ECCOnoob

Why is it? Its television. Commerical television at that too. Advertisers pay the channel. Channel makes programmes. Programmes pay celebs to star in it. Celebs attract viewers. Viewers watch it and increase the advertisers audience. Advertisers keep paying money to channel. Round and round it goes. Why blame the producers or the channel? If WE the public watch it and keep being attracted to it, they will keep making it.

Ah yeah, "real men". I know those. Those who sit with their pints of ale guffawing away about the pretty blonde with the big knockers behind the bar and comparing how good she is in the sheets or giving their expert wisdom on the latest x million pound striker who has just signed with City or comparing notes on why Alan's latest car is a a complete pile of tut. Yeah, hate to break it to you Princess but that's gossip. Just because the Millenials call it "banter" and the old duffers call it "chatting" its all the same thing

That's just what I was thinking. As with all these stories, its full of oh dearism but scant on actual facts. Basic state pension alone is over £600 a month and if he really is in such desprate state its likely he will still be entitled to some form of housing benefit / pension credit or council tax discounts. Lets then add on free bus travel, free prescriptions and winter fuel payments and its clear there are a lot of questions to be asked about why this 72 year old is in the position he is. Ex railway worker must have had some income. Ex railway worker likely to have some form of additional pension too. Something has clearly gone wrong but funny how the article (as usual) never mentions that. "What can I do?" He asks. Well on that sort of money quite a lot one would think. Millions of other pensioners do.

"Allegedly" happened at the event. Jesus, can we all just get that A word in our head before we spout off with our various ill informed reactions. Until there is PROOF that any of this misconduct actually happened beyond the words of ONE deliberately planted journalist we are currently in a position that nothing happened at the event. To the critics mouthing off to those with a different point of view, this is not about trying to defend the indefensible. It is absolutely not about being insecure and certainly not grounds to deem someone unfit to serve a rape jury. God sake. We are simply talking about a lack of evidence and proof here. You know, the kind of thing that courts and police particularly like to deal with. Why the hell does someone asking for proof give right to tar them with having a blanket denial of the sitatuon and instant support to the perpetrators. Its not. Its just merely questionning the so far very weak evidence produced by this so called journalist. Nobody knows all the facts yet. Nobody knows what extra footage/documents or comments are still to come. Until such time NOBODY has a right to spout off about what has or hasnt happened. NOBODY has a right to demand heads on the block of any of the attendess and most importantly NONE of our paid elected members have a right to demand resignation and condemnation of someone without proof of any misconduct or illegal behaviour. We dont have trial by mob rule in this country. Trial by twitter is ugly and wholly inaccurate. Beyond reasonable doubt is all that matters and nobody has hit that yet.

Well so far she has made a pretty bad job of it. No reported complaints at the time or immediately after the event. No footage of any of the alleged sexual misconduct No audio records of any of the alleged lewd conversations No photographic evidence of any of the innapropraite touching or groping No witness statements (on or off the record) from any of the other staff No reports to the police or other authorities for illegal activity No direct or indirect allegations made against a named individual. If some or all of that exisits then she and/or her paid newpaper publishers need to get on with it. There was a time in this world when journalists would gather all the facts and evidence before publishing. Now its just chuck it out piecemeal to draw attention and provoke a reaction - irrelevant of the truth or not.

Im more on the fence. Its certainly not beyond the realms of possibility for it to happen. The matcho world of corporate fat cats would certainly have form for such behaviour. BUT, I will say I am very surprised by the speed that MPs, twitterati, charities, companies and the papers are reacting to this without even so much as a second credible source or a preliminary investigation. Even in the world of 2018 rent-a-mobs it seems extrodinary that ONE unverified report has created such a reaction so quickly.

Exactly the same way that honey traps get footage of shagging politicians or footballers by using minature devices, by bribing hotel staff to set up hidden cameras and mics in the function room, by colluding with other attendees to stand in very strategic locations observing, recording and filming. Happens all the time in the press. Its called Dark Arts and Murdoch's publications were the master of it. Private detectives were on the payroll. Piece of cake to them.

