[Andy McDandy]

I suspect it's partly ideological (strip the state back as much as possible; if it's unprofitable then get some private sector expertise, if it's doing well then cash in on it), partly out of spite (that MP made me look stupid so I'll take it out on C4), and partly culture wars (it's all for kids and intellectuals and gays). But yes, the possibility of doing it as a dry run for the BBC is a real one.

So whoopee. What Carlton did to ITV, the Tories will do to UK broadcasting as a whole. Ant and Dec and Holly Willoughby and Amanda Fucking Holden forever.

[Boiler]

It may also be proof of concept for them - ‘look, we did it with Channel 4 so now we can do it with the BBC’. But the timing is exceptionally suspect - I can see that money going straight into a conveniently scheduled one-off tax cut.

Oh, very likely a tax cut. Apparently ITV have expressed an interest in Channel 4 - I'd have thought someone like Paramount could be interested?

Well, 2027 isn't that far away...

[Boiler]

I read Fenton's take on it.

The usual unhinged and demented bollocks underneath. Are we sure that isn't Fenton himself?

[Crabcakes]

Next up in “government by u-turn - if it floats we do it, if it sinks we ditch it and try again later”:

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/li ... SApp_Other

[Tubby Isaacs]

Trouble with floating something like this is you rile up the base, who then upset.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

I don't think so. I think you are making a promise to the base, you tell them what you intend to do, perhaps not today, but in the future if they keep voting you in.
As a bonus you can say that you would have done it already if it wasn't for those woke lefties/pesky kids.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Does it work like that here? In the US, there are so many layers of power, there's generally somebody else you can say is thwarting you. From school boards to the Supreme Court, and you can fall back on "Republicans In Name Only" and argue for them to be primaried by proper Republicans.

Here though, a 76 seat majority (or whatever it is now) is pretty a free hand. You look shit if you can't do what you promised with that. And if, say, Damian Green and 40 others kill it off, there's not really a groundswell to get rid of Damian Green and replace him with another Dorries.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

Guardianistas, the BBC, lefty activist lawyers, H of L, bleeding heart liberals...

[Tubby Isaacs]

How do they stop a majority of 80?

Actually there's the House of Lords, isn't there? Couple of defeats there might be a good excuse to give up and blame someone else.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

Like I said, H of L.

The others have all already been used as excuses.

[davidjay]

It's part of that horrible phrase the MSM, which means it's dominated by Cultural Marxists and therefore it's fair game.

[Cyclist]

This has just appeared in a local FB group

[Crabcakes]

How do they stop a majority of 80?

Couch the sale in terms of it being out of favour with Johnson’s base as well, thus directly affecting his popularity - as it seems to be, because they did no research and turns out Tories quite like stuff like Location Location Location and Bake Off - and it’ll wither and die.

It’s a majority of 80, but only 1 person’s opinion matters.

[Tubby Isaacs]

[Andy McDandy]

And if they hadn't, they'd be accused of spending like sailors on shore leave at a time of national crisis.

It's the old Christmas lights argument again.

[The All New KevS]

[Malcolm Armsteen]

