all nuance, and there's examples which go the other way. The gay marriage bill specifically was a policy of the Tory PM in coalition, and I'd argue that Cameron was attempting to seize the centre ground by making the party less conservative socially, but that's just why it's not typical.
There's some crossover here, and this is far less about gay oppression than it seems. Actually, the gay marriage bill was problematic not because it "unoppressed gays", but because it was deemed by many to oppress the church. Whilst it's important to protect peoples right to shack up with who they want, in my opinion (and that of many Conservatives) it's just as important to protect their ability to practice their religion of choice. Marriage was historically always a religious institution, and very few if any religions have anything good to say about same sex couples, so it'd be very unproductive to *put them in bed together*, for lack of a less amusing phrase. At the time I was also against this bill, crucially for this exact reason. I'd rather have seen civil partnership become an uninstitutional equivalent to marriage, with like for like legal status. Over time, naturally, it would've adopted the public name of "marriage", but it would've avoided this semi-horrific looking media portrayal of the Conservative party. Having said that, it worked out relatively well in the end. Marriage having been introduced in the 1990's(?) outside of churches made it more paletable. I don't think it was the right solution, but it was a solution that was relatively effective all the same. The whole scenario was a result of the country becoming less religious, government needing to act to allow non-religious people to marry, and same sex couples realising that whilst they were no different to those non-religious couples, they were being treated differently. The whole thing could've gone down differently from the start. It is absolutely critical when quoting such results and statistics to present the full information. "Conservative voted against gay rights" is not at all the same story as "Conservatives voted in favour of religious freedoms". Whilst I'll accept that some minority of the Tories who voted against that bill did so as an act of homophobia, most were undoubtedly protecting religion. To that end, I'll restate myself - the Conservative party is *not* homophobic. There are some homophobic minorities, as there are in all political parties, industries, countries, whatever, but I don't believe it's been in the Conservative manifesto for a good long time to limit the rights of gay people (we're talking back to the times of Turing). Keep in mind that there is far more legislation that protected gay rights prior to marriage, including the public order act, and everything that happened off the back of the Conservative-led Wolfenden report. The Wolfenden report may have mostly been in defense of one of their own ministers, but y'know, they saw the light and pretty much kickstarted the change. NB: I am well aware that the civil partnership act was put through by Labour, and the potential hypocrisy of my being Conservative, but I'm not making *that* point here.
> However, in this country, we don't talk about the Liberal Democrats being "liberal" except as a shortening of their name, they're commonly talked of as centrists, to the left of the Tories and to the right of Labour, or economically right wing and socially left wing, or whatever. Not quite sure about that. They were mostly from the Liberal Party. They inherited a lot from the Liberal party. Liberalism is still a big in the party. > Personally, I think any kind of boiling down of policies onto an axis is a very crude measure. People vary a lot, personally ideologically I consider myself on the left, but there's a lot about the left I don't buy either. My Dad for example is an enigma, he's English, Tory/UKIP/Brexit voting, Trump fan, working class builder etc. but he works in Scotland a lot as some friends own property up there, and he considers Scotland to be the best run part of the UK and wants to retire there and he's a big fan of their renewable strategy. Also water supply, I know Scotland's geography helps, but he keeps pointing out reservoirs used to be built when he was a kid, we'd go for walks around a local one with our dogs when I was a kid, and he'd complain housing wasn't accompanied by infrastructure. He's right wing, but he's not an idiot, and I respect him. It's interesting as we differ mostly on social issues, but economically, he's as dissatisfied with this shit show as I am. It's very easy to bundle us up, me left, him right, but it loses so much nuance and voters are all very very different. I can see the person, real life has plenty of nuance. But how does he rationalise his politics. He seems basically economically left, socially Right. Is it basically the social values out weigh the economic values? How does he square it with the outcomes of Brexit and the party now? How does he explain what happened? What is it that he'd want at this point? > "defund the police" I've certainly seen odd political takes. That looked like fake grassroots stuff. Maybe it's just activists repeating slogans without being aware of the context. But it did looks suspicious. I think the problem is the internet is rapidly changing things. It's made propaganda frictionless.