My manager would do that too if I was in the middle of the busy function and kept repeatedly disappearing off. Anyone who works in a busy hotel / bar / restaurant / function suite will face that every shift. Hardly some smoking gun is it.

Standard practice for private events with high profile attendees. Surely any genuine "investigative journalist" worth their salt would get round that one pretty easily.

I would agree with this too. I am certainly not condoing any of the behaviour but so far this entire storm has been created out of ONE single report following a newspapers own set up undercover plants at the event. Everything so far has been "allegedly" "they claim" "they believe" As with everything these days the speed out outrage is far quicker than the delivery of facts. What exactly what the role of these "hostesses"? Whether we like it or not, this was a men only event and "adult" entertainment services during "adult" functions exist for BOTH sexes. What exactly happened which can be deemed sexual harrassment? Who exactly was involved in the same? What behaviour were the hostesses doing to encourage / antagonise such behaviour? What was the agenda of the journalists and the plants? Who was the target?

Its the joys of the populist public vote I guess. Just like Brexit, Boaty McBoatface and nearly every election in history.... the majority of the time the masses dont always know best.

Set up a scheme like this themselves? For what? To be hounded by critics and rent a gobs including many on this very forum for wasting dwindling public moneys on such wasteful and unnecessary white elephant. We all know that's what would happen. I think the council have been perfectly competent for once - allow the scheme but let some other bugger put the money up and take the risk.

A symbol of greed in the digital age. You should put that on a t-shirt. By the way, that Netflix you speak so highly of, would that be the Netflix who paid sod all corporation tax a couple of years ago despite having profits over £200mil. Or perhaps its the netflix who this year were hitting the headlines for paying just £300k uk taxes despite "reporting" £1mil profit in thier published accounts with an alleged 300x times that money funneled through their base in Holland with a conveniently lower tax rate. That one right? Greed and corruption you say.

Do you watch any other broadcast live television?

They might well be for all we know. We are only getting one side of the story. We dont know any details whatsoever of the job specs, responsibilities, pay structure, whether they are employed or freelance, years of experience, other responsibilities, other broadcast income.... the list is endless.

The difficulty with all this saga is that without knowing any specific details of the levels of experience, job roles, responsibilities, qualificaitons, other broadcasting, amount of airtime etc between specific people involved nobody can judge whether there is deliberate and actionable inequality or not. Ms Gracie has made big noises about this all being "illegal" but is it? Whilst the world "salary" is used and would give the impression that these stars are paid employees - do we actually know that they are? If there is some sort of pay structure do we know whether the complainants are eligible for increase. Do they actually have the skills, experience or years required. If yes, then why wouldn't they raise grievance with HR just like any other salaried employee would be able to do. They could be freelance journalists/performers/actors/presenters who have a contract negotiated by an agent. In that cirucmstances legallity is far more difficult. After all, just like any other self employed person, they will get paid whatever someone is willing to pay them based on how much they think they are worth. Obviously that is boosted by the negotiation skills of said talent's agent. I am not for one second saying that this issue isnt important and shouldn't be brought out to the public, but there is huge areas of detail missing. Not that that will stop the press from making their own judgment and conviction as they see fit. Im sure the Daily Mail will be wetting themselves at the thought of a scandal that could bring down the BBC.

Yes, im sure all those homeowners who plunge into negative equity and cannot pay off the mortgages will be brilliant for the economy. Moron. You certainly live up to your username.

Can I ask what sort of complaint you are seeking to make. Were you injured? Or is it just a consumer complaint? If its the latter a solicitor seems to be a very extreme step and would cost significantly just to get them initially instructed. There is no legal aid available for consumer complaints and no win no fee is generally only offered if there is a substantial injury to be compensated.

