BBC: Bumpkins, hobbits need fairer coverage The strange Hobbit-like creatures rumoured to populate the barren wasteland between Islington and the Cotswolds must be reported better by the BBC, a report for the BBC Trust has concluded. The report recommends the restoration of the post of a Rural Affairs Editor to find and interview the creatures, to discover how on earth …
I notice around Wimbledon time that everybody suddenly becomes an expert on Tennis. People who at every other time of the year never mention, watch or play it are suddenly able to describe at length the best strategy for a player to overcome another's attack-vector with a well aimed speed-ball served to the watchamecallit.
Speaking as someone who lives in the city, but was raised in the country, I find many 'city people' (apologies for the lazy generalisation) seem to know everything about the countryside and how best to manage it when there are issues raised in the news with regard to the countryside or when Springwatch is on.
'Country Bumpkins' are looked down on like they're the uninteresting natives living in some sort of Middle Earth which where everything is overpriced during the summer (that last bit is true). Nothing a 'Country Bumpkin' has to say can be of any worth since it's probably based on some kind of superstition that involves cannibalism and hatred of minority groups.
The condescending tone of the City Elites (or City Tarts as I've heard them called -- never used the term myself, except for here) can be quite frustrating, especially when that condescending tone is one that is instructing the said 'Bumpkin' to change everything they know about the countryside because the Sophisticate (Welsh Assembly Member) has consulted a Focus Group.
It depends who your AM/MP is . If you have a Conservative or Plaid member they're usually from a rural area themselves and have some idea of what's going on away from Cardiff/London.
The Lib Dems used to be pretty good, until they started parachuting idiots in to seats like Montgomeryshire who were torn to shreds over issues like wind power.
The worst however are Labour. As their powerbase is in urban areas they simply don't care about the countryside or its residents. (See windfarms, fuel prices, land subsidy rules).
Don't forget hunting, will never forgive them for that. No clue what it is, but it hurts the precious pretty foxes (actually disease ridden vermin) and is inhumane (they're animals dear, not humans), so ban time.
Thanks for pissing on our thousands of years of tradition and clearing out more jobs from the countryside for your nimby loving supporters to move into those delightful farm worker cottages and commute to London.
You know nothing. For hundreds of years, its been the city toffs who hunt. They used to come for the season, now they day trip. The majority of real country people find these wanna be tweed wearers immensely annoying. They act like they own the place, cos they are on a horse wearing a stupid costume. Tossers. Each and every one of them.
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It is a bit worrying when a second rate so called comedian (he is on the BBC so must be second rate and need not be funny) is taken as an example of real social history. There was a time when people had to be funny not just pathetic to be called a comedian.
Mind you did you hear about the person who moved up to London to cut his journey to work. He became a drug dealer to defray the costs and his kids became gun and knife (knifes are quieter) carrying pushers. They hated all the dumb wh**** F****** who tried to shut down the drug dealing, the gun and knife carrying.
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That isn't just the BBC, though, is it? It covers pretty much all the mainstream media. It often seems as though if you could turn the M25 into a 500 foot high wall, it would take weeks for anyone in the media ( or parliament, come to think of it ) to even notice.
Even after they did and the whole thing was the biggest story of the year, it would still be six months before the chumps at Defra realised.
"pro-London propaganda"
This isn't just any BBC. This is M&S BBC! (Manchester and Salford)
They do sometimes mention stuff happening in and around Manchester these days. I've even seen them do voxpops from the Trafford centre. The problem isn't where they are based. The problem is they don't like to travel unless it's to somewhere tropical or exotic.
That is true but you also have to remember that the population of London is greater than Scotland and Wales combined. So things in London do affect more people.
I guess one of the problems is a general thing that you just aren't as interested in something that isn't where you are.
This has been going on silently for years. For example, the Countryfile programme, which used to be on sunday mornings, would at least attempt to be balanced between the views of actual rural dwellers and those who read those "South Ruralshire Life" magazines. Now that its gone prime time the focus has swung over markedly to the rambler/naturalist/Guardian reader/holiday cottager.
S4C at least does recognise that its rural viewers do in fact live and work in the countryside, and therefore appreciate programmes that reflect that.
Yes, S4C does cover a much smaller population, but it does do rural a hell of a lot better on a much smaller budget. Remember BBC news got a right hammering a few years back for not making it clear when what it was reporting didn't apply to Scotland/Wales/NI (Mainly education and health stories).
The problem with "rural affairs" coverage is that there's little or no scope to show these parts of the country as bastions of multi-cultural, liberal-arts, vegetarian individuals. And in that case, the BBC neither knows how to address them without the MC-LA types being horrified: both at the though that they don't have tube-trains "out there" and that their milk comes from cows - not Tesco (and that cutesy ickle bunny-wunnies are shot, skinned and eaten - by people) - and nor does it know how to present their concerns, interests and issues without their city-dwelling cousins ending up cowering in the corner, behind the sofa (so what does happen to all the "boy" calves, who are no use to a dairy farmer?).
Not to mention the ever present possibility that behind the back of an O/B presenter, we might be treated to the sight of some pigs "makin' bacon".
So, given that the BBC likes it's audiences to sit neatly in nice little compartments, that are easily catalogued with non-controversial and "balanced" mixes of people one can see why people who either choose to eschew cities, or have escaped from them, might not fit into their comfy view of their audience.
