Boris in full-Trumpian spate is, according to reports, attempting to shoehorn two right-wingers into key broadcasting jobs, which should be put out to tender and a selection process. The prospect of Charles Moore, ex-Telegraph editor, as possible BBC chairman will invoke shudders of horror amongst the inmates. As will Paul Dacre, former Daily Mail editor, in as head of Ofcom (the government regulatory body for broadcasting) – which latter has been described like putting Genghis Khan in charge of social care in the community.
Both men are oddly enough Sun Scorpios as is the BBC, Dacre born on the same day as Prince Charles.
Charles Moore, who once employed Boris Johnson as a journalist and described him as a nightmare to work with, was born 31 October 1956 and is a Sun, Mercury, Neptune in Scorpio in an innovative and can-be fanatical square to Uranus and trine Mars in Pisces. If he is confirmed, he’ll upset the applecart at the BBC and it’ll be a noisy term. His ambitious Mars in Pisces falls in the BBC’s 10th conjunct its rebellious Uranus and his Uranus opposes the BBC’s stubbornly opinionated 9th house Mars. His self-righteous Saturn in Sagittarius is square the BBC Uranus for sharply differing agendas; and his Pluto sits in the BBC’s 4th which will prompt him to put an iron hand on internal matters.
He is looking more satisfied than usual come late November into December with tr Pluto trine his Jupiter after an acutely frustrating October/November as the civil service mandarins dig in their heels about due process. Across the New Year and January he’s into disaster territory, with more later in the year; and there’s nothing that looks either easy or too successful over the next three years.
Paul Dacre, 14 November 1948, has the same blip upwards late November to late December; but will have an exceedingly messy, discontented three years after that. If he does get it, he won’t enjoy it. Though he’d have more than just the BBC to contend with since the rest of the TV network and social media would also come under his remit.
His crossover with the BBC if anything is worse than Moore’s with his Pluto conjunct the BBC Neptune and opposition the BBC Mars with his Venus Neptune conjunct the BBC Saturn and his Mars square the BBC Moon etc.
The BBC chart is hitting its roughest patch in 2022 with tr Saturn square the Midheaven; a shocking collision Solar Arc Mars opposition the Sun and tr Neptune opposition the Moon. And that’s the juncture when Moore is having his greatest impact in turning the place upside down.
It’s not that the BBC shouldn’t be reined in – the bloated and obscenely expensive, top-heavy bureaucracy needs a slash-and-burn, scorched-earth policy; and the left-wing, London-centric approach needs rebalanced. But a Boris vengeance spree handing on the baton to Moore could be a step too far.
Yes, the mentions here about the left wing bias of the BBC are odd considering that brexiteer Sir Robbie Gibb, brother of Conservative MP Nick Gibb, was the head of the BBC’s political output leaving in 2017 to become Director of Communications at 10 Downing Street for Theresa May. He was duly knighted in 2019. Prior to his 23 year career at the BBC he was worked for Conservative MP, Francis Maude. He is described as a ‘top Tory’ by the Daily Mail.
The current DG of the BBC, Tim Davie was the deputy chairman of the Hammersmith and Fulham Conservative party throughout the 1990s. Spot the trend…. Can’t wait for Pluto in Capricorn to sweep their archaic influence away.
Hahahaha BBC is left wing? The same BBC that featured Nigel Farage over 50 times but the Green Party and SNP barely only 10 times on Question Time? Top BBC reporters regularly get fed leaks from DomCum and No 10 & report it with no actual thought. That is certainly not left wing. Headed by the Tories and a Tory mouthpiece in the last 10 years. Plz do some more research before saying stuff.
Actually Trevor I find that the BBC can produce some very good dramas. You didn’t watch Life last night? This is set in Manchester and includes an interesting and novel dilemma for a married couple in their 70’s.
On a different note Tory Governments complain of left wing bias and the last Labour Government complained the BBC was too right wing so it suggests it is actually middle of the road( not helpful in the past with regard to climate change).
It would be good if more than one of these posts actually mentioned astrology considering the purpose of this website!
Well, electric Uranus was bound to shake things up for all that Scorpio in the BBC chart, plus fixed Mars and Neptune. Things are changing in broadcast media everywhere, and the BBC will have to change – but it would be a shame to see it disappear entirely. I find the news quite limited though, and prefer the World Service for a sense of our planet, and all the things happening here on Earth. The limited European news on both ITV and BBC is ridiculous, and has been for years, let alone the rest of the world or even the rest of the UK.
I agree with Shellyn on what news we now watch. Having been devotees of the BBC (ever since the Coronation, watched on a 10 inch screen), we have recently realised that nothing they report bears any resemblance to the lives we lead as middle of the road pensioners (honestly), and more importantly we are not impressed by how much news outside the UK we do not hear unless we go over to News 24, Euronews or even CNN. What is more depressing is how the same news bulletins are shown 3 times a day, irrespective of what other news has occurred. This is now downright dangerous when the Covid developments and requirements change on a daily, sometimes hourly basis, and is wasteful and incompetent. Apart from the news what do they show which is worth watching? We don’t mind paying the licence fee, just as we never minded paying National Insurance (for the greater good of the many), but feel its eternal London-centric bias is the road to hell.
Trevor, a considered, fair minded opinion from you. I lived in, and loved, the UK for many years but sadly the BBC (always know for bias) has disintegrated into…..? The present government is elected, but also rejected by many now – mostly caused by the leader (?) B Johnson. Politicis is always a dirty business, but the UK’s hallowed reputation has been obliterated by one man. How is it even possible
I have never minded paying the license fee, even if I happened to be watching mostly ITV or whatever. As I’ve always seen it, it set a standard, otherwise we’d have been having long ad breaks every 2 minutes like in the US. Commercial television has had to be balanced to compete in the UK.
