The Beeb and Strikes

The News and Pensions

The Beeb have had their problems.

They pay their chief bods an astronomical amount of money but this probably pales into insignificance when you look at what Wayne Rooney does by comparison.

The Beeb have been severely criticised this week for mistakenly reporting that some of the funds raised from Band Aid had possibly got into the wrong hands and been used to supply arms.

I’d have quite liked to have been a fly on the wall when Sir Bob found out about that one.

Michael Grade was as passionate as I had ever heard him on “Today” earlier in the week. He was seething and very prepared to lambast his previous employers.

The Beeb could be criticised for some of the dross that they have served up in the name of family entertainment sometimes, but then so can the other lot, and that is before you get onto the BSkyB lot.

But what a day it has been without the BBC news!

I almost forgive them anything.

I woke this morning to the sounds of Radio Four as I do every morning. Wishing for more sleep made me hit the snooze button before I had absorbed the fact that there was no John or Evan or Justin to greet me into the morning.

It was only when I realised that I was listening to Matthew Parris banging on about Churchill that I finally woke up to the fact that I had been duped, and there was something seriously wrong with the world.

Wandering downstairs, I did not expect to see Sian and Bill as it was a Friday but there was no smug Charlie or the gorgeous Susannah either; just some bloke who looked as though he had been brought in from the street to present the faux BBC Breakfast programme.

Oh well, an opportunity to just take a look at this Daybreak programme on ITV and see what all the negative fuss was about.

Oh dear, the very first view that I got was Peter Andre waving kuddly kisses to his Princess Tisha Tasha Globby Pops or whatever she is called.

This was a serious disaster!

As the day progressed it did not get any better. In fact, I didn’t even attempt to watch television news or tune into the radio. In times like these, the only serious place that you could get some news was at the Guardian website. The red flashes of breaking news saved the day.

But it is not quite the same.

A few years ago, at a time of extreme distress, my family laughed over a comment on Ceefax which said “News 24 – will it ever end?” in all seriousness.

Well, dear contributor. It ended today, well at least as we know it.

Later on in the day, with a distinct lack of visual stimulation, I decided to switch onto ITN. It was almost as spectacularly disappointing as the attempt in the morning. In fact, I could have been watching the same programme.

In all seriousness, ITN can actually produce a decent programme. They manage it perfectly well on Channel 4, which is more than a professional outlet most of the time but I miss the BBC. I miss Huw Edwards! I miss the conformity of the schedule. Perhaps I am more conservative and stuck in my ways than I thought.

I could go on and discuss the rights and wrongs of striking but that is probably another story.

And for those who are interested, I think everyone should have the right to strike.

What is interesting is that this is only the first of many as people finally begin to realise the impact of slashes and cuts on their pensions.

One might argue that it is hardly the altruistic strikes of years gone by where consideration for future generations was at the heart of strike action but it is still a plausible concern.

The BBC today and other public sector workers tomorrow.

The BBC’s pension is known to be generous and one cannot blame people for wanting to maintain it, if that is what they signed up to. Apparently, the deficit in the corporation’s pension budget is between £1.5bn and £2bn.

That is scary money. That is a deficit that is beyond my comprehension but might seem even palatable compared with the public sector and services industry pension problems.

This is one big scary world at the moment for those of us who are not reliant or likely to ever inherit anything substantial.

And it doesn’t stop with pensions. What about the other end of the spectrum where young people cannot even amass enough money to buy or even rent a home? What about those people who are not now going to be able to afford university education because they cannot stomach the £30K that they will have to repay for the duration of the sixty years of working? What about the poor sods who are desperate for an apprenticeship which is a rare enough thing today and will be more so as people finally realise that further academic education is not the be-all-and –end-all form of life after school?

I’m not an economist. I barely understand what it all about but I am for fairness and honesty, which is why I find all of this so very frightening.

I just hope my beloved BBC will be back on air on Sunday to help me progress with my learning on this subject.