Though it would be amusing to see how a reporter deals with being on the wrong end of a shotgun barrel in a "get off my land" situation.
We often get the BBC (and sometimes ITV) turn up in our village when you want a view of the countryside and how country shops cope, how rural life is is so different etc etc...
We live 10 miles outside of Birmingham, have have these magic things called motorways (M42, M5, M40,M6) which we can use "Cars" on and these funny things called trains, we also have this thing called a 60mb broadband connection?
Tough being in the "countryside"
Of course, the pubs* allow dogs in, the girls tend to turn up to the boozer covered in horse shit and you are as likely to park next to a battered land rover or tractor than a gleaming white range rover and when you get a power cut, you have to switched to bottled beer, but hey ho.
*Pubs, those things that serve beer and some snacks, not those things that serve food with a drink as a side order.
Sounds idyllic, cue BBC turning up interviewing the mud splattered horsegirls about the demise of traditional farming, and accidentally putting the price of beer up due to spending power (public funded dontchaknow), and then another crew will turn up to do a piece on rising prices...
>I live in the country!
>...we also have this thing called a 60mb broadband connection?
Now I know you're lying. No one who lives in the real countryside has trains, or broadband. We're lucky to get 1.5MB/s down a piece of wire bought wholesale from RadioSpares back in the 80s.
Still, nice to see the Reg not being patronising at all to us country folk.
As for the badger cull - it had nothing to do with cute badgers (they're not all that cute, in fact) and everything to do with the fact that it was a stupid idea that couldn't possibly do anything useful to control bovine TB.
Which, to no one's surprise, except that of townie hoorays who like killing wildlife because they think it's fun, it didn't.
And the only reason Cuadrilla backed down (nominally - we'll see what they say a few years from now) at Balcombe was because they knew if they went ahead with fracking they'd get their arses kicked in court, and it wasn't worth the effort.
Once they'd been forced to stop because drilling was causing earthquakes, as happened in Weeton, I'm sure even the Cuadrilla board could estimate what a damages claim would cost.
As a borderline bumpkin myself I have noticed that there is a lot of reluctance to talk about rural issues and more specifically to talk about them with people who live in the affected area. At best you're going to get a representative from the NFU ( the one union for whom the government will bow down abjectly at their slightest whim ) rather than someone who knows the actual area that the story is about.
The last foot and mouth story broke just very near to where I live. Various journalists and reporters were consistently found waiting outside the farm where it happened for days. I did not see a single story on the topic that spelled the name of the farm correctly in spite of the fact it was right there. Not to mention reporters stomping around through fields where they risked spreading the pathogen further. That week I realised that I just wasn't cynical enough about the news media.
That's the problem with impressions of the US in a nutshell - we've all seen Seinfeld and Friends so we (think we) know all about New York/USA etc. I moved to upstate New York to work at an ivy league university and it is another world, let alone another country
I am covered by the joy that is BBC London - I will never forget the day a local double murder cut off a load of the town. Of course when I got home from work I switched the BBC London news straight on - Only to be confronted by a load of pointless crap about Camden, the mayor blowing his f**king nose and zero news at all about the murders.. I have not watched BBC London news in 5 years what's the point.
We pay £12.50 a month to pay for the BBC, basically 2 channels for 1/4 the cost of a sky subscription. And yet we have this god awful television, low budget tripe... and doctor who. As for the lack of countryside coverage, when are they watching TV? All I ever see on the bloody channel is countryfile and 'ye olde time show of victorian era'. and occasionally if I watch during the day Doctors (oh and the snooker when it's on).
What are they going to do to showcase the countryside folks more? Start a new soap opera and put it up against emmerdale? "Down in sommorset farms we got tra'ers an comboin 'ar'sters."
For 12.50/month the BBC produces a load of stuff that Sky can only dream about. Sky only has to provide footie and US dramas, whereas the BBC has to do all the public broadcaster bits too. Where is the sky equivalent of Countryfile? I assume it's somewhere between topless darts and the repeats of 1990's quizshows?
Anyway, back to the point of this story - of course the BBC doesn't reflect people from the countryside - it's staffed entirely by urbanite middle-managers with no appetite for risk and no new ideas. Why else is it stuffed full of property/antique and cookery programmes. They are just making TV that *they* want to watch.
Get rid of all the middle-managers and allow the programme makers at the bottom to decide what to make. I'd much rather a BBC that took risks and failed 90% of the time, but gave me 10% great shows, than a BBC that is risk adverse and fails 100% of the time by giving me mediocre shows.
We do have our 1/2 hour daily regional news in the south-west and that certainly does cover local issues. But even in this rural area, coverage of farming and other countryside issues is meager at best.
As for 'Countryside'; it's bit like some country magazines - all gloss and no muck.
Most people living in the countryside work in towns.
If I have a job in the countryside I might be working with a machine that is worth more than the house I live in, and spends most of the year in a shed.
I do get usable broadband, but the mobile coverage around here is getting patchy. I suspect the phone companies don't know that trees grow, and they are bigger than they were when the coverage was calculated.
"Many rural licence-fee payers gave the thumbs down to the BBC’s reporting of the badger cull, arguing they invariably pictured healthy or “fluffy” badgers and failed to represent the farmer’s point of view, and the arguments for the cull."
So the assumption of the report's writer seems to be that the majority of it's 12 million rural licence payers are actively involved in dairy farming? The author obviously knows less about the country than the rest of the BBC.
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