Sunday 23 August 2015

Bye bye, Met Office

Photograph by Tim Pestridge

The erosion of the BBC continues with the non-renewall of the weather reports by the Meteorological Office which has been providing them for as long as the BBC has been going. I think I am right in saying that the Met Office was actually designed for the BBC. 92 years of close association with Aunty is about to come to an end. This October, in fact.

We will still get the fishermen's weather reports, we will still get people like Michael Fish telling us not to worry about hurricanes even if one is about to hit us hard in a matter of hours, and we will still get a BBC announcer reading out the daily weather report at 6 in the morning and throughout the rest of the day, but the difference is that this data will probably be collated by a French company.

Well, I think it is not only sad, but it is a disgrace. Us Brits depend on conversations about the weather when all else fails, but I really cannot imagine a tweed-besuited man putting his copy of The Times down in a second-class railway carriage, taking his pipe out of his mouth and challenging his opponent in the seat opposite by saying something like, "I see it will rain again today".

I spent a couple of hours watching old footage of Spitfires taking to the skies to defend the South Coast from invasion by Nazi Germany today, all the while bearing in mind the dependence the pilots had on as accurate forecasts from the WW2 Met Office as they could get at the time. This was before the super-computers (above) and before the satellite surveillance that we also take for granted now.

The government have always hated the BBC since it lost control by emergency wartime propaganda legislation, and now they have about 4 years to completely change it beyond recognition, siphoning off most of the revenue for its own disgusting and illegal purposes. It's illegal now, but not for long.

The Met Office will still thrive, as the BBC is only a fraction of it's clientele - at only a fraction of the corporation's budget. It is not a financial decision, it is a political one - with backing from foreign financiers.

Do you think that there is anything we can do to reverse the destruction?

7 comments:

  1. Nothing so predictable as change and a new generation moving up.

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    1. I wish it were the new generation. Sadly, it is an old generation's psychopathic children.

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  2. And the weather forecast for South West England tonight comes from New Zealand. Good Evening Bristol.

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  3. I agree 100%. And to think that the Met Office were recently employed by the US government to advise their armed forces. Whatever effing next!

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    1. I have since heard that the BBC's non-renewal of contract with the Met Office may be a ploy to put counter-pressure on the government by over-reacting to its insistence to make further cuts to the budget. If the US military make use of the Met Office, then I am sure the Brits do as well, even after WW2.

      The trouble is that the top brass of the BBC are quite often just as nasty as the government of the day - but are on a higher salary than most ministers. More scope for bitter resentment.

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  4. When I heard the news, I was aghast. What next BBC - bloody Neil Nunes reading the shipping forecast forever? He can't even pronounce moderate - says mode rate!

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