Free Saturday Weekend Guardians (paper) to give away

krappyrubsnif

Due to a catastrophic ballsup I have two unwanted copies of today's Saturday Weekend Guardian surplus to rqumts, if anyone wants one direct message otherwise I will leave them under a stone on the bench in Stroud Green Road or somewhere like that.

grenners

Guardian is mainstream London bubble establishment propaganda and is to be treated like the BBC with a high level of suspicion and cynicism. In fact, defund the BBC.

krappyrubsnif

Come now, I also take the Newcastle Chronicle and Sedgefield Weekly Clarion to keep in touch with our friends in The North, as well as Russia Today, New China News Agency, the Havana News and the Ecaudor Eagle, so I know The Truth about everything. It's so simple. The Guardian has its faults but it's better than being misinformed or ignorant. M
Defund the BBC and my life would be empty.

grenners

Well the BBC drives me insane. Why should I be taxed for something I barely watch. No one under the age of about 35 watches any of it. Young people are completely confused by it, they have no TV but a handful of devices where its possible to use the BBC. It should be made to compete with the other subscription channels. I can't remember the last thing I watched on it for months. Yet they are planning to increase the licence fee in April despite a c. 10% drop in GDP..... I can't see at all why I am paying c. £150 per year for a few programmes I cpukd do without and a woefully biased news and current affairs offer.

krappyrubsnif

I admit I was shocked to discover recently that the 'BBC Licence Fee' covers all live TV including Channel Four, ITV, Now TV and YouTube etc and all other 'live' TV, even on phones and laptops - I didn't know this, because I have always paid the licence fee as a matter of course, and watch Channel Four News every night......but my daughter cannot afford to pay it and just watches Netflix. I agree this is ridiculous. I don't know what the answer is. I agree most BBC news and current affairs is today disgracefully unprofessional, biased, rigid and prone to false equivalence. I don't watch it and only listen to the headlines. There is far too much crowd-pleasing so-called 'entertainment' that is a waste of the licence fee, but then people do seem to like bread and circuses..... But there are some excellent documentary and cultural programmes, dramas, and BBC Four, when not on repeats, is beyond excellent. And BBC radio whether live or on BBC Sounds is utterly brilliant - worth the £150 a year alone. End of rant.

grenners

......its time is running out. Some replacement to BBC sounds will come along and it will cost you much less than £150. Gary Lineker will habe to work for sky instead of taking about £500K a year out of the BBC.

AtomGallery

Quite agree Grenners, and I imagine you agree with Robert Jenrick that tax payers should not have to fund replacing combustible cladding on flats because not all taxpayers own their own home, and while we are at it we don't have kids so why should we pay for state education for other peoples kids, and another thing..

krappyrubsnif

But basically, we're all f*****d. Gary Lineker can go and work for Sky but like many people of my generation I will not watch Sky because its owned by a certain evil wrinkled Ausralian far right tycoon bogeyman, worse than the BBC. What to do? We're all pawns in some media monster's plan, whether it's the so called MSM, Facebook, Google, Fox TV, Times Radio.....they all have an agenda. No one is educated to think critically any more. Mass media of every form is harnessing this.

grenners

..... erm no.... I'm certainly not suggesting you shouldn't pay for my kids state education. I'm talking about a forced subscription to the bbc which is a seriously out of date situation. They are just seeking how long they can get away with it before it's reformed.

fwiw

While Sky may have been founded by everyone's favourite evil wrinkled Australian far right tycoon bogeyman, he doesn't own any of it any more... It was sold in 2018. So safe to watch it!

krappyrubsnif

Phew!

rikki

I hate Murdoch, as we all should, and I was really pleased when he lost control of Sky. Their news has its blind spots and faults absolutely, but in general it is of better quality and more balanced than the Beeb.

I'd like to see non-news BBC output funded by taxes, but under control by citizen's assemblies rather than the current elites.

As far as its news output is concerned, it's an absolute joke.

Meanwhile back to the Guardian - well when its offshore trust starts paying UK tax, and it's editor stops being paid £300k pa, and when it stops receiving millions from Bill Gates to puff his agenda, and when it stops giving a platform to Tony Blair whose lies caused so much devastation and death, I'll consider reading it.

Until then #DumpTheGuardian and #FundAPeoplesBBC

@krappyrubsnif - you try and do a good thing and see what you unleash!

grenners

Defund the BBC.
Guardian I don't pay for so whatever happens to it then fine.

krappyrubsnif

@rikki I like nothing better than to toss a pebble in the pond and see where the tsunami hits.

krappyrubsnif

@rikki as a matter of interest, do you read any newspaper, or if not how do you get your news, comment, analysis, current affairs, etc? Social media, mixed online or one favoured source?

Ali

Netflix seems to cost between £120 and £168 a year. Sky I expect is more.You don't have to pay s TV licence if you watch through a replay service such as ITV hub but you can't watch via iPlayer. BBC does lots of other stuff such as its web sites educational services etc all part of the licence fee. Your right about younger people not watch so that's a big problem for the BBC trying to stay relevant. For what you get it is really good value for money.

rikki

Good value for money for statist/elitist propaganda, sure.
@krappyrubsnif I try to take in a wide array of sources. There are independent journos I trust on Twitter, I watch RT, Al Jazeera, Sky, and dip in to The Canary, Alex Jones, the FT, DeClassifiedUK, and then select experts in particular fields, like Craig Murray, Dr. Bob Gill, various climate scientists, etc etc. So very mixed and never one favourite source.

