BBC: Wave of closures and critical changes that will affect output balance

 

For decades, the BBC has strived to become more like private mass media and is paying a very high price for it with recent announcements leading to the demise of various services. One hopes that the trend towards political correctness will now turn into a trend towards value content, if anything for the sake of survival in a very competitive environment.

The coming of the Digital Age left  many promises unfulfilled. The transition from analogue to digital was a bag of missed opportunities. In the 1990s came the expression 'Value for Money' that became 'Value for Rubbish' and waste leading to generations of viewers walking away from the BBC.

The saga of the BBC World Service was a typical example of what should not have been done. The once proud BBC World Service was cut off bit by bit. BBC World Service used to be a pool of talent respected worldwide and one of the worst tragedies was the loss of its well known headquarters at Bush House in Central London. The facilities had been rented from the beginning and the opportunity was missed to acquire them because those in charge thought that there was no point in buying the buildings because rental payments were relatively low. When the cost of renting went up, the Corporation saw much of the budget allocated by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office eaten away and the decision was made to move the World Service to Broadcasting House - not before closing down many language services and reducing the entire operation to the bone.

Short-termism killed the BBC World Service that now exists as a skeleton of its former self. From a budgetary point of view, the BBC World Service was merged with local BBC and it now seems that BBC News Channel will now merge with BBC World to form "a single global rolling TV news service". Elegant way of calling a de-facto reduction of the BBC output.

Tim Davie, the present BBC Director General, stated that many of the World Service's foreign language services would go online only. Another step towards the shadows. It was announce that there will also be cuts to local television and radio services in England because 'while the vast majority of the spending is focused on traditional broadcast television and radio channels audiences are shifting online. This will lead to a chain of job losses.

Any hopes of retaining British soft power overseas should be forever forgotten. For decades, British programming for overseas publics has been cut bit by bit. The now defunct Central Office of Information used to produce a wide range of programmes in English and in foreign languages for radio and television that were very much appreciated by foreign audiences. The closure of foreign language services produced by the BBC only made a bad situation worse.

Unless there is a dramatic change in terms of internet services provision across the United Kingdom, millions of Britons across the United Kingdom will not be able to access BBC streaming services when so called traditional radio and television broadcast services come to an end. One wonders then what is the point of focusing on services that can only be accessed by those who have access to Internet connections that are fast enough to distribute such services.

All we hear is talk about finances. What about content? At the end of the day, no matter how many cuts are introduced to save monies, people are going to continue walking away from the BBC if value content is not on offer and/or the services cannot be accessed because of slow and insufficient Internet connections across the United Kingdom.

  

  

Russian Internet

Russia's State Duma, the lower house of the Federal Assembly of Russia, adopted in the first reading on Tuesday a bill aimed to ensure security and availability of Russian Internet (Runet) in the event of potential isolation from the global network.

This means that data from its own organisations and users would stay within Russia, rather than be distributed globally.

The bill's text warns of the "violent nature of the U.S. National Cybersecurity Strategy adopted in September 2018," which accuses Russia of alleged hacking attacks "without evidence," said the law's sponsors.

Russia has regularly been accused of cyber attacks on other nations and organisations.

The draft law, called the Digital Economy National Programme, makes sure its internet provision can continue to function in the event of external powers attempting to disable the country's service.

The law's authors say that Russia will unplug itself in case of a major cyber threat.

Russia will be required to create its own version of the internet's address system or Domain Name System (DNS), so it can continue to operate if connections to international servers are interrupted.

Twelve organisations are involved in overseeing the root servers for DNS with none of them based in Russia.

The eventual plan is for all Russian internet traffic to pass through these new routing arrangements.

The project has received support from Russia's president Vladimir Putin.

UK: Frustration is dangerous and will certainly fuel extremism

Frustration is dangerous and will certainly fuel extremism

For the first time, I am hearing people openly talking about joining paramilitaries and even National Action in the United Kingdom. Extremely high levels of frustration are creating a pressure cooker effect and the unthinkable might happen. 

At a gathering people spoke about using IRA tactics in Britain to fight against the political establishment and the mass media including BBC, SKY and others that have a very clear anti-British political agenda.

When it was mentioned that several serving soldiers were on trial for suspected membership of National Action, I saw the whole picture. No one in the British Armed can have certain ideas without the middle ranks knowing about it and this leads me to the fact that National Action is alive and well inside the British Armed Forces.

