Jeremy Corbyn proposes 'BDC' (digital version of BBC) as part of media overhaul - Polidicks

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/aug/23/corbyn-proposes-public-facebook-as-part-of-media-overhaul https://labour.org.uk/press/corbyn-can-fix-failing-media-setting-journalists-citizens-free-hold-power-account/ Here is a breakdown of the opposition leader's main points. Support for local and investigative journalism funded by Google The first idea was aimed at encouraging active support for local, investigative and public interest stories, with a view to granting charitable status for this type of journalism. He said that one solution to funding public interest media, such human rights, environment and housing stories, could be to negotiate setting up an independent fund financed with a windfall tax from tech giants. A similar public interest fund is already established in France and Belgium between news publishers and Google. More diversity at the BBC Mr Corbyn would like to see information about the social class of anyone who creates BBC content to be published in a view to improve diversity at the Corporation. He also proposed regional and national board members should be chosen through elections by BBC staff and local licence fee payers. All boards should be representative of the country, with a minimum representation for women and minority groups, he said. The Labour leader would like better regional balance across the media to improve diversity - currently 94% of British journalists are white and 55% are men. An independent BBC body Mr Corbyn floated the idea of a new independent body to set the licence fee and suggested the BBC should be placed on a permanent statutory footing so that it would be "freed of government control". A digital license fee The Labour leader proposed funding the BBC through a digital licence fee, supplementing the existing licence fee, collected from tech giants and Internet Service Providers, such as Netflix, Amazon, Google and Facebook. He said that this "could also help reduce the cost of the licence fee for poorer households." Letting journalists decide their editors Mr Corbyn suggested journalists elect their own editors and, for particularly large or influential titles, workers and consumers should have seats on the board. A new public digital corporation A new British Digital Corporation would be a sister organisation to the BBC that Mr Corbyn believes could rival Netflix and Amazon. He also proposed a social media platform that would harness data for the "public good". Building on this idea originally proposed by James Harding, former BBC Director of Home News, Mr Corbyn said: "It could become the access point for public knowledge, information and content currently held in the BBC archives, the British Library and the British Museum. Imagine an expanded Iplayer giving universal access to licence fee payers for a product that could rival Netflix and Amazon. It would probably sell pretty well overseas as well."

I think it's a great idea. It's bringing public ownership of media into the 21st century.

"Mr Corbyn floated the idea of a new independent body to set the licence fee and suggested the BBC should be placed on a permanent statutory footing so that it would be "freed of government control"." Holy shit no what the fuck are you doing Corbyn, the licence fee is pathetic enough already and he wants to give them even more control over it?

The BBC is way, way more than just garbage soap operas that can't die and bad daytime game shows. You are aware of that right?

Yeah the radio is spectacular and the documentaries are simply brilliant but why do I have to be forced to pay for all the stuff I don't like when i'd rather go without the better stuff and just keep my 150 quid?

Do you even known BBC means? British Broadcasting Channel

Doesn't the BBC already have an online component?

They have websites and the usual kind of stuff you'd expect, but the BBC's main purpose is to make good TV and radio stuff. I think the idea with a 'BDC' is that their main purpose would be to make good digital services and platforms and stuff - they'd be like an Amazon or a Google or a Facebook but owned by and accountable to the British public. Don't really know what they'd actually develop or do though, he was pretty vague about that. I think it's a cool idea that I hadn't really thought about before. I feel like there's an 80% chance it would fucking fail but then again, if we lived in a world where all broadcasting was private, the idea of the BBC would probably seem fucking wacko too.

Reminder that Corbyn actually looks up to Venezuela as a role model for how to run a country.

If you don't mind me asking, how exactly (or at least, how do you interpret it)? I recall him expressing support for Chavez raising education & living standards, and some general Corbyn™ tweets on wealth inequality + distribution, with radio silence on current affairs & Maduro. Nothing in the last manifesto threw up red flags for me or seemed radically dangerous so

QE is pretty damn awful, literally just printing cash to pay for stuff.

I heard the question swoosh past you, mate, might wanna be more subtle when you dodge it next time. You gotta curve just right so it goes nyeeow.

but what relevence does this have to do with the idea he is presenting here?

Because this just sounds like another massive waste of money, like most of Corbyn's ideas.

We've have the BBC for almost a century. It's hardly going to send us on the Venezuela route because it hasn't already. Public ownership isn't inherently a socialist idea. Thje Conservatives historically have a history of nationalising/managing certain industries.

