David Craig, on August 5th, 2020(Wednesday blog)
Banned by the Times
First, I must proudly admit that I have just been banned from commenting on the Times and Sunday Times websites even though I pay an annual subscription.
Normally I only write comments where I believe I have information that some readers may not be aware of. So I don’t do as most people do – just spout inane opinions without ever checking the facts. The subjects I tend to comment on are ones about which I’ve written books – greed and waste in charities; corruption and looting in Africa; the German-run, power-grabbing EU; the incompetence and stupidity of UK governments and the scam perpetrated on students by money-grabbing British universities as they throw worthless degrees around like confetti.
Though I have also warned about Joe Biden’s ever-worsening senility, the farce of supposed Man-Made Global Warming, the fact that the Chinese Covid-19 plague almost definitely leaked from a lab in Wuhan and the hypocrisy of the fascists and anarchists hiding behind the Black Lives Matter protests as they totally ignore the 90% of murdered Western Blacks killed by other Blacks and the over 10,000 Blacks killed every week by poverty in Africa caused by corrupt Black African rulers.
But it seems that my additions to human knowledge are no longer welcome at the Times and Sunday Times and so I have been banned by the (IMHO) EU-loving, Brexit-hating, progressive, virtue-signalling, Clinton-adoring, Trump-loathing woke moderators at the Times and Sunday Times.
It’s the BAME Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) again today
I get the feeling that the BBC tried to blackmail the Government and failed.
When withdrawing free TV licences for the over 75s the BBC were quite clever. What the BBC did was to continue to offer free TV licences to any over 75s on Pension Credits. When doing this, the BBC knew full well that 39% of households eligible for Pension Credits don’t claim the benefit. That’s 590,000 households who could get Pension Credits but which didn’t claim. Official figures show that Pension Credit take up was similar for those under 75 (62%) and those 75 and over (61%) but was lowest amongst pensioner couples – with just over half of those entitled received the benefit.
According to Age UK, Department for Work and Pensions figures show an estimated £1.1 billion of available Pension Credit went unclaimed in both 2017 and 2018. Age UK state that “On average this amounted to more than £2,000 per year for each family entitled to receive Pension Credit who did not claim”.
The BBC calculates that making over-75s pay for their TV licence will bring in an extra £745m. That’s around 4.7 million households who will now have to pay for TV licences that previously got them free. But the BBC also knows that if just two thirds (372,000) – 63% – of the 590,000 households which currently are entitled to but don’t claim Pension Credits were to be pushed into claiming the benefit in order to get a free TV licence, then this would cost the Government more than the £745m the Government saved when forcing the BBC to assume the cost of providing free licences for all over 75s.
The BBC, I believe, assumed that the idea of the Government having to pay more in Pension Credits than it saved by forcing the BBC to assume the cost of free TV licences would force the Government to back down. But this didn’t happen. And now the BBC has painted itself into a corner where ever more people are questioning why we are all paying for some BBC rubbish that most people don’t even use any more given that there are so many better alternatives. After all, you don’t pay a tax to Tesco if you do all your shopping in Lidl and Aldi.
Oh, and I should mention that the BBC has had to hire around 800 extra licence enforcers at a cost of perhaps £12m a year to squeeze the TV licence fee from the over-75s who previously got it free.
For a short-term gain, the BAME Broadcasting Corporation have made themselves a figure of loathing and have put the whole concept of the licence fee in danger.
Dumb!
Coronavirus Rhapsody
And here to cheer us all up is a rather clever Youtube video – Coronavirus Rhapsody:
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I recall discussing The Times and their comment system with you quite a while back. I’m surprised you still bother and I hope you have ended your subscription. The Times and its readers are not interested in other opinions. I’m sure The Times employs people to go through the comments making offensive remarks about views they don’t like. They certainly do not enforce their terms and conditions. It seems to be the case with other newspapers as well. My local paper is free online and it brings out all the nutters on the comments system. Perhaps they tell us all we need to know about the majority of the population, which explains why the biggest nutters of all are in Westminster and the media.
The BBC thought it had earnt a favour as it did what the government wanted with the covid1984 psyop.
But maybe they had too much fun with Mason Mills so now hopefully they are doomed.
I get the Sunday Times every week. They’ve just bumped the price up to £3 and I think it’s getting thinner.
I will stop buying it. The major event recently is the invasion of illegals from France but no coverage in the Times. Selective news reporting is no good to me. A pity because I do enjoy some of the contributors such as Liddle, Clarkson and Oliver.
I thiunk you are right over this. The BBC have driven themselves into a hole and don’t know how to dig themselves out without loss of face. I have never know such immediate anger among decent, ordinary, normally fairly apathetic old people over anything as there is over this. If comments made by thousands both on discussion fora and on the various petitions are any indication, there is going to be massive witholding of payment by various means, all of which will possiby cost the BBC more than they stand to gain by their meanminded imposition. Even a BBC broadcaster said early this morning on R4 that the BBC faced “a battle of attrition” over the withdrawal of the free licence. Too true they do! There are many ways of making collection virtually impossible which fall just short of criminality. And every viewer needs to know that IF some jobsworth should knock at the door demanding to know whether you have a TV licence, all you need do is tell him (or her) to push off and mind their own business. There is absolutely NO obligation to answer any questions. Above all, do not under any circumstances let anyone asking about a TV licence gain entry to your home. If the BBC suspect you are watching or recording live TV but have no licence, let them prove it! Given today’s density of housing and flats, plus multiple receiving devices in many homes receiving a TV signal via WIFI rather than through an aerial, I reckon it would be extremely difficult to demonstrate definitively which specific terrace house or semi or flat is watching TV. None of this excuses in any way the bully-boy tactics to which the BBC’s collection agent, the deplorable Capita, will undoubtedly resort. How DARE the BBC, that left-wing, BLM supporting, statue-destruction-approving, Saint George Floyd worshipping organisation think if appropriate to terrorize the nation’s oldest citizens, the very oldest of whom – Sir Tom is one – fought in a foul war for the freedoms from which BBC top brass benefit!
I was banned from the Daily Mail’s comments, using my real name and email address after being a member for over a decade. In that time, several of my comments were removed due to complaints from other comment makers. Some of them were reinstated after being reappraised by the moderators.
I got an email saying I had been banned for not obeying the terms and conditions of the community, but the comment judged to be offensive was not specified.
I have a feeling that it was something true but derogatory about the Royals. Since the articles that I comment on are moderated, surely all that was required was to disallow the comment, but the moderator must have allowed it to go through, hence the ban.
Believe it or not, I tried but failed several times to get a comment in that just said that the black population of the UK in the 2011 census was around 3%. I have a feeling that the media wants us to believe that the black population is much higher than it is in order to justify having blacks in most TV adverts and even in an ever-increasing number of programmes, especially on the BBC.
What is especially silly about this is that I got back in merely by using another name and email address. The name is fake, but the email address is valid. It has to be valid because notification of replies to your comments are sent to it. That is also the case with the Times’ comments for which I just use a guest login that allows me to read two articles free a week. There is no way that I am going to sponsor the mainstream media. I don’t buy newspapers and I don’t have a TV licence. I use a broadband connection to watch programmes, movies, etc. In any case, it’s fun having the TV licence inspectors coming round regularly and telling them that I don’t have a TV that I am watching (you are allowed to have a TV if you are not watching it) and if they can prove otherwise that they will need a court order to enter my house in order to catch me in the act of watching it.
From the comments above it looks like the cancel cultures is spreading everywhere. There have been scenes of book burning in the USA. How long before this blog is closed?