Banning an organisation doesn't get rid of the ideas that led to the creation of the said organisation. What is more, the present trend to prevent people from expressing what they believe (attempts to control Internet, bans and censorship carried out on Internet will only make things worse. When people are not able to express their feelings and ideas in writing, they will carry out attacks. Like an animal pushed against a wall, with nowhere else to go, people will turn violent.

Only yesterday somebody suggested that Police Forces are being readied to deal with Civil War in the United Kingdom because Civil War is coming. Spaces for dialogue are vanishing and the harsh approach put into practice by Police Forces in the United Kingdom show that it is self-evident where things are heading.

I reject the idea of going around publicly threatening individuals or communities but I do understand the level of anger shown by some who do go around threatening individuals or communities. More often than not we have seen members of Muslim Communities with placards talking about beheading those who do not surrender to Islam. We have seen them burning Poppies and insulting and threatening British troops and the beheading of Lee Rigby is a clear example of what is to come showing that what is written on placards is very much the announcement of what is going to happen in the no so distant future.  

 

Internet is not a threat. It is a safety valve

Internet is not a threat. It is a safety valve.

I strongly believe that Internet is a safety valve that allows to diffuse much of the frustrations that could turn into violence. I believe that in a deeply divided society in which despite rising numbers the individual is paradoxically increasingly isolated, we need the means to allow grievances to be vented safely. For this reason, I reckon that attempts to prevent people from expressing their feelings in social media are misguided and dangerous.

Some years ago, I wrote a piece about Thomas Hamilton, a loner that was a member of a gun club in the United Kingdom. Thomas Hamilton was a ticking bomb, loaded with frustrations and resentment made a lot worse by the fact that he couldn't let go of the anguish that was growing and growing inside. Suddenly, one day, he decided to arm himself and walk into a public school where he shot dead teachers, parents and pupils.

Jo Cox's case is cited as a case of politically motivated assassination when in fact it was a case of a mental health patient that on the eve of the attack was asking the National Health Service for support because in his own words he was feeling emotionally troubled. Thomas Mair was also having mental health problems but the case was completely distorted and made to appear as politically motivated. Thomas Mair was described as a Right Wing Terrorist.

In a society in which one in ten teenagers are showing symptoms of mental health problems that go untreated in most cases, social media play a vital role. Those who do not have a rewarding and fulfilling private life can use the Internet and social media to relieve some of the pressure they are under.

I think some British politicians are getting things extremely wrong. Censoring and banning can only make matters a lot worse. I do believe that putting things under the carpet is not the answer. It is better for things to happen in the open so that we know what people are truly feeling and thinking. You might not like some of the comments people make but this is no justification whatsoever to prevent them from expressing what they truly feel and think.

Britain has a particularly serious problem. Why hasn't anybody asked why so many people are choosing to live alone and why so many that would like to have some kind of social interaction are being ostracised? Let's remember that we live in a country in which not less than 15,000 people take their own lives every year (this is about the cases that we know but there will be plenty more that we don't know about). I guess we only notice the problem when our train services are cancelled because somebody jumped onto the rails in front of a passing train.

Behind the drugs problem, there are fundamental social issues related to how we interact with each other. In the Digital Era of Mass Communications millions of people don't have a voice and feel completely abandoned.

Internet: A safety valve, Breivik, Dumblane

I reckon that thanks to the Internet and the possibility of using it as a safety valve in an increasingly dictatorial social environment, we don't see more violent explosions.

Internet keeps people talking and talking can be a very good thing to defuse a time-bomb that could be generated by a deadly combination of frustration and isolation.

When censorship arises those who are behind want to believe that stopping people from writing articles they will avoid the unavoidable and in fact quite the opposite happens. The more repression there is, the more isolated people become, unable to to express their views, they start storing anger and when anger reaches unstoppable energy it explodes.

I wrote several articles and one of them has to do with what happened in a location called Dumblane. A loner called Thomas Hamilton, leaves his home and armed to the teeth enters the premises of a primary school and kills both teachers and pupils.

Not long ago, Anders Behring Breivik carried out a massage at a camp in Norway and many young people lost their lives without even knowing why they were killed.

As long as people focus their minds writing and interacting with others, as long as they are not left in complete isolation to brew a dangerous mix of frustration and anger, society as a whole will be safer. This is why I am totally against levels of censorship that deprive society of a safety valve.

Just a few weeks ago, troubles started in Turkey. The authorities blocked access to Internet thinking that by blocking access to Internet they could control an potentially explosive situation. It was absolutely counterproductive. People unable to vent their anger and their frustrations in Internet, flocked into the streets and real violence was widespread.

What most people want is to be heard. To feel that they are not alone. This is the fundamental role of Internet as a safety valve.