h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Just think how boring this place would be if we all agreed, then the s would lose their jobs and there would be more strikes and so we start all over again

Dagnamit what happened to my post?

Oh well start again.

From what I have read about the strike and its causes (which admitidly is limited) it seems to be a classic case of what I hate about the modus operandi.

Namely making huge decisions without any proper consultation or negociaiton, acting shocked when the workers get hacked off at it, then saying "ok we will talk but we are not going to change our minds".

Surely it would be better to speak to the unions first and say

"We need to make x in savings, this is the way we are planning to do it. Can you come up with any better suggestions? If not we are going to do it anyway."

Ok so sometimes the end result would be the same but at least you try negociation and consultation first. It might be that you find a better way of doing things without destroying peoples livelehoods.

I have to say this is kinda ideological for me, ruining peoples lives to upsize profits for people who probably dont need the money (I am talking about the generality here, not just the BBC strike) is seen as a "good thing".

Reminds me of that annoying bank advert where they are talking aobut champagne for the sharholders meeting. Well sod em. I say if a business is making money then people jobs and lives are worth more than shareholders dividends.

The other side of the strike was detailed in a comment article yesterday in The Evening Standard, by Tom Bower the former producer of Panorama.

He said that at least 4000 jobs were created by Greg Dyke and all they are trying to do is get back to pre-Greg Dyke figures.

He was well known for increasing costs, sending all new staff on residential courses to learn about the meaning of the BBC, that includes porters. Some courses were held at the Hilton to the cost of £950 a head. There were 2 courses to the US to learn about leadership, at a combined cost of £380 000, cause you can't learn leadership in the UK can you?

The BBC has a Diversity Unit which examines race and equality, it costs £2 million and a lot of employees think it gets in the way of making programmes.

One of the points he made was in sympathy with the strikers, its difficult not to be sympathetic with people losing their jobs when Alan Yentob the Arts guy gets paid nearly £250 000 a year, a pension of £100 000 and a bonus in 2002 of £67 000.

With wages like that how can they afford to pay for extra people?

Another point is that they have to prepare for the licence fee being withdrawn. Why else are there adverts between every single programme now? Yes someone once told me that adverts for upcoming programmes are not adverts, but they are taking up the space which will be taken up by product adverts later.

So the streamlining of staff is something else which will have to happen once the licence fee is withdrawn, so maybe they are just preparing for it.

Or maybe just trying to clear Greg Dykes over spending.

I dont doubt that the BBC can be hugely wasteful.

I do however doubt that the best way to sort this out is by shedding frontline jobs, privitisng parts of the BBC and "contracting out". Mayby all the top brass could tske a 25% paycut. I am sure that would save a packet.

'Alan Yentob the arts guy', better known as 'Yentob the ex-controller of BBC1 who got fed up of being behind the camera and decided to have a crack at programme-making from the other side'.

Thats the one and he seems to be doing very well at it.

Alan Yentob
Imagine... Wed 25 May, 10:40 pm - 11:40 pm 60mins

in deed intresting programs

I believe he was payed for that series as an extra to his contract, so if that is true then he is doing very well indeed.

When I worked for the BBC pre-Birt, everybody, absolutely everybody, was aware that they were in the business of broadcasting. Porters, filing clerks, personnel, everybody - not just the staff actively making programmes. That "corporate culture" was what made the BBC a world leader in broadcasting. It also made it possible for talented and creative people to move about within the BBC's career structure - it was a place where the best was nurtured.

Birt wrecked it, and if MT has any sense he'll be trying to return to pre-Birt status, which I think is what Greg was doing. Granted there is, rightly, a greater demand for accountability in this day and age, but quality broadcasting (and I'd include H2 in that scope) ought to be compatible with that. *Look after the staff* - stress and ignorance do not promote creative thinking.

Remember the guy sweeping up the chippings in St Pauls? "I'm helping Sir Christopher Wren to build this great cathedral".

Mol

Thats true I forgot about Birt, he started the rot.

Just a quickie, while we are all very grateful for the love and support being shown for the BBC here, we'd like to ask that people refrain from discussing either the motivations or pay scales of individuals. The decision to strike or not is a personal one and it doesn't necessarily reflect a person's politics or their commitment to the job.

We do hope to minimise the disruption to the site in the event of further strikes, but unfortunately last night was disrupted more than anticipated by an entirely separate technical issue which unfortunately locked the Moderators out for a while. I understand they've been working through the decisions furiously and are doing their very best to return all suitable postings in the shortest possible time.

Regards,

Jims
(on behalf of the h2g2 team, the Moderators and everyone else whose job has been made considerably less distressing by the h2g2 Community's generally good-natured approach to current events. Bless you all)

See, we can be nice littl' boys an' girls sometimes.

Is the site going to be put on pre mod for the 48 hour strike or is something else going to be implimented cos the s are going to be up all night sifting through the postings or can you make some kind od sieve that catches postings with certain banned references like they had on the Messageboards if you posted a banned word, profanity, URL or your posting was over 500 words it was automatically sent to premod

KasSorrel,

"...someone once told me that adverts for upcoming programmes are not adverts, but they are taking up the space which will be taken up by product adverts later.."

No, it's a function of the fact that BBC programmes are now made to also be shown on American affiliates, who co-fund them and *do* show commercials. This leads to the programmes being several minutes short of the hour or half-hour, and needing "trails" to pad them out.

Jimster, the impression I had was that a bit of sporadic posting while the site was on premod because of the strike wasn't going to be a problem. Barring another technical problem is this true for further times of site premod? i.e the mods should be able to cope with the amount of traffic? Or is it better if people don't post at all?

cheers,
kea.

*Actually*...

If you watch things like Spooks, you'll see that they actually are just short of the hour. When they show it in the States, they cut a further 15 minutes out. Eeek!

>>
No, it's a function of the fact that BBC programmes are now made to also be shown on American affiliates, who co-fund them and *do* show commercials. This leads to the programmes being several minutes short of the hour or half-hour, and needing "trails" to pad them out.
<<

That's interesting. In NZ 'one hour' programmes routinely run for 65 or 70 minutes (we have alot of advertising, typically ad breaks are 4 minutes long and there will be 4 or 5 of them in an 'hour'). I'll have to watch to see if the BBC programmes play shorter here, or if NZ networks just add more ads (which is more likely ).

US networks can get fines for making certain tv series longer than 1 hour.

I forgot...the hour includes commercials