The Lords Select Committee on Communications, of which I am a member, has announced an inquiry into the governance and regulation of the BBC, and has put out a call for evidence. The Select Committee contributed towards the debate around the renewal of the Charter five years ago. Already it is felt right to investigate how the new Charter and the BBC Trust, established by it, are working. Sir Michael Lyons is quitting as Chairman of the Trust and Lord (Chris) Patten is taking over, having been approved after being examined by the Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee at a recent hearing. It is good to have a big beast at the helm, although he will be a very busy man, what with the duties of the Chancellorship of Oxford University and some other activities. The job is basically a full time one, although not described as such.
The Lords Committee would like to receive views on the clarity of the BBC Trust’s duties and whether more regulation, especially the handling of complaints, should be given over to OFCOM. Is the Trust sufficiently independent of Government and of the BBC Executive? Does the Trust have sufficient oversight of BBC management? How well does the system of review of existing BBC services by the Trust work? Can the Trust do more to ensure that the BBC delivers value for money? Does anyone have suggestions to improve the governance and regulation of the BBC?
If you want to submit written evidence, send it as an attachment to holcommunications@parliament.uk by 6 April.
Over a year ago I decided I could no longer watch television as the quality was so poor and the offers of programming mindless. So I refuse to buy a TV license.
It was the best decision I made for a long time. It changed my life and that of those around me remarkably. Now we cannot ever imagine why we sat glued to that screen for so long.
It is a propaganda machine. Used by government to dupe the people into accepting their politically correct policies. And it has worked well as a brainwashing technique, which you find hard to really believe until you stop the addiction.
I listen to radio four Today programme. And read the newspapers.
Unfortunately it is getting harder to listen to current affairs programmes without wondering why the journalists go along with the distorted facts and obvious unhealthy line they are compelled to push out.
No longer is there anything left untouched by PC intervention. And now I know why they do it. It’s because they lose their right to employment if they dare to think for themselves. Have an alternative view, or, know of a study that proves what they are compelled to tell us is wrong.
Will this change in man at the top to Lord Patten alter any of that? I hope so, but, I doubt it.
We need governance that will get the BBC to innovate a quantum-leap, paradigm-shift, practical-philosophy, and all-round curriculum of Individual Earth-Citizenship education and practice for All – absolutely-distinctly from Workplace & Career-Skillings.
This should majorly include new knowledge, advances, theories, and challenges:
for instance the following syllabuses/subjects should be afforded both introductory programmes and graded-courses:
(1) Human Movement Evolution & Individual-Development
(“Wisdom of the Body Moving” by Linda Hartley; “Effort” by Laban & Lawrence; … …);
(2) Human Mind-Functional Development
(“Perceptual Self-Control” by WT Powers et al; “Six Thinking Hats” by E de Bono; …)…;
(3) Human Spiritual Enablement
(“Meditation Made Easy” by Lorin Roche; … ) …
(4) Human Needs-&-Hows Affordable-Determination & Cooperative Problem-Solving
(Method III: see originator “Teacher Effectiveness Training” by Thomas Gordon, and also “People Skills” by Robert Bolton; …) …
(5) …
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0037M21Mar2011.JSDM.
This post got a mention in yesterday’s Evening Standard diary section (22 March 2011)http://londonersdiary.standard.co.uk/2011/03/baronesss-bark-at-two-jobs-patten.html
Comment in the Evening Standard put a twist on this that I did not intend! I am sure Oxford welcomes choice of Lord Patten for big job, very proud of him.
Baroness, kindly I think you need to ‘watch your back’ –
– and would all others kindly note that wherever ’Chris Patten’ is mentioned herebelow it is under the concept of ‘Worker’ and not as ‘Person’.
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Firstly that a ‘multiply-masked’ ex-governor/civil-servant (hereinafter called a ‘worker’) could discharge all the duties, of two full-time jobs, as well as other workplace, civil, and family/personal commitments, is nothing short of an economic, mental-health, and global-society phantasmagoria.
It shows that none of the remits of that worker’s workplaces and lifeplaces are truthful & sustain-worthy, therefore arguably are not sane and not the product of individually-and-collectively healthy mind-functionings
Its mis-argumentation is :
one-worker can do
(fulltime job A & in workplace a)
&
at the same time can do (fulltime job B & in workplace b).
* (see End-note below).
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Surely a Chair of the BBC Trust should be a full-time job
(40 hours per week should be conceded here)
and should include making better constructive progress for us all;
and this worker’s tie with Academia should surely see him/her standing up especially for us non-dons, way below, down here,
because both pecuniously and positionally Don-dom does not ‘need’ his/her support:
whereas weboth impecunious & ill-positioned most definitely do, especially if we are ever to become able to progress up-to-date in our mind-body-spirit development, as well as in our further democratisation enablements.
