TangoWeathershipLaputa
@TangoLaputa
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What - exactly - do bats do to justify £100m expenditure on a "bat tunnel"? What would happen if all the bats - who will - (given the cost I bloody well hope so) move into the £100m bat tunnel - just died? Are there no other bats in the UK, and might they not just repopulate the "de-batted" spaces? Personally, I have no idea. Everything I know about bats I got from a poem by John Berryman: "Bats have no bankers and they do not drink and cannot be arrested and pay no tax and, in general, bats have it made." Forgive me, but from where I'm standing, it really does look like "bats have it made". But maybe someone like, say, Chris Packham, can explain why I'm wrong, and that without a dedicated tunnel, bats risk extinction?
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Well, the Church of England is basically hyper-homeopathic Christianity. Vanishingly small amounts of content or belief. Just a cringing desire not to offend anyone in the hope of retaining its ageing followers and a total inability to fill the churches it usurped and vandalised in the Reformation. I resent the ultimately pointless holocaust of pre-reformation art in the service of ultimately - complete irrelevance. I’d rather have kept the art. I’m totally irreligious, but Irish and so tribally Celtic, not Rangers. I disbelieve passionately in Catholicism, not Anglicanism. It’s never occurred to me that Anglicanism offers anything worth getting out of bed for.
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After all, Nick Robinson, the Butley Orford Oysterage (a fine institution) thrives in the open market, without relying on a national levy imposed on anyone who eats fish or seafood even if they've never been to the restaurant. So why should the BBC not operate under the same rules?
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@Basil_TGMD Well, to save time, perhaps anyone who is interested should just message Sir Keir directly on X? Brace yourself for a tsunami of approval and congratulation, Prime Minister. @recusant_raja @Keir_Starmer @KemiBadenoch @dcsandbrook @RachelReevesMP
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@elonmusk @BBCr4today @recusant_raja @amolrajan @womenshour @BBCNews @BBCNewsnight @Jeremy_Paxman @JeremyClarkson @SkyNews @Channel4News @ButleyOyster @GBNEWS @NewYorkTimes_es @BostonGlobe @MetroUK
The payment of the licence fee which funds the BBC is - as you well know, Mr Robinson - not a voluntary choice by the consumers of media in the UK. It’s a - uniquely and unjustifiably - compulsory levy on anyone who owns a TV in the United Kingdom, whether they consume BBC output or not. Compulsory licence fee revenue accrued by the BBC is NOT a popular mandate, nor is it an index of national support. It’s a wholly undemocratic and antiquated legacy from the 1920s and 30s, when the BBC was the only available national broadcaster, and in 2025 it is indefensibly antique. If you are - as you generally imply you are on Radio 4 and podcasts - a democrat, why should the BBC not be exposed to the democracy of the market? If BBC output is as highly prized as you and BBC management suggest, why does it require enforced subsidy? Moving to free market subscription would surely generate the same or even a higher revenue than the licence fee. Or does the BBC perhaps not believe that it would survive in the open market, and that it can exist only as the creature of a centrally enforced levy?
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RT @TangoLaputa: @bbcnickrobinson @elonmusk The payment of the licence fee which funds the BBC is - as you well know, Mr Robinson - not a v…
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The payment of the licence fee which funds the BBC is - as you well know, Mr Robinson - not a voluntary choice by the consumers of media in the UK. It’s a - uniquely and unjustifiably - compulsory levy on anyone who owns a TV in the United Kingdom, whether they consume BBC output or not. Compulsory licence fee revenue accrued by the BBC is NOT a popular mandate, nor is it an index of national support. It’s a wholly undemocratic and antiquated legacy from the 1920s and 30s, when the BBC was the only available national broadcaster, and in 2025 it is indefensibly antique. If you are - as you generally imply you are on Radio 4 and podcasts - a democrat, why should the BBC not be exposed to the democracy of the market? If BBC output is as highly prized as you and BBC management suggest, why does it require enforced subsidy? Moving to free market subscription would surely generate the same or even a higher revenue than the licence fee. Or does the BBC perhaps not believe that it would survive in the open market, and that it can exist only as the creature of a centrally enforced levy?
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@bbcnickrobinson @Matronincharge @elonmusk Do try a bit harder, Nick. Your glib, dismissive answer reeks of the entitled complacency of someone protected by the BBC from accountability and competition.
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RT @TangoLaputa: @BBCr4today @BBCRadio4 @BBCSounds What - exactly - do bats do to justify £100m expenditure on a "bat tunnel"? What would…
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What - exactly - do bats do to justify £100m expenditure on a "bat tunnel"? What would happen if all the bats - who will - (given the cost I bloody well hope so) move into the £100m bat tunnel - just died? Are there no other bats in the UK, and might they not just repopulate the "de-batted" spaces? Personally, I have no idea. Everything I know about bats I got from a poem by John Berryman: "Bats have no bankers and they do not drink and cannot be arrested and pay no tax and, in general, bats have it made." Forgive me, but from where I'm standing, it really does look like "bats have it made". But maybe someone like, say, Chris Packham, can explain why I'm wrong, and that without a dedicated tunnel, bats risk extinction?
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Personally, I think that dual language signs in languages which have been indigenous for centuries, if not millennia - Welsh, Scottish, Irish Gaelic, Cornish - even if they are nowadays only understood and spoken by a small minority - should be honoured, actively taught, and promoted. The little Welsh I know (I'm Irish but live in England) I learned during 1970s holidays in Wales - from dual language signs. "Town centre"- I think = "canol y dref", and "hospital"- I think - = "ysbyty"... It's pitifully little, for which I apologise to any Welsh X readers, but even as a 12 year old kid, I understood that I was visiting a country with a rich and different history, and a culture and language thousands of years old.
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@vicderbyshire OK. And how much are the viewing figures up - or down - since Paxman left, for example? I honestly don't know, but a rebase to "last May" looks quite tendentious to me.
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Indeed. I've always assumed that the C of E clerics who prefer to go by the title "Father" are basically the gutless Anglo-Catholic wannabes who aren't prepared to "cross the floor of the House". But yes. Neither flavour of Christianity has an even faintly defensible record in the prevention of child abuse. Other monotheistic religions are also guilty, of course.
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RT @AdmiralFishnose: @TangoLaputa @BBCNews Believe it or not there are some churches in the CofE where the priest goes by the title "Father…
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While I may agree with many of your views, I think you - personally - have to recognise that your public support for any cause now has a negative value. Consequently you should avoid publicly espousing causes that you wish to advance. It's over. You're done. So maybe you should back the Labour front bench instead?
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@AdmiralFishnose @BBCNews In the C of E I think they're called Reverend. But yes, child abuse may well - sadly - be an example of successful and enthusiastically adopted ecumenism.
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@BBCNews Or, less controversially, "Churchy McChurch Face"? It was good enough for that little Sir David Attenborough boat thing.
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I didn't entirely get the relevance of the Cromwell film meme. Though I remember seeing the film in 1972 at the cinema in Bournemouth aged 9 while on a drab holiday holiday with my parents. My "take-aways" (not a 1970's phrase) were these: 1/ Richard Harris was good, but as an Irishman (me too) an odd casting choice. 2/ Alec Guinness was even better as Charles I 3/ The film ended very abruptly with the dismissal of the Rump Parliament 4/ A young Timothy Dalton played Prince Rupert of the Rhine 5/ Early on some bloke got his ears (and nose?) cut off and 6/ I was violently sick after we got back to the rented holiday flat because I'd eaten fish and chips and drunk a lot of cold water. Prompting an argument between my parents. Huzzah!
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