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Humblebeginnings

Listed below are comments made by Humblebeginnings between Saturday, 20th June 2009 and Sunday, 2nd August 2009.

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The End of Fortress Journalism 10:58am on 02 Aug 2009 I wonder if it had not been better to have looked at the future of the media. It is, after all, the media that has driven the changes and not the customer who still craves pure news delivery at the simplest level.

Unless we are completely senseless we cannot avoid "the" media. It exists everywhere we go because large corporations have vested interests in influencing. Psychology indicates that if you repeat something often enough it begins to impact and that "something" benefits from being subliminal. Words, images, colours, sounds, sensations, motions and movements can all be used in toxic ways. Branding is no longer just the use of a logo. Turn on your radio or TV and you are buying into a brand, an idea, an agenda. Open a magazine, newspaper or brochure and there is evidence of the absence of independence (in most cases).

Even films, art, science, music, literature etc are often a part of a brand. It is important that we belong to a brand if the media can influence us to do so, because it makes life (for them) so much easier. The BBC has become a brand. It has a stylised mark against all it creates which, perhaps, explains the need for its College of Journalism.

This is unhealthy especially if it is driving free thinkers and free spirits out of the mainstream to get their angles of "what life is all about". A look at history demonstrates how many things came from free spirits and free thinkers, against pitifully few ideas from the rest. The BBC has become conformist with a capital "C", taking the allegedly popular stance with all it handles - hence its obsessive indulgence with audience and brand.

We need to stop this disease now. Individuals must be allowed to thrive in our society or we truly do face 1984 a few decades late. Independence must be King.
Teenagers' listening habits 2:02pm on 15 Jul 2009 "teenagers don't listen to radio"

Surely that begs the question as to why the BBC are pouring lots of license payer cash into "visualising" Radio One or any other radio for that matter. If "they" don't want it then why is the BBC throwing cash trying to get them to do something they don't want to do? Don't you have a great reason to close Radio One?

And, how does all this research go with your recent claims of success with Michael Jackson coverage where, apparently, no arm of the BBC could do wrong?

I worry about how you are all chasing "customers" as if that is the only marker you actually understand. Don't you ever think about what your "real" audience want, the people (teenagers included) who are listening to you today and every day? Do they not count because you already have them?

The BBC is a public service broadcaster, not a barometer by which all other media must be judged. A quick check on my radio dial shows a lot of stations broadcasting music that I am sure a lot of teenagers dig, but how would you capture that in a survey when they are not listening to or interested in you one little bit? They are a happy bunch so let them alone.

Why does the BBC have to act like a kleptomaniac so far as audiences go? Are there not enough people to go around everybody according to their tastes?
On the Blair trail 10:43am on 15 Jul 2009 "...it has so far helped 10000 children from 350 schools..."

How's that then Mihir? Did Mr Blair personally buy rackets, balls, and a year's subscription to a tennis club or courts for each of them? Or is this just another example of political "spin" from the maestro of it, consumed only too readily by someone who should know better than to repeat "half truths"?

I'd far rather know just how the sale of playing fields, the curtailment of competitive sport and a few other political disasters goes down in Mr Blair's list of "things you didn't oughta have done". Isn't it too easy for those with a fair old dribble of cash rippling through their accounts to engage in things that "bless" their shortcomings? Or would you like to spare a thought for the mum and dad in their twenty first floor flat whose little Jane has a great love of water but no access to economic swimming facilities?

The great thing about sport is that it was supposed to be accessible to all kids, either unsupervised in the street or the park, and supplemented and school. Did Blair do anything to encourage that?

Oh, and the Thatcher, Blair thing. No contest - one was really evil; the other just an opportunistic mercenary.
Newsnight's Politics Pen 09:58am on 15 Jul 2009 Ben Bradshaw was waxing lyrical about the BBC on Five Live yesterday afternoon. Like a true politician there he was sitting on the fence both airing public criticism of BBC extravagance, and defending its tradition as "the best media corporation in the world".

So the BBC is in bed with New Labour but the honeymoon is most definitely over and the pillows are more strategically positioned. Mark Thompson has liberally immersed himself in one of those odours that the opposite sex cannot resist but the olfactory mechanism of New Labour is a doing overtime dealing with the stench of its own incompetence, extravagance and greed. The romance is off. Of course talk of divorce or separation is a little premature, at least it is in the interests of the public forum. There may be no children to consider but there is the Family. And Mark Thompson knows better than anyone what happens when the Family get upset.

But hey what about the punters who pay their protection money all the year around? Don't they deserve something a little more resilient when it comes to defending them from Big Daddy? You can't compete with him Mr Bradshaw so what are you going to do about your failed "marriage" and the angst that it is causing the victims you are supposed to be protecting?