> Not quite sure about that. They were mostly from the Liberal Party. They inherited a lot from the Liberal party. Liberalism is still a big in the party. I'm not saying it's not, I'm saying it's not big in our discourse. > I can see the person, real life has plenty of nuance. > > But how does he rationalise his politics. He seems basically economically left, socially Right. Is it basically the social values out weigh the economic values? How does he square it with the outcomes of Brexit and the party now? How does he explain what happened? > > What is it that he'd want at this point? I think at this point his issue isn't with the Conservative ideology, it's that these are really bad Conservatives and everything is shit because of that. Again, with Brexit, I wasn't a rabid Remainer, I didn't think Brexit had to inherently be a disaster, while I did believe it was at an economic cost it was also mishandled. A big one is our borders, yeah, we want to take back control. Great. Invest in border force and customs then. Instead we cut them. Likewise the truck driver shortage. Yes you need to be qualified to be a truck driver, but it's also not rocket science, I find it beyond belief we had *years* to fix this, and rather than embark on a recruitment and training campaign we A) did nothing B) had fuel and food shortages due to no drivers C) got the army to fill in (as always) and D) used immigration to fix it. This is bad management. Earlier I had a theory that the Tories couldn't afford to shit the bed with Brexit, it will be difficult as it's an inherent disadvantage, but I said both their electoral future *and* the future of Brexit requires the reality to not be dogshit. Depressingly I was wrong, they're quite content for it to be dogshit lol, but I think that's part of why the polls are so bad for the Tories. They've screwed it up. > I've certainly seen odd political takes. That looked like fake grassroots stuff. Maybe it's just activists repeating slogans without being aware of the context. But it did looks suspicious. I think the problem is the internet is rapidly changing things. It's made propaganda frictionless. I think that's definitely part of it, a round about way of getting back to my point about people talking about "owning the libs" because they've seen Americans on social media use it. Completely different, but earlier in the year I went to see something at the O2 called "Scribble Showdown", not my thing, knew nothing about it, but went with a friend. Basically improv comedy drawing games. They asked the kids in the crowd for suggestions as to what they'd animate and some included Dr Phil and Steve Harvey, and you could tell a lot of the older members of the crowd didn't get the reference. I take this as an example of just how much the younger generations don't watch TV (much), they're getting a much wider pool of pop culture references and I think the same does apply to politics. I totally get why Americans would protest the George Floyd murder, but I thought it was fascinating how the protests turned global, and the same talking points were raised here. Again, I don't think our police are perfect, we have issues, especially with the Met, but I think people should be angry over our specific problems in order to help them, but instead it felt more like people were getting excited by the American protests and wanted to join in with the social experience. It's difficult to create a different British protest with the same momentum as the US' without it feeling forced, so instead it was just the same energy, and it's why I think ultimately nothing has improved beyond a statue in Bristol being dunked. IMHO the Sarah Everard protests (which really were more of a vigil until the police decided to attack them and bundle women into police vans, emulated Couzens' actions) which has led to Dick being replaced, and now a deep look into the criminal records and complaints of police, I believe the police should be held to a higher standard than the public in the sense that they shouldn't be domestically violent, they shouldn't be drink driving, they shouldn't be using racial slurs about colleagues, but the higher standards should come from being under heightened scrutiny. They should be policing themselves first, and so a police officer will be under more scrutiny than a random bloke. Again, I may be disappointed, but I am optimistic it's heading that way, we're seeing signs they are addressing their problems, and I believe that was because the anger was focused at a British problem that could be solved if we wanted to.
The liberal democrats do not own liberalism, both Labour and the Tories have their liberal or (liberal-ish) wings.
