Post by Teddy Bear on Jan 15, 2008 16:09:16 GMT
Fibs about Scotland on the BBC
By Alan Cochrane
Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 14/01/2008
It would be a gross exaggeration and wholly unfair to say that the BBC is a bigger threat to the maintenance of the United Kingdom in its present form than the Scottish National Party. However, the network part of yesterday's Politics Show had a pretty good stab at disproving those statements.
In one of its rare forays north of the border, presumably to try and justify the "British" bit of its official title, the Beeb came up with two filmed reports which could only have served to mislead.
Whether this was a deliberate intention or not is difficult to say but the fact is that the reports were largely inaccurate in content, in that they didn't tell all the facts and, certainly in the case of the second report, were just plain wrong.
The first report sought to perpetuate that old myth that we Scots are heavily subsidised by English taxpayers and regurgitated the fact that the "average" Scot gets more spent on him or her than their English counterparts.
The report, designed we must assume primarily for English consumption, ignored totally the fact - explained at length in this and other newspapers some time ago - that if per capita spending in the English regions is examined, then Scotland comes out just ahead of both the North East and North West of England and actually below the total for London.
True, there was a fig leaf at the end of the report about how police spending in Scotland was less than in England, but by then the old lie had been reinforced - the Scots are subsidy junkies, pure and simple.
Later, in the "Scotland-only" part of the programme Professor Iain MacLean, of Oxford University, provided a bit of balance, making the point that different parts of England got differing amounts of subsidy from central government.
And he said if the current system of allocating resources to the British regions was changed to one based on need, then Scotland would indeed probably receive less and some English regions more. But, importantly, London and the English East Midlands would also be among the losers.
Strangely, his words, which presented a much more balanced picture of how the UK cake is divided were, not included in that part of the programme aimed at English viewers. Why not? Could it be that they got in the way of the tale the producers wished to tell?
However, if that part of the programme was misleading, the second part of network BBC's look at that faraway country of which they know nothing was a travesty.
It was not entirely clear what the reporter's objective in this piece of nonsense was, but it seemed to be to prove that the English were invading the Highlands, were buying up all the houses there and were attempting to prevent all development to the detriment of the indigenous peoples.
As such it was a clumsy - we'll give it the benefit of doubt and call it amateurish - attempt to paint a totally false picture of racial tension and had no place in a supposedly serious political slot.
The reporter rehearsed some of the story of the proposed Beauly to Denny power line and informed us that some 18,000 objections had been lodged, and clearly tried to give the impression that all the objections were coming from the English - a complete load of hokum as even the most basic and superficial research would have revealed.
She talked at some length about the phenomenon of "White Settlers" and implied that the term applied only to people from England. This is wholly inaccurate. The name is given, rightly or wrongly, to all outsiders, wherever they're from, who set up home in the Highlands.
Thankfully, it was left to the Liberal Democrat MP Danny Alexander to inject some sense into this rubbish by stating that it was quite wrong to suggest that all incomers were against development while all locals were in favour.
I suppose we're supposed to feel grateful to the BBC for doing its Politics Show from Edinburgh. Next time, however, it would nice be to think that its producers, editors, reporters, researchers and the rest might try to leave their pre-conceived ideas behind. Nice - but probably unlikely.
By Alan Cochrane
Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 14/01/2008
It would be a gross exaggeration and wholly unfair to say that the BBC is a bigger threat to the maintenance of the United Kingdom in its present form than the Scottish National Party. However, the network part of yesterday's Politics Show had a pretty good stab at disproving those statements.
In one of its rare forays north of the border, presumably to try and justify the "British" bit of its official title, the Beeb came up with two filmed reports which could only have served to mislead.
Whether this was a deliberate intention or not is difficult to say but the fact is that the reports were largely inaccurate in content, in that they didn't tell all the facts and, certainly in the case of the second report, were just plain wrong.
The first report sought to perpetuate that old myth that we Scots are heavily subsidised by English taxpayers and regurgitated the fact that the "average" Scot gets more spent on him or her than their English counterparts.
The report, designed we must assume primarily for English consumption, ignored totally the fact - explained at length in this and other newspapers some time ago - that if per capita spending in the English regions is examined, then Scotland comes out just ahead of both the North East and North West of England and actually below the total for London.
True, there was a fig leaf at the end of the report about how police spending in Scotland was less than in England, but by then the old lie had been reinforced - the Scots are subsidy junkies, pure and simple.
Later, in the "Scotland-only" part of the programme Professor Iain MacLean, of Oxford University, provided a bit of balance, making the point that different parts of England got differing amounts of subsidy from central government.
And he said if the current system of allocating resources to the British regions was changed to one based on need, then Scotland would indeed probably receive less and some English regions more. But, importantly, London and the English East Midlands would also be among the losers.
Strangely, his words, which presented a much more balanced picture of how the UK cake is divided were, not included in that part of the programme aimed at English viewers. Why not? Could it be that they got in the way of the tale the producers wished to tell?
However, if that part of the programme was misleading, the second part of network BBC's look at that faraway country of which they know nothing was a travesty.
It was not entirely clear what the reporter's objective in this piece of nonsense was, but it seemed to be to prove that the English were invading the Highlands, were buying up all the houses there and were attempting to prevent all development to the detriment of the indigenous peoples.
As such it was a clumsy - we'll give it the benefit of doubt and call it amateurish - attempt to paint a totally false picture of racial tension and had no place in a supposedly serious political slot.
The reporter rehearsed some of the story of the proposed Beauly to Denny power line and informed us that some 18,000 objections had been lodged, and clearly tried to give the impression that all the objections were coming from the English - a complete load of hokum as even the most basic and superficial research would have revealed.
She talked at some length about the phenomenon of "White Settlers" and implied that the term applied only to people from England. This is wholly inaccurate. The name is given, rightly or wrongly, to all outsiders, wherever they're from, who set up home in the Highlands.
Thankfully, it was left to the Liberal Democrat MP Danny Alexander to inject some sense into this rubbish by stating that it was quite wrong to suggest that all incomers were against development while all locals were in favour.
I suppose we're supposed to feel grateful to the BBC for doing its Politics Show from Edinburgh. Next time, however, it would nice be to think that its producers, editors, reporters, researchers and the rest might try to leave their pre-conceived ideas behind. Nice - but probably unlikely.