Friday 21 January 2022
A Vigilant Eye
How good it is to know that a vigilant eye is fixed upon you, lovingly protecting you against the slightest error, the slightest misstep. This may seem somewhat sentimental, but an analogy comes to my mind—the Guardian Angels that the ancients dreamed of. How many of the things they merely dreamed about have been realized in our life!
Yevgeny Zamyatin - WE (1920-21)
It is clear enough that people are divided in their attitude towards government. Some people, particularly those in the public sector, seem to think it is on their side - looking out for them with a vigilant eye. Almost in a parental sense.
Others know very well that government is no guardian angel and a vigilant government eye is not necessarily what we want. Especially in our surveillance age. In a democracy the vigilant eye should look inwards too, but governments know very well that most voters are not vigilant enough to bother.
Even in a democracy it is seems to be virtually impossible to vote against any government agenda, let alone vote to reform its major institutions. The BBC, NHS and state education are good examples of this latter problem. As politically formidable institutions, they have to be reformed very carefully and very slowly. Even so, they are powerful enough to defeat proposals for fundamental reform.
We even have a major political party whose function it is to guard them against reform with a vigilant eye. With many vigilant eyes we might say. Plus the Guardian’s vigilant eye we might add. Plus the BBC’s vigilant eye.
The BBC is a good example of a vigilant eye. Nobody can be unaware that we have reached a technological era where the compulsory licence fee is not morally sustainable. Televisions are no longer bought primarily to watch BBC television. A generation is growing up which barely knows what BBC television is. Netflix yes. Xbox games yes. BBC - it's for oldies.
The moral conclusion has become embarrassingly plain. It is simply wrong to deliberately perpetuate a system where people are threatened, taken to court, fined and even jailed because they fail to pay…
Fail to pay what? Pay the BBC licence fee and you are protected against threats, harassment and court action. What do we call that – protection money? In a moral sense perhaps it is and the BBC protects it with a vigilant eye.
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8 comments:
During the last (big) financial crisis it was said, with some justification, that some banks were too big to fail for fearf of general collapse..
You could argue that some organisations are too big to remove cleanly, they must be carefully reformed or defused like a complex bomb. I'm thinking of the BBC, the NHS and the Mafia, and probably several political parties in various countries. All are subject to 'producer capture' and are more dedicated to their own interests than those they were originally meant to serve.
Of course sometimes you have to protect those nearby and blow up the bomb to nullify the threat. If I were the BBC, and had some measure of introspection (ha!), I'd come up with a proposal for reforming the organisation over a period of years. Perhaps to a News organisation funded from direct taxation and the 'entertainment' sections sold off? The alternative, for the BBC, is slow starvation as the number of license payers drops year on year.
I have argued for some years that as the licence fee was introduced to provide a service on a new invention, namely public radio. At first it provided government information, propoganda?, and some light entertainment. As commercial enterprises came on air the BBC should have been cut down or cast adrift. There are now so many alternatives that the BBC can hardly justify having numerous television channels and umpteen radio stations. As DJ says above, paring it down to what it originally was would be the ideal solution.
"As politically formidable institutions, they have to be reformed very carefully and very slowly." Or swept away as in a flood. That would be best for the Beeb. The Notional Health Service needs the slow-and-steady method but is never likely to get it.
State Education: as an education service it was quite deliberately buggered up in the late 60s and 70s. I doubt if it's debuggerable now. Maybe start by knocking the universities around and see if you can thereby instil the fear of God into the schools. Or follow Thatcher: declare that the schools are going to be "privatised" and every parent will get free shares. Bribe the teachers with shares too. Promise to sack all Deputy Heads. There must be a way.
Funny old thing, the BBC. Who or what decides what we get from it in terms of output?
Patently, it's not market forces. Although some bits are clearly profitable, the profit motive doesn't actually shape a lot of what they do. On the other extreme, though, it's clearly not some bunch of political commissars who take their orders direct from the Cabinet Office.
I would actually have some respect for the BBC if either of these extremes was the case. I appreciate a bit of ideological purity. But instead, we have a group of people who are assuming they know what is best for us just because they were successful in joining a self-selecting elite. That might have been OK when there was only one clearly defined elite. But now things are changing, and I don't want to be patronised by some smug Oxbridge jerk who was selected because they had the approved attitudes towards sex and race and nationhood.
You don't need to pay the licence fee. I haven't for about 12 years. I don't have a TV I just watch whatever I want on my PC, everything is available to stream somewhere. And its all perfectly legal - on demand watching does not require a licence. I occasionally get the narky letters, which get filed in the bin. Once some bod turned up and I told him I didn't need a licence because I don't watch live TV and he went away. That was nearly 10 years ago, never had another one bother me.
Once again, I agree with Sam. Be careful! Not too much reiffication!
I also agree with Derieme. I always say that nothing has been done so badly in Britain since the war as the destruction of our secondary education system by doctrinaire left wing politicians. Instead of improving it, if they felt too many working class children were short changed, they were, and still are, subsumed by the 'equal opportunities leading to equal outcomes' myth. They are so subject to 'group think', that they have not thought through the ideal of 'equal opportunities' as the impractical and illogical concept that it is. Nor are they likey to in the foreseeable future in the current political climate.
DJ - "I'd come up with a proposal for reforming the organisation over a period of years." I'm surprised they haven't done that, but maybe they think that dragging their feet will eventually lead to funding from taxation. To my mind the BBC should never have been involved in entertainment.
Andy - I'd cut it down to nothing - just sell it off.
dearieme - yes it was deliberately buggered up. Maybe to stop a drift away from the traditional working class. A school voucher system could worth trying but I don't see anyone with the political balls to sell it and then do it.
Sam - "I don't want to be patronised by some smug Oxbridge jerk who was selected because they had the approved attitudes towards sex and race and nationhood."
Well put and many seem to feel that way. I'm hoping that this outlook grows as younger generations begin to influence things.
Sobers - we have a TV and do watch a small amount of live output. The grandkids never watch BBC at all and seem to be entirely uninterested in it. Things will change eventually.
Tammly - I'm sure education is partly seen as early years indoctrination with a strong flavour of political indoctrination simply because it is a political issue. That could change in ways we can't foresee because kids now have access to a far bigger world beyond school. Many teachers must seem small and parochial compared to that world.
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