As you will be aware from when you raised this exact same argument in your January 2016 post, the point I am arguing is that licence fee monies are NOT being misused. Its the cost of making a television broadcast which us feeble minded viewers expect and demand. Yes, I concede that specific report you refer may well have been on somewhere in the UK. BUT the remainder of the show and/or further episodes refer to other destinations including abroad. You dont need to be a tv expert to know that the presenters will record dozens of links for different topics in a single filming session in a single place - that's how they can get 8-10 episodes out of just a couple of days on location. As I said earlier, if the overall narrative to be portrayed is "holidays" our minds expect to see a holiday image. The producers will know full well that image would be far more towards a nice Spanish beach rather than a wet pavement in skegness. The same reason applies why a report on some retail issue must always be filmed in a big supermarket or department store. Any car complaint must be always be filmed in a mechancis garage or dealership compound. Yes they could absolutely save money just sitting at a desk with pictures behind them - but that is not the image we viewers expect to see. Its all about keeping attention, keeping narrative and keeping viewing figures up. Three old boilers doing nothing but sitting behind a desk hardly has the visual appeal or hook as multiple locations and constant feeder images. Whether you agree or not, there is no denying that is how the majority of viewers minds work and exactly why television companies spend money obtaining and producing such things. Why else would they do it? They are business operations after all. Alleging "oooh what a waste of money" could be applied to lots of aspects of television production but cheapen it too much and viewers zap away all that effort, expense and time at the single click of a remote. Now being as its a one year anniversary shall we just agree to disagree on this one. ---------- Post added 08-01-2018 at 00:00 ---------- Firstly, what makes you think that putting adverts on the BBC would remove the licence fee. There are television licences active in many other countries but they still have ads. Secondly, making the BBC fully commerical would have massive consequences as has been argued on many other threads of this forum. There are entire types of programming which would be wiped out deemed not profitable, all the specialist access services and disability services would be chopped, your web services would disappear behind paywalls or lengthy advertising blocks. That's before we get on to the dozens of local and national radio services, news services, politics broadcasts, contribtutions to the national broadband rollout, broadcast infrastructure and minority language stations which the licence fee pays for. See how long ITV / C4 / Sky and Viacom (C5) will absorb those costs before hitting the wider consumers financially or in quality. Be careful what you wish for.

Oh god not this old chestnut again. Put simply its because us simple minded viewers expect it. It gives a show context, narrative and a suitable setting in which to aid any story or image they are trying to portray. If the show has a general theme of "holidays" then they will portray that "holiday" image a viewer expects to see. Its exactly the same reason why weather presenters reporting about heavy snowfall are pointlessly sent out to film in the middle of a freezing cold blizzard or traffic reporters are sent out to stand on top of some motorway bridge to describe how busy a road is or why news reporters have to stand outside of some closed up courthouse or some government department's office hours after everyone has left just because the story they are reporting relates to it in some way. YES, they could just sit in a studio and be able to produce exactly the same "content" a lot easier. BUT, its the backdrop and narrative which us trigger remote happy viewers expect these days. Never ever underestimate how little attention span a viewer has. Television (even the most basic of things) is vastly expensive to make. Trust me, broadcasters dont fritter money away unless they had some good reason for it. I dont know how much of a jolly you think a lower level consumer show presenter really has. They are hardly hollywood starlets with an entourage catering to their every whim. They get to travel out somewhere yes. They probably get stay in a hotel yes. But they spend their days stood around for hours filming public interviews, gathering B roll filming in hotel rooms, shops, kitchens or some resort attraction due to be featured, do a few links to camera and then that's it. They fly straight back to work on the next part of the programme and do the voiceovers back in a studio somewhere. Just like most people who are "perceived" by to be spoilt by having the luxury of travelling abroad for their job - the actual reality is far from it. Staff might travel out to film somewhere and be back in less than 48 hours. I know of one radio broadcast techie who was flown for 12/14 hours to some far flung destination to set up show but then returned the next working day. Hardly a "jolly". The majority of TV crew will be very similar.