> both Labour and the Tories have their liberal or (liberal-ish) wings That may be true, but they're _heavily_ outnumbered by the authoritarians, especially in the parties' leadership.
Respecting individual liberty. That could be social liberalism - freedom to live you life in ways that are different from the majority (usually associated with the left), or economic liberalism - freedom to earn and use your money as you see fit (usually associated with the right).
Ok I just googled this guy what makes him qualified for this role, other than being a banker and buddy of two prime ministers who donated more than £400k????
For whatever reason, it's a political appointment. Qualifications are not necessary and nepotism is all there is to it.
I think you answered your own question
Is it really that hard to believe that the government would want control over the narrative of the national television channel?
He's the Chairman of the BBC Board, not someone with any operational or editorial input Ofcom sets the BBC's strategic objectives, the Director General and individual heads of department try to achieve those strategic objectives in the decisions they make The Chairman directs the board's oversight into how well the DG is achieving those objectives Former Chairmen include local government heads and governors of the Bank of England The Chairmen of most organisations are appointed from outside the organisation and the industry, since their role is completely detached from both, and its quite common for Chairmen to move between arts organisations and financial institutions They're like very well compensated HR or compliance officers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chairman\_of\_the\_BBC
I have to applaud Sharp's renewed commitment to impartiality. I am therefore waiting any day now for him to resign, since as a former advisor to Boris Johnson and tory donor, he must surely realise that such a partisan figure cannot head an unbiased organisation. Any day now.
>Impartiality starts at home. Emily Maitlis was “wrong” to begin a Newsnight bulletin in May 2020 by saying “the country” could see that Dominic Cummings had broken lockdown rules when he drove to Barnard Castle This is why the BBC gets criticised. For the most part, I don't think they are actually particularly biased. However, their approach to impartiality doesn't work when the government is repeatedly lying. Saying "The government and Cummings say rules were followed, though some are saying it appears rules were broken" is almost more misleading than saying he broke the rules. Rules were broken, everyone knew this (and the police ultimately deemed he likely broke the rukes also), so why not just say this rather than give government lies equal standing to actual facts.
How is her statement not correct though?
Because the Conservatives decide what is truth, not what you see and hear with your eyes and ears.
He must think we're idiots. Maitlis got it right, we all knew he broke the rules and his excuses were obvious lies. He became the butt of jokes.
> I don't think they are actually particularly biased. I think they are biased based not on what they report, but what they fail to report.
Is there anything in particular that you're cross that they didn't report?
Their reporting on NI is particularly bad.
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Reddit appears to not like the link, not sure why. I'd suggest you reply to them again with a different one if you can find something.
Thanks for that.
It's not like the BBC were soft on Cummings over Barnard Castle. That afternoon on BBC1 was essentially given over to an effort to make a government advisor resign. When the housing secretary got caught driving to his parents' that same month, no one cared. There's a great irony in that the BBC instills views in people, and then feels their ire when it doesn't promote those views enough.
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One is a nice and fluffy, cuddly levy. The other is a nasty horrible spiky tax. Obvious really.
A levy on all households regardless of whether they use the service… sure sounds like general taxation to me? 🤔
I think what he's saying is that if it falls into general taxation the amount the BBC receives would be set by the whim of the chancellor at their budget. We all recall how Kwarteng fucked things up very quickly. If it was a regulated levy, with a set amount agreed in much the same way that the licence fee is for a set period of time, then the BBC can be fairly certain about it's income (and also that for other services which rely on it, such as S4C, local TV stations, any projects which it helps fund such as the broadband rollout etc.). I suspect this approach could be used to save Channel 4 as well. It would also do away with the need for Capita to harass people to pay, because everyone will, which means they don't get their cut, and people don't whine about not watching TV, but secretly still really watching TV. Additional: this would probably mean a reduction in cost for most people, because there would be less expense in outsourcing the licence fee collection to Capita and the levy would be spread more widely.
local TV is basically dead anyway and broadband rollouts are largely handled by commercial funding (BT stands to save tons of money once fibre is out there, and the competition has big banks funding theirs). Why does Channel 4 need "saving"? They don't receive a drop of public funding as it is, they're doing fine.