It's not just this policy, it's the combination of all his policies that would ruin the economy, he just seems to want to waste money on the most asinine crap to satisfy his vision of a socialist utopia.

I mean investing in services, transportation, education and healthcare are pretty asinine and totally wouldn't even in many cases improve the countries economic state long-term. And the Tories sure don't have their own vanity projects and questionable economic policies and peoples real wage growth has totally not been stagnant for 10 years. At the end of the day most arguments seem to come down to a fabricated sense of trust in Tory economic policy and an opinion that investment will bankrupt us. And yes that's a large generalisation but that doesn't make it not pretty accurate.

I'm no fan of the tories, and I certainly won't be voting for them, but I sure as hell won't be voting for Corbyn either because he's an irresponsible idiot who'll do more damage than good. His plan to print cash to pay for projects just says it all, this is a man with absolutely zero understanding of economics. His way of dealing with these issues is totally irresponsible. The people supporting Corbyn are killing the labour party, right now labour should be smashing the Tories, we probably have one of the worst Tory government in history and somehow Corbyn is still losing many polls to them through his sheer incompetence and dreadful past that keeps coming to the surface. Of course whenever this gets brought up you get the usual "fake news!" cry from the corbynauts.

I mean quantitative easing is a not something new or unique to Corbyn and only makes up a part of costing. Corbyn is far from perfect but he is the only option the labour party have had for the last few years. Corbyn has continued to significantly over-perform expectations in elections and rumours of the labour parties demise seem to have been significantly exaggerated. I and most other "Corbynauts" (I prefer corbynistas personally) would love a more modern alternative who offered something that would be clearer of some of his more questionable interactions but there has been no candidate in the previous leadership elections who would have performed better, they were all underwhelming and not inspiring. People also call fake news at the statistically backed fact that Corbyn and his current party have faced ridiculously high degrees of media bias against them and still they have been gaining ground. Even if the party was losing ground ( which it so far is not) I'd rather lose trying for things I believe in like reversing privatisation of the NHS, nationalising the railway, tackling PFI costs crippling public services and actually tackling income inequality than just be a different flavour of Tory again. I'm ok with trying and like most people it's not about Corbyn himself but about trying to create a fairer and better society for everyone.

QE isn't new, it's used by the bank pretty often, but the way he wanted to use it was very irresponsible and is a great way to trash everyones savings with hyperinflation. Most of his nationalisation plans would cost an absolute fortune, more than they'd be worth by any means. And lets not forget his hilarious UBI idea that I calculated would cost the country roughly about 1 trillion every 5 years, yeah a wonderful plan, not that the liberal arts students that support him would care. There are plenty of other labour candidates who could do a better job than Corbyn, but the corbynauts are convinced he's going to usher in a new socialist utopia. I also find it funny that they'll all laugh at Trump's fake news stuff but then do the exact same for comrade Corbyn. There's a media bias against him because he's genuinely awful.

It's false because Corbyn's polling numbers are fucked. Labour was polling horrendously bad before the snap election yet he achieved stunning results against all the odds to the point he humiliated the Tories, gained considerable amount of seats and forced the Tories into a coalition with far right Irish nutjobs. This was also against one of the most highly regarded British PMs in history. He either managed to mount one hell of a comeback (thus, not incompetent at all) or the polling is simply fucked. Also you say they should be smashing the Tories if anyone else was in charge, the Labour right are far more inept and cowardly, when they launched their post Brexit coup they didn't know what to do and put forward a man who was so stupid he believed ISIS should have a place at the negotiating table and who got completely obliterated by Corbyn. You want those people to take charge? Also, Ed Miliband polled really well and he managed to achieve far worse results against a Tory party which was no where near as popular as May's in terms of polling. The public are far more in tune with Corbyn's views than you'll think.

