So I wrote to the BBC asking how they propose to make available the Dear Leader televised debates to ex-pats abroad, since we can still vote in the UK and, obviously, want to make informed decisions. A process which took half an hour clicking around their website to find an actual way to send in the question, as opposed to being constantly redirected to FAQs where, obviously, they’ve already answered all the possible questions you could come up with. Now, after two of the debates, they’ve replied. Saying, Hey, we understand that you’re a licence fee payer who wants to watch TV abroad but we’re sorry, the terms we negotiate for broadcasting copyright material don’t allow us to do this.
So congratulations on answering someone else’s question with your cut and paste reply.
And when I reply to that e-mail saying, duh, answer the question, I get an e-mail back saying ‘You can’t reply to this email.’ Duh. And they send me back to their website saying, ‘We realise this is inconvenient but….’ Well if you REALLY didn’t want to inconvenience me you wouldn’t send me back to your website, would you?
It really shows up the two sides of the BBC: the brilliant ‘output’ side which produces great TV and radio, and the ‘bureaucracy’ side which exists to, duh, keep its jobs. Unfortunately I think the bureaucracy side is winning, soon there will be tens of thousands of bureaucrats and one person left to read the news, act in all the dramas, produce the documentaries and DJ on all the radio stations.