Answer: someone with at least sufficient candle power to read an autocue and enunciate his words. Neither of which Wright can do to a professional standard.
You’re right, of course, it is a lazy argumentative tactic - but then again this is The Pit. However, while I concede the point about unhelpful generalisation, I’d like to make one valid point before moving on. You are not quite comparing like with like. There is an oft-recycled lie that the BBC does not run adverts. The truth is that it does run adverts, to near-saturation levels, but they happen to all be adverts for BBC products. Unless you are uncommonly scrupulous, and very quick with the remote, if you watch BBC TV you will be saturated with BBC propaganda which never addresses the fundamental question at stake (see below for more). For this reason, I think it was okay to refer in passing to people basing their views on recycled Beeb propaganda (albeit I have already admitted it was rather a cheap shot). However, you have no equivalent basis for assuming that any of my arguments proceed from allegiance to Rupert Murdoch or exposure to any of his propaganda. I don’t buy any of his papers, and I don’t watch any of his TV channels.
The fundamental question, to which I referred above, is not how it should be funded but whether an entity like the BBC should be funded at all. I maintain that it is simply illegitimate to tax people for something they haven’t asked for, don’t want and are quite happy never to have or to use.
This is the fundamental question which I think is worth addressing. The thing is, even BBC apologists don’t really agree with the principle. Look, Twisty, in the course of the forthcoming year, I’d like to take some money off you for a project I have in mind. It might be to write a book about my recent travels. It might be to make a short video of a play a friend of mine has just written. Or I might just want to pay a mate of mine, who is utterly rubbish at reading out loud, to read out loud for half an hour a week.
The thing is, I’m not going to tell you what I’m going to do with your money. You have no say. If I happen to produce something you like, that’s just lucky, but I might just choose to spend it on a programme saying that Guiness is crap and anyone who drinks it is a stupid drunk. Remember, YOU are paying for me to do this, and if when you see my output you think it’s garbage, well, that’s just tough. You pay, but you get no say.
What’s more, they’ve just passed a law that says you and everyone you know has to fund my project, whether you want to or not, and if you don’t you can actually be sent to prison.
Now, how ready are you to send me your money? How fair do you think it is that you have to pay up front, you can be sent to prison if you don’t, you get no control over how I spend it, and even if you hate what I produce you will never see a penny of your money back? If you seriously think this is a fair and sensible way to fund creative projects, then please send me £100 immediately. I don’t think you are going to do this. So what makes the BBC any different?
It’s nice to see that someone adrift of the facts has bothered to offer the old argument that ‘it’s worth it to have the programmes uninterrupted by adverts’. First of all, you have the option of videotaping anything interesting and then fast-forwarding through the ads. Secondly, the commercial sector is perfectly capable of offering this option. A friend of mine in LA sits down every week to watch Sex And The City on HBO. She enjoys the show, and no adverts interrupt the programme. I’m told that Sky often show movies without interruptions from adverts. (I can’t say for sure because I don’t subscribe to Sky.)
My basic argument is this: in the real world, there are two systems that make sense. One is that you pay, but you have some say. The other is that you have no say, but you don’t pay either. The BBC offers the worst of both worlds: we have to pay and yet we have no say in how they spend (and I would say ‘waste’) the money.
And there is wastage. I have witnessed really appalling BBC waste of licence-fee money first-hand, and can provide good examples.
