[You can read Part 1 of this essay here]
Fear not! If you are not part of ‘social media’ or fearlessly choose not to read articles written in the print media or slavishly listen to or watch the broadcast news, you are not it seems alone, as more and more people turn away from the BBC in all its woke and multi-culti politically correct glory and find other avenues to explore for their news and leisure enjoyment.
Careful though, as many have found that many corporate financed and controlled alternatives are not that much better, but then you are not forced to pay for what you don’t want. There are thousands of video sites and blogs out there, some as good if not better than anything produced by the traditional media and all with a comments-below section or the like button if you wish to use them.
Comments are mostly very similar to those found on the major traditional MSM sites: repetitive, sensible or not, often written with little or no knowledge of the subject and with much bias – as is often the case in the real world – full of threats of violence, vitriolic, often using suggestions or acronyms of language not heard even in the barrack room or used by the proverbial fish wife, never mind written in the public domain. These same people often demanding that their freedom of speech should remain uncensored by moderators.
It’s odd that before this explosion of media opportunity the same was not said about ‘Letters to the Editor’ that were often not published for whatever reason, possibly because the ‘editor’ retained the right to edit or refused to publish just anything that arrived on their desk so to speak and in any case would follow the owners’ preferred political view.
Censorship then at a time when the media could be said to ‘nudge ‘one way or another the views of its readership; just as the Reithian BBC, Pathé News and Government ‘Information Film Units’ had been doing for years. All in the best traditions of a “one nation, all in it together, middle class man in the civil service knows better” tradition and they’re still doing it now.
Just look at the makeup of ‘talk shows’, beautifully diverse in all aspects bar one – few working people, you know the ones that actually work with their hands for example, presumably they are too thick to have something relevant or interesting to say.
The media then still lives in its own virtual reality, a reality where recently a ship due to be scrapped could be described in a headline as ‘heading for a mental scrap yard’ or a Douglas DC 3 aircraft designed and built in the 1930s could be described as a ‘Navy Jet’. Or when motorists caught up in a major tailback on a motorway were told the delay was ‘thanks to’ an incident. An incident as it happens where people had died.
On the other hand, the new Digital reality is all around us and available on demand if you can afford it or even want it – on a laptop or device near you as they say. If you want to fly a Boeing Dreamliner, the apps are there ready and waiting, the problem being is that some of the population seem to believe that a computer simulation is the same as flying the real thing in real time. Real training costs time and money and as for flying that latest fighter jet apparently the R.A.F. spend up to seven years to train a fighter pilot. Any commercial pilot will tell you that there is much more to flying a commercial jet than sitting in the front sipping coffee and refusing to fly because the cup had no anti-spill lid, as reported in the MSM this last week. But no matter, this reminds me of people apparently living in this virtual world who are convinced that they know everything and can do anything who will tell a practitioner in all seriousness ‘they thought of doing that’ as if that puts them on the same level. Ask any doctor – they meet these people on a daily basis.
After the New Year I visited a cinema to see the award winning movie “1917”, screened in IMAX and on a large screen (not as large as the surround screens older readers will remember). The picture quality was brilliant and really ‘in your face’ but the sound at 80 dB was not to my taste, in fact my ears were still ringing the next day. I found the plot weak and unbelievable, but there is lots of noisy action and gore along with close ups of the dead and decapitated, if that’s what you enjoy seeing.
As a piece of digital virtual reality and production it’s really good but doesn’t, for me, capture what trench life was like; mostly the soldiers are too clean for a start, the movie’s ‘Saving Private Ryan’ action scenes were far better.
“1917” was, presumably, written for the millennial generation, translate this as ‘good on the digital and virtual but weak on reality’. Advertising for anything now in the cinema is so overdone with designer style and very loud soundtracks suggesting that everything can be obtained without little effort, I found myself wondering not for the first time is this advertising, propaganda or brainwashing? Full as it is of multicultural one world overtones, ‘woke’ messages and political correctness, you could be forgiven for thinking why the people you see around you don’t all drive £40,000 cars, live in houses with every technological device with huge rooms complete with laminate floors and black and white furniture surrounded by ‘art’ on the walls and the latest technology bolted to the walls.
Maybe many of us have just been left behind in this new digital reality, just as many people failed to see or felt the heat of ‘white hot technology’ as promised by Harold Wilson all those years ago.
My car is full of digital technology, I can plan journeys, read emails, change the temperature of the seats, dim the glass, read instruments on the windscreen, check what the engine and transmission is doing, what the fuel consumption is doing and all the rest. It slows when needed and steers itself into a parking place. Mostly it’s unused and not particularly wanted and I know from experience as it ages it will break down and will cost a fortune to repair, it has little real world use although it does have lots of pretty lights showing on the dashboard when it’s dark. It’s mainly used when passing the time when we are stuck in another traffic jam on a cutting edge technologically ‘smart’ motorway.
“Alexa how long will we be here and where are we going?” I asked my artificial intelligence assistant the other day, back came the reply “I’m sorry I can’t answer that question”
Neither can I, Alexa, neither can I.
Harry Again – point taken – and where would GP’s be without resorting to their ‘check-a-sickness’ computers?
No need to worry about the eventual demise of the BBC.
Sooner or later they are going to run out of their cloned women presenters who proliferate every conceivable programme including every known sporting event in the Universe – what is the betting that a woman will become the next DG, probably the ex-China Reporter – ‘journalist/ observer/ serial Claimant/ salary Crusader/ sometime Announcer/rabble-rouser/ grossly underpaid/ political Activist and Mistress of the BBC Universe/ salary arbiter in Chief/ and Part-Time worker, Union of The Soviet BBC Admonistration, HRH Carrie Gracie.
What began as a public outcry about the positively GROSS salaries being paid to second-rate BBC ‘personalities/celebrities’ (Lineker and the army of LGBTQXY+ others ‘staff’) has ended up with a complete block and silence over that outcry and that disgraceful set-up, but has now degenerated into a Crusade to bring every woman in the BBC UP TO the colossal, obscene salary-scales of the men.
The BBC is going the same way as all unaccountable Empires, gross excesses in every conceivable Department and the arrogance of uncontrolled power; together with the rise of the LGBTQXY+others, who dominate the Halls (pun intended!) of Power and the low-grade quality and/or content of their ‘armies’.
Look at the ‘output’ in your TV Schedules and it will be found that an average of 80% of that output are Repeats – time and time and time again, which of course forces the average viewer on to programmes which cost the viewers more money – and filled with baffling ‘advertising’.
One might even imagine that the ‘grandees (of which there are hundreds!) are all in the pay of the ‘Independant’ TV Moguls.
Carry on like this and they will p, hopefully but inevitably self-destruct.
Yes, you guessed it – NOT a fan!
I can tell you from first hand experience that commercial jet pilots invariably cannot fly a simple glider with three basic instruments.
They are not actually pilots, the aircraft flies itself, they just “manage” it.
Unless that is they started their flying career in gliders but few do these days.
‘Ask any Doctor……’ You say………..and he/she will spin on their chair and ask the computer to reach a diagnosis…….there could well come a time when we will need to sue the computer for incorrect diagnoses……. perhaps……?