Nicked from

I See You

I see you, Nadine Dorries.
It didn’t take long for you to reappear on here, did it? Therein lies the rub for the publicity-desperate charlatans like you, who think volume is an adequate substitute for competence; you don’t half drag yourselves into the limelight, desperate as you are for the attention. You’re in a league of your own with Fabricant and Kwarteng, a triumvirate of unbridled uselessness, throwing yourselves onto every grenade Boris Johnson fumbles into his own trenches. Like a wilfully ignorant hydra the three of you have been growing ever more butthurt and brazen with every criticism, wearing your pathetic victimhood like a badge of honour every time it’s even remotely suggested that you might not be very good at your jobs. And we’re the snowflakes? Please.
It’s barely been a week since you put forward your economically illiterate plan to sell off Channel 4, and you’re already running to the Daily Mail to histrionically label your detractors as ‘leftie luvvies.’ A label that apparently includes such notable commies as… erm… Ruth Davidson, Jeremy Hunt, Damien Green and Tom Tugendhat. Oh, and 82% of the British public, according to one Tapestry poll. Nobody apart from you and Boris Johnson, a man with an ego so pathetically fragile that he considers journalists doing their jobs properly to be a personal affront, thinks this is a good idea.
Which is precisely why you’re doing it, isn’t it? To a pathological narcissist, nothing justifies their vapid, spiteful, short-sighted decision making more than a false sense of oppression. Everyone’s being really mean and you’re the real victim here, Nadine Dorries. Which is why it’s absolutely essential that you force this sale through and single-handedly destroy everything Channel 4 offers as a national asset to the taxpayer. Only you can see what truly has to happen to make Channel 4 a viable prospect in the new, emerging, digital marketplace! Only you truly understand how it works and how to fix it, even though it doesn’t require fixing and just a few short months ago, you didn’t even know how it was funded! Only you really understand the maths, where a one-off dividend of a billion pounds is somehow a greater sum than a rolling investment that ploughs precisely that amount of money into the sector every twenty months or so!
It’s just absolute nonsense to suggest that catering to shareholder interests will somehow free Channel 4 up to put more money into the creative industries than it already does. It’s also equally moronic to suggest it needs to change to cater to the new, digital landscape, when it was already pioneering in that regard and remains commercially profitable despite the growing pressures of the marketplace. Suggesting it has to compete with Netflix completely disregards its public service remit, and even without that rather salient point, Netflix is currently saddled with more debt than 2023’s average British Gas customer. Why is that a business model a profitable, perfectly viable commercial endeavour like Channel 4 would even *want* to emulate?
Even your valuation of the channel seems way off, particularly when it completely ignores what has to happen if the taxpayer is to see any value for money from this sale. If - and it’s a big if - you genuinely do care about its public service remit, the only way it could ever be preserved is by ring-fencing its news funding and the percentage of its commissioning budget that currently gets invested in smaller, independent projects and production studios. It’ll never sell for a billion quid with those conditions in place, which is precisely why you’ll never impose them on the sale. Instead, you’ll simply pawn it off on the first buddy of the government willing to stump up a headline-worthy sum for it, before immediately spaffing that cash up the wall on another disastrous idea like a Festival of Brexit.
Which is the other farcical joke here, isn’t it? The suggestion that Nadine Dorries, a woman who could be successfully outperformed in terms of culture by a tub of Yakult, somehow understands how to successfully invest in our creative industries better than Channel 4 in the first place. You haven’t got the first clue what it means to provide a meaningful public service to your audience. All you ever do is gurn theatrically to the right wing, a clownishly overwrought performance with absolutely no substance behind it. The reality is that for all of the smaller, independent studios across the country who have sought investment from Channel 4 in the past, you’re a sort of Freddy Dunning-Krueger, gleefully slashing away without even the slightest understanding of the damage you’re inflicting.
The suggestion that this sale will do anything other than crater investment in the very skills you’re pretending to support across the country is an insult to everyone working in them. The financial argument you’ve put forward is gossamer-thin, pathetically transparent when held up to the light. When you realise that, it becomes immediately apparent that this sale is a purely ideological one - yet another attempt to simply pawn off a dissenting voice in the hope it simply shuts up and goes away.
Here’s an alternative suggestion, hopefully delivered by the deepfake Queen that your flag-shagging sensibilities found so grotesquely offensive. Why don’t you do us all an actual public service for once, and instead of sticking your fingers in your obstinate ears and crowing about ‘loony lefties’ like a petulant baby, actually listen to the industry experts who understand the disastrous consequences of this decision far better than you clearly do?
I won’t hold my breath, Nadine Dorries. You’re like a contestant on Naked Attraction, sending home the first willy you find objectionable without even considering the possibility it might be a grower. The only difference is that it’ll be the whole country’s loss, and you’ve got absolutely nothing to offer that could fill the unsatisfied hole in our creative industries that you'll leave us with.
I see you, Nadine Dorries. I fucking see you.

[Tubby Isaacs]

And if they hadn't, they'd be accused of spending like sailors on shore leave at a time of national crisis.

It's the old Christmas lights argument again.

I think for a while nobody was allowed to make any programmes, weren't they? Were they supposed to buy non-existent programmes?

[Andy McDandy]

I think that only programmes which could be made with minimal personnel were allowed, such as the remakes of Talking Heads.

[Boiler]

I think for a while nobody was allowed to make any programmes, weren't they?

Correct. For a few months the industry all but shut down.