QE was also relatively dropped by Labour with the public investment bank plan being pretty dead in the water primarily due to such media backlash (even with several noteworthy economist endorsements if such a plan was done within reason). UBI was and is just discussing the possibility of looking into it, very hilarious and ridiculous thinking we should consider investigations into ways to tackle problems. Nationalisation would be a slow process that would be well worth the short term cost, it's literally barely debatable that a nationalised railway would be more efficient and cost less to the taxpayer than our current disgrace of a system. Literally none of the other candidates at the previous leadership elections could have remotely confronted the tories in my opinion, and it is just that an opinion. None of them were captivating enough to even beat old comrade Corbyn. Who the fuck thinks Corbyn is going to create a socialist utopia, he's just another democratic socialist using some socialist policies within our existing systems. You have this constructed idea of a crazy cult of personality around an idiotic extremist and I don't really think I can debate that. Maybe you just have different persnonal experience with Corbyn supporters to me and from that your conclusion may well be valid, hell you may well be right, but I have yet to see this personally. Like I said myself I'm a pretty average Corbyn supporter as far as I can tell and most of the stories. Dismissing media bias out of hand like that is pretty rich, tackling the issues raised in the LSE report is asking a bit much and I don't expect you to disprove it but I personally see comparing "fake news" for both parties as a bit of a false equivalence. As I say people are quite capable of acknowledging significant issues with Corbyn while still supporting him and I do not see Corbyn vs the media, I see Corbyn putting up with the media. You don't see Corbyn calling the media the enemy of the people you see him simply defending himself, sometimes successfully and sometimes unsuccessfully, usually because some of the most extreme stories are indeed indefensible but for every 1 of those there are a dozen nothing stories about him dancing his way on remembrance Sunday or being a communist spy.

Stunning results? I didn't know losing an election against an incompetent and extremely unpopular Tory government is "stunning". Ed Miliband was soon after the Gordon Brown disaster so it was no real surprise he lost, and he really was a wet blanket of a candidate, but he did at least manage to out poll the tories for most of the election cycle. Corbyn can't even do that, that's how bad he is.

Yes you got me I'm a Marxist and I want the country to go bankrupt. I am utterly delusional and labour has been wiped off the map. Corbyn really is a neo-marxist satanist antisemite (personal opinion he probably may well be a bit of an antisemite). If you really think marxists have taken over the labour party membership you might need to take a step back, labours policies under Corbyn have been mostly pretty tame and sensible approaches to modern problems.

Excuse the shitty MSNBC absurd intro, but you remind me of this Glenn Beck parody: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_TX_pp4cdo

Yeah I mean we only saw John Mcdonnell at the may day parades with a bunch of soviet flags dangling over him (imagine trump standing around with swastikas hovering around them and try to tell me you lot wouldn't consider that just a bit iffy), but no clearly I'm nuts for thinking Corbyn and co might be on the marxist side of things

We are talking about membership, that's what you said has been taken over. Corbyn and co are on the "Marxist side of things" I wasn't exactly debating that, I think McDonnell in particular could probably be considered literally a Marxist, but that doesn't exactly make their policies particularly extreme and what exactly being a Marxist entails varies wildly from person to person. This comes back to some of the problems I have with Corbyn as a candidate I fully acknowledged, personally I believe Marxism is not some magical evil that instantly leads to the USSR and don't think anyone who is a Marxist is somehow equivalent to a nazi but I recognise that in the modern day people are still pretty red scare so I would prefer a "cleaner" candidate. Do you actually think Marxists are the equivalent of Nazi's genuine question? Does everything have to be compared to nazis and trump with you.

Well I mean I think it's safe to say that those who would support a party leader who clearly at the least has marxist sympathies, may indeed also been quite marxist leaning themselves. My disagreement with marxism isn't even really to do with the soviet union (although mcdonnells and most likely corbyns soviet sympathies are certainly disturbing), it's that it's straight up unfeasible. every time it's been tried has ended it total and utter disaster. I don't want a PM who leans that way, and apparently neither do most people, considering they'd rather put up with a dreadful tory government than a weird socialist labour. Labour just doesn't represent the working class any more, it represents weird overly idealistic middle class people (which is where the massive student support base came from). He needs to get out of labour and let someone more reasonable, and more importantly better qualified take over (considering Corbyn couldn't even pass his A levels with decent grades)

Considering Trump defended murdering Nazis and nothing happened, I reckon McDonnell will be fine. I don't even like McDonnell much, he's a bit weird. But hanging around Soviet flags is bad, yeah, but nowhere near as bad as the Tories being friendly with the Saudis, a far more evil regime than the Soviets ever were post Stalin, including arming them. Corbyn is against this severely yet the Labour right, the people opposing him, screamed him down about it.

The fact that the Tories are bad doesn't make Corbyn not bad, and I would say that whether the post Stalin Soviets were less bad than Saudi Arabia is very much debateable, I'm a fan of neither regime mind you. However the Tories are at the least not standing by Saudi ideology on a political platform, only a diplomatic one. I don't agree with this diplomatic tie, but it at the least is not influencing home policy, in the same way the Corbyn and Co's soviet sympathies may influence their policy. Corbyn has also shown sympathies for terror groups such as Hamas, as much as he denies it, the facts are a the least somewhat worrying so he's hardly clean on that front either.