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There is another factor too, which I demonstrate here in a similar way to a roadworthy-vehicle-policeman pulling-over a car and going around its lower body-work with an ice-pick, for rust-spots:
the ‘worker’ in this Oxford plus BBC plus Other-commitments, plus social-family-personal lifeplace necessities and multi-parameterings confusion, falls within a quite alarmingly low-level of Lifeplace-Personal-Efficiency;
which is because he has-to-have not just one human-living out of the Common Purse, nor even only two;
meaning quite apart from his ‘job-costs’;
he ‘has-to-have’ multiple numbers of human-livings, put into his personal-pocket every week;
(see previously posted comments for the principles, strong-argumentation, moral-reasoning, and life-experience-factorisation thereto:
which in brief validly-show that,
with the legislated British sufficiency-income, for an individual to live healthily, citizenlike, and environmentally-supportively, set at approximately £200-per-week (No-Assets above £5000) in the 75% timeframe Lifeplace (as distinct from the 25% timeframe Workplace),
an individual having-to-have twice that weekly income is only 50% personally-efficient (at making-ends-meet & being-sparing in environmental-lifesupports-destructivity, in the 75% lifeplace);
so even drawing only £1000 per week from the Common Purse in the 25%-Workplace makes one only 20% personally-efficient at living in the 75%-Lifeplace;
and that, herein, is life-threateningly compounded by the plain Law of Physics fact, that it is impossible for the one-worker-in-one-workplace-fulltime to be in another workplace doing another full-time job full=time, both at one and the same time.
That this paradox has not yet been sustain-worthily resolved does not negate the strength and validity of the Personal-Lifeplace-Efficiency reasoning and Issue;
nor does it justify multiple or super-fat pay-packets,
nor inverted-hierarchical money-property-power snobbery and cliquery.
——————–
Arguably both Jobs are internationally-vital as well as being vital to the future of every individual within the British Nation .
Are we expected to believe and sovereignly to approve that two vital fulltime jobs must be done by only one already-evidently-overloaded worker ?
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End-note:
* de facto that this ‘worker’ can be in two places doing two different jobs at the same time is something of an oxymoron …
(interestingly, but I suggest nn not-necessarily, this might be justifiably equated with ‘an oxford-moron’) …
Be that as it may, surely the & (ampersand) should at best be a v (not ‘versus’ but vel meaning four-possible-outcomes “or”); or even be outrightly a slash-tribar ( = plainly conflicting, not the same, never compatible with each other ).
“Com-patten-able” will have to go down in history, I fear, if this Oxford-BBC-Parliament-People emperor’s-new-clothes’ farce is not soon, seriously and securely corrected and worthily publicised.
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1451Sn27Mar11.JSDM.
maude (and Others turned-away from TV)
TV is a solitary-relationship between the individual-viewer and whatever-is-on;
Couple to this one’s need (or exigency) of having to share a programme, probably a whole evening of programmes possibly not all of one’s own primary choosing, with another or others, and we have ‘foreign-bodies’ at work between us.
That is not the fault of the TV set, nor of its available programmes if you have a good range provided such as at least the Freeview list.
————
I agree there is a surfeit of junk- and low-spirited programmes, even whole channels and groups-of-channels (such as among the 900’s on SKY);
Nonetheless, there is a reasonably good, healthy or positively-spirited range of programmes available at reasonably affordable cost.
I have a small number of ‘Favourites’ some of which I can have on ‘wall-to-wall’ but are positively-spirited as much in the background as they are in concentrated focus.
Herein it has been through SKY channel 275 “Body-in-Balance” that I have discovered I can really benefit from having healthy people showing me how they do it, up close too.
Mind you, I would be lost without a quick Remote-Control to defend my sensibilities from Ads or from a sudden change of programme into Noisy-Hard-Rock or noisy eff*** and blind-ing such as some Stand-Up Comedy rages.
——————
Thanks to Jill, at Keele University long long ago in 1954 before a TV and a Computer became fashionable in a student’s life, who introduced me to a particularly-helpful brief ‘prayer’ from “Murder In The Cathedral” (TS Eliot)
“That I may do the right thing, and for the right reason”
I am able today to select appropriately and often to plan not just the right-thing, but for the right-reason.
As many better known friends and relatives have often counselled, including via the Radio and the TV-screen
“I just don’t want to see you burning your bridges, or throwing the baby out with the bathwater”.
In this spirit, I urge you to again include good-quality TV in your private and personal activities planning, not instead of Radio and Written-word, but in complementation of them.
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1453T29Mar11.JSDM.