A brief word about the news

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I have become so disillusioned with my previously beloved BBC’s ‘news’ coverage that I can no longer stand to listen to or watch it. When it comes on in the car, I’m inclined to tune to another station. When I see articles linked to on the BBC site I half heartedly look but don’t expect balanced coverage.

Why?

Things they’ve not covered that really matter to me include:

– The privatisation of the NHS. If the s75 regulations are enacted into law the final nail in the NHS’s coffin will be in place (although all this is really horse-bolted-stable-door-nonsense now). Apparently there was one mention of it on the BBC’s today programme. I don’t plan to be here, but I love the NHS. Warts and all. Mid-Staffs disasters were largely caused by the government bringing business into healthcare. Healthcare has no place being a business. Jeremy *spit* Hunt witters on about compassion whilst slapping a price on every fucking thing in sight. Two-Faced little toad. You want to fix Mid-Staffs? Get enough staff in so that the staff aren’t drained at the start of their shift, let alone at the end. Throw money at training. Resource the hell out of it. Take the managers and such away and put them back making little plastic toys to go in cereal boxes. It’s meant to be a HOSPITAL. *sigh*. There will always be mistakes. There will always be disasters. We should learn from them. Mid Staffs is an example of everything that can go wrong being piled in a heap on one sorry excuse for a hospital. But taking the things that made it bad – targets and chasing money – and making them what the privatised-logo-slapped-remains of the NHS is about is going to make it worse, not better. Incidentally, the report mentioned nurse-patient ratios, don’t see Jeremy Hunt saying how the NHS is going to get enough money to pay enough nurses for that. No, we’re going to get fucking compassion training. In the words of the immortal Douglas Adams, Go Stick Your Head In A Pig.

– The welfare reforms that are causing hideous and disgraceful hardship to people. Indeed, killing people, or causing them to kill themselves. I was going to add descriptors like ‘poor’ or ‘disadvantaged’ or ‘disabled’, but the reality is they are all people. They are just people who society used to say should be supported, but who the media and the government have now vilified, just so they can save a few quid. A few quid which they have handed over to their 1% friends.

– Immigration. I’m weird, I’m pro-immigration. Because nearly everyone who wants to come to Britain (deluded though they are about what I am rapidly coming to despair of as a country) wants to come to work. And this bullshit they’re-taking-our-jobs attitude is a steaming pile of racist crap that should be exposed for what it is. When you actually look at the welfare figures, when you actually look at the employment figures, these new immigrants barely register. BBC’s coverage? Strangely pro-government-vilification.

– And a smaller one, in some ways. Electric cars. Look, they’re bloody good, alright. I’ve been in ’em, I’ve even driven a few, and they’re nifty. They’re not the answer to everyone’s problems everywhere, but they do what they say on the tin, and they’re a boat load cleaner than everything else around at the moment, except for cycling and walking. I’m quite bored of the BBC’s Clarksonian randomness on this front.

And it’s a shame, because I used to love the BBC. My belief in the concept of the BBC as a fair, largely unbiased news outlet was never that strong, but it was strong enough that I thought it was worth it. These days I’m left to wonder. Still, we’ll be in Canada, and the BBC will stop being funded by our taxes, and yes, I know Canada’s gone a bit insane over the last few years, but hey, everywhere seems to be depressingly mad these days.

KateWE

Kate's a human mostly built out of spite and overcoming transphobia-racism-and-other-bullshit. Although increasingly right-wing bigots would say otherwise. So she's either a human or a lizard in disguise sent to destroy all of humanity. Either way, it's all good.