I wouldn't say its being deliberately "run down" its just that viewing habits have changed dramatically over the years. Sky might be perceived as better quality but lets not forget that massive amounts of Sky and BT programming is nothing more than back catelogue from the BBC and ITV anyway. In fact, if it wasnt for re-runs from the 1970s 1980s from those so called dinosaur insitutions such as the BBC / CBS / NBC and ITV archives there are entire Sky channels that wouldn't have anything to broadcast. The biggest threat to any ye olde TV these days is the internet. Youtube is ever increasing with stats showing that 300 videos a second are uploaded with a 5 billion people viewing daily. Add on live streaming through instagram, snapchat, facebook and we have a whole generation of people making their own entertainment and information sources. I have read interviews where a certain generation get their news from Snapchat! There is a whole world seemingly invisible to anyone over 35 which is filled with megastars springing up out of thin air earning millions of fans and millions of pounds without even touching such archaic things as media training or auditions or agents or writers or television studios or even so much as a defined talent. How is any broadcast service (regardless of the perceived good/bad quality) supposed to compete with that.

You are so far from the truth its laughable.

Because just like our own laws and regulations each country has different rules on what is and isnt accepted. Lets not forget that Tramadol is an opioid based medicine which is heavily controlled in many places including here in the UK. Its not something you can pick up over the counter. The ingredient content of medications (in fact many other consumed products) accepted in one place may be partially or wholly banned in another place. There are several medications available in the USA which are banned in the UK just as there are several perfectly acceptable food items widely on sale in the UK which are totally banned in the states. Dont think this sort of restricting and control is limited to the so called uncivilised and backward parts of the world. Ultimately, if people are not prepared to obey the rules BEFORE they start travelling they have to be prepared to face the consequences. As to the main topic in issue. This woman is certainly not as innocent as she is pleading. There is far more to this story than is being said. The quantity of drug, her failure to produce any paperwork, her failure to seek advice from any authority, the failure to declare the haul to UK authorities before embarking on such a trip, the lack of information as to how she obtained such high amounts when she is not even the patient requiring it, the genuine reason why said husband needs such high amount in one go, the legitimacy of her trip at all. Its all a massive grey area. Seems totally foolish to even conceive such an idea. Personally, I think she is extremely lucky to get three years. It could have been x5 times that in other places.

Yes you "could" give me those arguments but seemingly have held back. Also, unless you are going to provide stats that prove there is any increased demand for road capacity to such a level that it requires the opening of this extra carraigeway lane for a single day of the year.... or that there is any measurable and noticable change in environmental impact between normal driving in a bus lane and normal driving in a adjacient carriageway.... or that there is any signficnat and noticable time difference in an overall journey times directly due to the opening of bus lane on one single day of the year... then your "argument" will amount to nothing. As for throwing in some unseen and unwritten alleged "good practice" and your final desprate submission of using the mythology of "christmas spirit" as some reasoned argument to prove your point You have still failed to say one reason as to why YOU need this free access to a bus lane. Was the traffic heavy? Were you delayed? Were you significantly inconvenienced by the restriction which would exist for the other 364 days of a year? Traffic restrictions are not just about signs. They are part of legislation which is active at all times. Its not just switched on and off on a whim just the same as any other legal enforcement isnt. Yes, the council could choose to relax the rules for a single day. Yes they could spend money and time changing the bylaws, signage and terms of enforcement, but why should they. Is there is a meaningful reason for it? Will it offer any significant benefit? Will it actually give meaningful change to anything? Probably not. After all, there are whole periods of a normal day at any possible time of the year when some entitled ponce believes that bus lanes are too frequently unoccupied or underused or that yelllow lines and cross hatch no parking areas are totally unreasonable or that one way systems or restricted junctions are wholly inconvenient or that paying parking charges is just sooo beneath them.... BUT whether they like it or not, it does not give them any right to being able to choose when they think they should flout them.

Why do lazy pig headed entitled drivers need to use bus lanes? We can all ask questions dear. Try answering some. You have still failed in giving any legitimate reason why you NEED to use a bus lane. Lets see your "effort".