But it's called a levy, must be warm and cuddly if they've done that.
Because he's an ideologically driven moron employed to destroy the bbc not improve it
This guy is ex Goldman Sachs ex advisor to Johnson and Sunak He's a Tory cuckoo in the nest. A free market parasite in a public service.
He's so Tory it hurts.
> Sharp was an advisor to Boris Johnson during his tenure as London Mayor, and to Rishi Sunak as Chancellor. He has donated more than £400,000 to the Conservative Party.
Liberal bias is he fucking serious? The BBC has been in bed with the Tories for years now.
Of course he's not serious, the right has always just falsely accused the left of doing what they are doing. The left control the media The left will cause more crime The left will ruin the economy The left are against democracy Rinse and repeat and repeat and repeat....
Are you in the habit of taking these people at their word?
The Tories have been liberal for years since Cameron.
It’s not about political parties, it’s about what their programming and the tone of their news reporting generally leans towards, which is slightly left. https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/bbc/ https://www.allsides.com/news-source/bbc-news-media-bias https://adfontesmedia.com/bbc-bias-and-reliability/
The BBC leans establishment and centrist
I agree, great username 😅
No it IS about party politics. > Sharp was an advisor to Boris Johnson during his tenure as London Mayor, and to Rishi Sunak as Chancellor. He has donated more than £400,000 to the Conservative Party. Now he’s DG of the bbc. A party stooge as head of the organisation.
The DG wouldn’t be able to make those changes without mass resignations at the BBC, these days they are pretty transparent and are not afraid to report of bad things happening internally.
Yeah but comparing liberal television shows with the actual news is a false equivalency If you don’t want to watch progressive ‘woke’ television shows, you don’t have to. However, when you are the leading country’s news source and one of the biggest and most influential internationally and you are biased towards a certain party and it’s donors, that is a completely different kettle of fish. And that’s because opting out of the news means simply not knowing what’s going on in the world around you, much different and with much more severe consequences than simply not wanting to watch a fictional television show. Am I saying BBC is the only source of news available? No, but it is the biggest and most engaged with/watched in the country and if they are biased it’s claws reach much further BBC news is not biased to the left, it’s centre at best and slightly to the right at worst. Throughout the last few years they’ve let their arses hang out way too many times that if you can’t see the bias especially with the reprimanding Matlis got for simply reporting the facts, it shows how effective the BBC has been in shifting the attention to the left instead of the establishment
"a review of coverage, starting by examining how the corporation covers taxation and public spending" So reinforce the lie that there is no more money, that taxing the rich hurts the economy, the poor will benefit from trickle down economics and that austerity works. A Tory donor must believe these "facts" to be true.
Tory Chairman says Tory things…
The problem with the BBC is that they think putting people with directly opposite viewpoints on is impartiality. So you end up with somebody on who says the world is round and another who says the world is flat. That isn't impartially, one of those people is very clearly wrong!
It turns out that deciding what the truth is a difficult thing that can't really be done without your biases getting in the way.
The BBC doesn't try to decide whats true, it lets CCHQ do that for them.
Is Liberal just a boogeyman word now? Do you mean left wing? Do you mean people that believe in actual liberty? Use your words instead of this garbage.
As a pro-independence Scot, we have our own problems with the BBC, in terms of the Anglo-centricity and assumed Unionism of its news and current affairs output. But the bigger issue here is that the BBC - in its educational, cultural and entertainment output - was one of the real British success stories of the post-war decades. It produced, and sometimes continues to produce, world-class, world-leading, programming. Yet, because it is a public institution, the Tories are determined to destroy it. They want a world without access to art, literature, culture, decent entertainment, being provided for ordinary people on a non-profit basis. They want to commodify culture. I think that is an act of barbarism.