I think the “I don’t watch it so I don’t want to pay for it” brigade ignore this, but it seems to be quite common these days for people to think that everything exists in a vacuum.
Most people I know record everything these days as I do. So when ads come on, it takes 5-10 seconds to skip them to get back to the programme. If we still lived back in the days where we didn’t have recording equipment and had to watch tv live, I’d say the licence fee was a benefit to remove annoying commercials. Not now. I say ditch the licence fee. It’s offensive and very archaic. We have the means to skip ads now. It’s just a Tory tax. Start showing commercials, I don’t care one jot. I know it would morph the BBC out of ‘traditional’ recognition, but again, I don’t care just as many others don’t.
Fair enough, if you personally don’t mind the ads. Recorders like Sky+ and Tivo passed me by, I went straight to catch up and on demand streaming services; but people recording and skipping ads won’t be a sustainable business model in the long run. Unfortunately everything has to be paid for somehow and perhaps I am especially jaded after over 20 years in business and commercial side of media, but I say better the devil you know.
Look at how formulaic the movie industry has become with endless franchises. The BBC, although God knows it isn’t perfect, does function as a kind of regulator of quality; purely because it has that freedom to take creative risks and be independent of populism or commercial influences.
Damn – forgot to ask and I’m really curious…..how is it a “Tory Tax”?
The Tories claim to be the party of freedom of choice, so why not allow those who want to watch BBC programmes pay for the bloated biassed corporation while allowing people such as I, who can live quite happily without watching or listening to any BBC productions, spend my £157.00 pa legally enforceable tax, the so called “television licence fee”, on something of my choosing?
The self importance of the BBC is staggering. It can afford to pay Capita 60 million pounds p.a. just to collect the licence fee and prosecute those who refuse to pay.
In its present funding format it has no place in todays world. Boris needs to chuck a hungry cat among the fat pigeons, who have been smugly roosting in their ivory tower for far too long, and make them earn their corn in today’s market place.
You want the BBC? Then you pay for it! Politics shouldn’t come into it.
Don’t penalise those who are content with watching subscription, or pay-as-go, or free-to-air and internet television channels from around the world.
” Don’t penalise those who are content with watching subscription, or pay-as-go, or free-to-air and internet television channels from around the world.”
I suggest that next time you are at Netflix, watching any content there, you don’t use “skip end credits” function, and use freeze frame on those parts that parts indicating financing. If you have information search capacity and/or intellectual honesty, you will, in fact, notice how much “public funding” has gone to making that production. Cues: Look at collaboration from National or Regional movie boards, associations etc.
The fact is, if you do not want to see any products the public at some place hasn’t funded, somehow, you are pretty much confined to some Youtube channels. Even the big, commercial blockbusters movies or series could have not happened if productions hadn’t, the very least been offered tax cuts (and this means, essentially, prioriZing entertainment industry over, let’s say, a factory giving a steady job to locals, instead of catering to the crew for a month or two).
Well said
Public funding comes from the government and is controlled by the government.
I pay my taxes according to my means and can choose to pay to visit museums, theatres, art galleries, concerts, etc; which receive public funding. The BBC licence is not “public funding”, it is an enforceable tax collected for the funding of a private corporation.
If you don’t pay the BBC this tax they can legally prevent you from accessing news, information, and entertainment broadcasts from anywhere in the world.
You’re happy with that? I call it blackmail.
Its definitely a bloated bureacracy but it hasnt been remotely left wing for years. Aside from any other consideration you must have observed how it platformed Nigel Farage to the most extraordinary extent anointing him with credibility.
I find it staggering that anybody living through the past 5 years can still think of the BBC as “left-wing”. I don’t know what the evidence is for that.
Majorie,
You are absolute right about the bloated bureaucracy in the BBC and it’s nothing new. I was an engineer surveyor for one of the biggest engineering inspection companies in the UK. One of my locations was a BBC occupied, but property company owned, building near Broadcasting House.
I visited it on a regular basis in order to inspect the heating and ventilating system to ensure that it was being maintained by the lessor, the BBC. As it was let on a full repairing lease basis any defects had to be repaired and/or replaced by the BBC, although my report went to the property owner.
At this particular inspection I found that one of the larger air conditioning units was beyond economical repair, after receiving my report the property owner’s building manager arranged a meeting with the BBC’s staff and asked me to be present.
We, the property manager and me, turned up at the building expecting to meet an engineer from the BBC, explain what needed to be done, agree a course of action and leave.
When we entered the meeting room seven BBC people were present. We quickly realised that none of the seven had any engineering knowledge and were there just for appearances sake.
The meeting quickly descended into farce as we were totally ignored and it became clear that they were all arguing amongst themselves as to who was going to have to take a decision.
After some 45 minutes the Landlords building manager had enough and informed them that we were leaving as it was a waste of our time. What happened after that I don’t know, but I did know that most of the licence money was being spent on running talking shops instead of making programmes.
I agree about it’s left wing politics and London centric approach does need to be rebalanced. I’ve stopped watching the news or political programs because of it. I watch euro news,Al Jazeera and France 24 as it reports far more than bbc or sky news. It’s shocking what they don’t report on. I resent the cost of the bbc and it’s political agenda but that’s just my opinion.