LukeG

Lol, look away for a minute and this happens...

I think everyone has to admit that all sources and individuals have a worldview that influences their 'impartiality' some sources such as RT and Al Jazeera are pretty much just state propaganda from their countries - but do have value in reporting angles that we might not get from UK sources. Sources like Sky, LBC are all about cash, so they just create content for a wide an audience as possible -, and the Guardian and Daily Mail are two sides of the the same butt cheek.

As for the BBC I have a soft spot for them - having travelled and listened to media across Europe and America, I'd say their output on radio and TV is much higher quality than their counterparts over there - in particular France has trash output that's pretty much 'captured' by a small elite of pro-government hacks that don't even delve into widespread rumors of paedophilia by some key government figures. (Which has turned into a scandal recently). I'd add that German and French news sources arent as critical of their governments as in the UK by a wide margin - maybe because in the UK we love a grumble and the media don't see themselves as part of the 'elite'.

The BBC is run by a wide variety of individuals with their own outlook - it often skews to the left -, in particular covering 'woke' issues, but if you're aware of that, the radio and TV output is varied and much more high quality than commercial or state counterparts elsewhere.

grenners

UK Column News is an interesting one which you can watch if YouTube........if you want to see the UK government and BBC getting torn apart.

Ali

I am not sure why anyone would want to see anyone "torn apart"

The BBC is usually under threat from what ever the government of the day is which gets amplified when they have the opportunity to appoint who runs the BBC and it's regulator OfCom . The recent BBC Chair appointment is a "placeman" for Johnson. I am not sure I would want to see Paul Dacre the ex Daily Mail Editor as Chair of OfCom. He has a good chance as the selection board has ex Mail Execs and members of the Times Board on it so I guess both Rothermere and Murdoch have some influence on who and what politics gets to be OfCom Chair

If you want to apply here is the job advert

https://publicappointments.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/appointment/chair-ofcom/

One worry may well be that in the future the regulatory requirement to show balance removed as it was in the US. You can see the results of that with the likes of Fox etc.

By ruining the BBC you may get more than you bargained for.

I also think the rest of the world would be wondering what on the earth we would be up to doing that.

grenners

By torn apart I mean the BBC and other media sources (not a person) scrutinised properly......in a way which never happens on the BBC. I might make a distinction between the BBC news reporting and the BBC in general. So that's a very good channel UK Column as it exposes things which the establishment media might all try to ignore and not look at in too much detail.....until it's too late. That's if you can stick with it as its a bit tedious. The BBC was thought to be impartial and nowadays the internet means we can look at different sources and decide if that's the case.

Ali

Grenners you sound much better when you write more gently !

You mention that scrutiny is not prevalent on the BBC. I wonder then why Johnson refused to be interviewed by Andrew Neil on the BBC at the last electoin ?

grenners

The bbc is not going to scrutinise its own output, articles etc. And they don't really criticise the papers much when they sit down on Marr and look at all the identical headlines.

kreuzkav

I like the Adam Curtis offering 'Can't Get You Out of my Head' released on iplayer last week. Concering the Guardian, I still read it everyday online. I only found out lately that Bill Gates was a major funder. Not that I go for conpriacy theories. He seems decent in many way but always a bit worried by major patrons.

Ali

To say that Bill Gates is a major funder of the Guardian needs a bit of clarification. You can see what grant his foundatino gave

https://www.gatesfoundation.org/How-We-Work/Quick-Links/Grants-Database/Grants/2011/08/OPP1034962

grenners

Well he is apparently one of the biggest owners of farmland in America now. He's investing heavily in synthetic meat development. I'm sure he donates enough to get his agenda in the paper.

rikki

Given what the best-placed scientists are warning re our current trajectory and the future WE face, let alone our kids and grandkids, I think "torn apart" is a perfectly good and very restrained phrase. The government is leading us on a genocidal path re lack of any meaningful and necessary radical change on carbon emissions and other ecological issues, and the BBC, along with corporate media, is wholly inadequate in reporting the science and holding those responsible to account. I understand Dacre has now been appointed at Ofcom. Adam Curtis is always worth a listen.

Arkady

I'm not really into the billionaire-led model, but simultaneously owning lots of farmland while investing in products that will end traditional meat production is a *very* smart place to be right now.

rikki

Yes, well he's got to afford his bunker in New Zealand's mountains while the rest of us perish somehow hasn't he. Very *smart*

Arkady

Not sure you quite catch my drift. If one did happen to be a billionaire who was in the process of giving away most of his billions to good causes, then ending traditional meat production while rewilding the land traditionally used for that purpose is, to my mind, very high up the list of the best things you could do for humanity at the moment.

grenners

Or the worst because he's part of the new neo-feudalism and will use his market influence to grow crops for profit and increase the price of beef to support his megalomaniac psychopath agenda to save the world. He will secretly have is own organic beef whilst we eat something that will probably make men turn into Soy Boys and women grow beards. He already created one monopoly with Microsoft. Maybe he's a ruthless business man driven by power. And it suits him to support the climate change agenda to concentrate his power. Becareful of the new alliance between private global enterprise and unelected global government. Danger!