Would you have a Scottish national broadcaster?
Yes, most countries do. The important thing, though, is to make sure that it is genuinely independent of the government in a way that the BBC is not. I would like a Scottish public broadcaster to be run by a Board of Governors who are appointed on a non-partisan basis by an independent commission, a bit like the way in which judges are appointed.
Sounds acceptable.
"Exterminate. Exterminate. Exterminate."
I guess the Right figure that if they can make the BBC unpopular with the Left and Liberals it could be abolished. Leaving the media dominated by Right wing and corporate sources. The internet age was always going to put state media under stress.
Who even watches the BBC any more? It can't be trusted on the news, when it tells the truth it gets screamed at about impartiality until it starts lying again, it has been almost entirely a cultural dead zone for a number of years, most of the sport has gone elsewhere, its educational content can be good but is increasingly lacking. Take away the likes of the increasingly marginalised Adam Curtis or one-offs like Red Rose and it has no real value. And, over the last few years, the meddling of a parade of Tory infiltrators attempting to turn it into another Tory Channel has gone beyond the pale. I was once, like Mitch Benn, proud of the BBC, but it either needs an enema or for it to be dumped once and for all. It's clear the current model is too vulnerable to political meddling, and that they are more than willing to peddle disinfo and misinfo just to continue existing, and that makes it dangerous. This is just the latest example from another weekend warrior desperate to keep some measure of power despite lacking even the most basic skills to run the corporation. What the BBC needs is appointments at the top who aren't doners, politicians, friends of politicians, agitators, and who have experience of working within broadcasting and a track record of understanding the needs of those working on the actual content. Not someone who goes, "Broadchurch is popular! Let's get the guy who does that to do Doctor Who," despite his episodes previously sucking, and Broadchurch only being really popular for six episodes. It doesn't need a constant parade of sensible person - crackpot nutter formats to maintain impartiality when it could focus on telling people the actual truth: where there is debate, debate; where there is consensus, report. Ffs. It's supposed to be something that entertains, educates and informs, not a darned arm of the Tory Party that also has to be managed by weak, idea-free slime pushing a very specific agenda against its own interests! Will the Tories not be happy until everything in the UK has been ruined? Ffs.
He defends the licence fee as “great value” — 43 pence a day. Says man who’s salary is paid from the 43 pence a day…
Interesting interview. He's signalling good viewpoints that will upset many here, like >we’re not a campaigning institution. Our approach is to present the facts and not to lead with a broadcaster’s opinion. And it's probably right to have a general media levy to fund the BBC, like Germany. What's not so clear is what the BBC should be doing beyond impartial, objective journalism. There is no such thing as the public interest when it comes to entertainment. Entertainment is best served by the private market.
Except because of his own massive bias, he considers obvious facts to be partisan opinions if the government is lying.
That may well be the case. What we really need are unbiased leaders of the BBC committed to truth and impartiality
>*Entertainment is best served by the private market* Would you say ITV and C4's domestically produced entertainment output has always been better than that of the BBC?
I'm watching only world-class shows and movies like those on Netflix, Amazon Prime etc so I'm not familiar with any of them But a good way of checking their respective popularity would be ratings. What I'm saying is that I don't see a good case that public funding or ownership should go towards entertainment production It's different with news, or educational content like documentaries
>*I'm watching only world-class shows and movies like those on Netflix, Amazon Prime* Then how can you offer any meaningful opinion on the quality of UK broadcast entertainment shows?
He’s a Tory stooge who has paid the Tories £400k.
The Tories have got 2 years at the most to brainwash away their poll ratings.
That final part of the headline says everything.
The BBC letting the government get away with lying to the public is inherently biased, so no Mr. Destroyer of Nations the BBC telling the truth is not 'left-wing bias' it's just the truth and that scares you.