Spare us the Politics Pen. Can we have a little more razor sharp dissection of Mr Red's and Mr Blue's policies so that we can hereinafter refer to them as twins in the purple party? Oh, and can we have a reduction in the protection money - at least until you get this odious situation back under control.
Where has the summer gone? 09:37am on 15 Jul 2009 There I was just getting used to an average summer mix of sun, cloud, showers, rain, lightning and thunder, wind, and all else, and you come along to spoil it with this jetstream stuff. Whatever happened to those isobars, low pressures, high pressures, warm fronts and cold fronts (I fell in love with meteorology because of those symbols!) and good old fashioned whether the weather today?

Personally speaking (and I claim copyright on this) I think that the good old earth is slowing down a little because of all the extra weight us people are putting on it. It is doing a bit of a wobble, like when you put your finger lightly on a spinning gyroscope. Because some eastern monstrosity told all its people to jump at a precise moment, perhaps. Devilishly cunning some of these eastern sages, always have been.
Michael Jackson coverage 8:16pm on 02 Jul 2009 From one isolated news bulletin on the BBC yesterday.

"Mollie Sugden has died after a long illness. She was best known for her part as Mrs Slocombe in "Are You Being Served".....". Twenty seconds maybe, probably less.

That is how you should do it BBC - every time.
Michael Jackson coverage 06:17am on 02 Jul 2009 #73

For someone who tinkles on the keyboard so frequently you are surprisingly lacking in human understanding boilerplated.

A "repressed feeling" is one you cannot feel which is not what I said at all. Indeed "repressed feeling" is what anyone who goes into a public situation to "show", "let out", "demonstrate" with others does not deal with personal feeling at all - they attach to and deal with what is termed "the group feeling" - impersonal - because it tends to shift their guilt. The group feeling may be useful for the individual repressed person (as in groups anonymous) but it doesn't deal with the repression itself which is a purely personal thing.

Repression comes from guilt. So the greater the repression of personal feeling the greater the showing of public guilt and the greater the repression amongst all those involved. It is one of those damned circular traps we humans get ourselves into. In a nutshell it absolves you from blaming yourself for the deep feelings you have - denial of permission to feel that way unless it can be shared in other words.

"Big, showy" functions are shallow; that is why they have to be big and showy. It is often said that love begins from the tiniest private whisper and ends in a lot of shouting in a public squabble. That is why private feelings are so important. Permission to have and deal with our private feelings are two of the hardest won abilities we all need.
Michael Jackson coverage 9:45pm on 01 Jul 2009 #68

I share your thoughts on "Death of a Celebrity".

On the night Diana died I was working and listening to FiveLive. I was initially shocked and then intrigued as the first reports of "conspiracy" began to appear less than an hour or so later via misreporting of what had happened, where and the exact time Diana had died. My shock at the announcement of her death was the limit of my grief. As you rightly say I never knew her (although I was closer to her than many for reasons I will not disclose), so how could I feel anything but sadness for her. I was ashamed at the public hysteria that followed - it was appallingly shallow (anyone with real feelings will know what I mean). Grief is private within and for very good reason. Advertising feelings is a very well known way of admitting guilt especially within a diversion.

The wailing over so many celebrity deaths is unhealthy. I am sure that Michael Jackson would prefer us to sing along to his music than to put on the kind of empty show that he would have shied away from. Media please take note.
What really happened 09:35am on 20 Jun 2009 Given that we have recently had a plethora of blithering apologies from our political masters and mistresses that mean absolutely nothing (to them or us probably) it seems that the BBC has caught this variant of swine flu in thinking it can get away with anything "just as long as it fits the rules".

Along with many others I am still waiting for the BBC to release the truth of 9/11, the 45 minute dossier, the descent into tabloid action and speak by the BBC's journalists and many other news "disasters".

Apologies count for nothing BBC but releasing the truth does. Who knows it may do all your egos a power of good too.
MPs' expenses: Your e-mails 01:03am on 20 Jun 2009 #121

It should be encouraging that there are people within the UK still trying to provide accurate observations upon our largely archaic and discredited democratic processes, but, sadly, there appears to be heavily armoured bullet proof shielding surrounding our representatives. The privileges of those who speak in the two Chambers of Parliament seem stifling of debate rather than encouraging of reform and honesty.

The expenses scandal is just one cause of the ripples on the surfaces of our democracy in action. Amongst all the others are intransigent ignorance of the public voice hidden behind the cries of "we must listen". But then isn't this rife across UK public and commercial life too where customer service is actually an illusion worthy of prime TV via David Copperfield or such?

There are politicians who do reach out to their audience in an attempt to check the pulse and measure the temperature but they are a dying breed. There are a few journalists who do the same. Sadly none seem to work for the BBC.

I would love one politician prepared to make urgent policy commitments for the next Parliamentary session that encompass standards of accuracy amongst parliamentarians and actually specifies penalties for failure, the least of these being, termination of office (or the Chiltern Hundreds) to succeed in breaking the ugly cast that shapes our futures.

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