The Director General of the BBC just resigned. Here's the latest news.

Here's how the public media has failed to keep its responsibilities to the public. This is how much reputable organisations such as the BBC have fallen from respectability, and amplified the right.

Background to the Current Shitshow.

With world leaders arguing about climate change targets they’ve already missed in the Cop30 conference, and with the doctors’ strikes going ahead on 14^th November as the Secretary of State, Wes Streeting rejects yet another pay offer, things do really seem to be collapsing in the UK, and the media is being detrimental to the situation.

When I write about the National Health Service and the Department for Work and Pensions, it must be understood that I write my articles and my posts on Bluesky with sadness, frustration, but most importantly, I don’t type criticism of the institutions without a reason or justification, and I do this because we all depend on these very departments for our day-to-day lives, and for them to help us when we are most in need. The institutions are crumbling before our eyes. We all have to do what we can do what can be done to help everyone in need in society, in the face of austerity.

We can all see the challenges with the NHS, for example. We frequently see in the media repeated imagery of doctors who describe the conditions in NHS hospitals as being abhorrent, something reminiscent of the third world, and with hospitals falling apart from the asbestos and RAAC-laden nightmares of the 1960s that are coming back to haunt us from the terrible mistakes of the past. It shows humans aren’t perfect.

But this is the thing. That asbestos isn’t there because people wanted to kill people, and the guy who invented leaded petrol was just trying to help people get around easier without their engines stalling. Let’s not forget about the chemist Albert Nobel, who invented dynamite, which you could say started the impetus to war, or if you are being less cynical, allowed the construction industry to flourish. We’re all just people.

The world has never been perfect, and in these times, it feels like things are difficult right now, with all the recent ethical concerns about the technology we use, the air we breathe, the lives we undertake, and the political positions we take. We spend entire lives worrying about what’s going to happen next, what’s the next war that will erupt, and who is we still believe is telling the truth in an honest, non-sensationalised way.

The People on the Frontlines Fighting.

I had a very positive interaction with the NHS yesterday, where my doctor who had known me for years cared, listened, and supported my point of view in regards to being too ill to attend a DWP Work Capability Assessment. For you see, it wasn’t the fact that she wrote an excellent letter to the DWP to explain this; but rather that we were both brutally honest about what the situation looks like in the health service.

When I told her about the fact that I waited forty-five minutes at Salford Royal hospital to get tested for epilepsy, and nobody turned up and the appointment was never rescheduled, she found this absolutely unacceptable. It sounds obvious if you think about it, but when you see the NHS repeatedly failing over, and over again, including myself, it becomes hard to believe anyone cares. But they absolutely do.

I remember jokingly saying to her, “I feel like we are in the apocalypse”, and she darkly agreed with me. And this is the thing, in that this struggle is shared, and everyone is incredibly stressed right now. She just needed to have the ability to help me, and unfortunately, GPs in the NHS find themselves with the decreasing ability to do exactly that, with their profession being eroded away, thanks to far-right voices.

Most people do not see the mismanagement problems with the NHS, because they only need to go to an appointment a few times a year, and perhaps undergo a minor operation in hospital. As someone with several chronic illnesses that will be with me probably for the rest of my life, I easily have gone to hospital over a hundred times in the last few years, and I feel like I live in the hospital. I think I’m qualified to write this.

The failure of the NHS is an issue that impacts everyone. In Wythenshawe alone, where I live in Manchester, only 10% of adults are fully healthy. This is down to a number of factors, including how the estate was an overflow estate after the war, the chronic lack of underinvestment in the place, as well as the complex mosaic of people, especially the older people who live in this area, who are the most vulnerable here.

So when I see my local GP that my friend goes to, Tregenna Group Practice, become so overworked and overrun with patients, with the medical equipment straight from the 1990s, desperately trying to schedule patients onto the rota with whatever clinical staff they have, this is a really, really sad situation. Inevitably, some patients will be left without care, even though they so desperately need it. At this point, it is well known publicly that the current system kills the frail & the sick. We need action, not words.

This Government is Completely Fucked.

Sir Keir Starmer and his team of quite frankly incompetent idiots are committing an act of public self-harm by cutting public services to the point where almost every single NHS trust in the country is operating in the red. I do not think that Sir Keir Starmer realises just how fragile his government really is, and how much his government is failing his people. That’s why the party has split so hard, and it appears that key people are being removed, causing the government to transform in chaos.

I would love to have a discussion with Wes Streeting. When he abolished the NHS England departmental body, who did he consult? Did he consult even ONE doctor? Or, as is usual for both the Conservatives and Labour; I would say this just yet another political power grab, seizing ever more political power over the NHS and dictating exactly how a surgeon should hold their scalpel, creating yet more bureaucratic red tape over what a doctor can’t, and can do to protect their patients and assist them.

I am not too worried about the resurgence in Reform in the polls, even though they are currently projected to be in the lead. It’s still three years until the next General Election, and there’s still time for things to turn around so that the worst of the damage can be mitigated. While I have no confidence in Sir Keir Starmer as a prime minister, as it has been shown that he can’t PR his way out of a paper bag, I do hope that his close aides realise they need to communicate better to the public, to provide the population hope, and bit of honesty, without the current atmosphere of doom.

Look, hearing budget, after budget, announce some kind of cuts, some kind of austerity, that there is going to be even more hardship, is not going to help the current economic crisis one bit. We have to actually tackle hardship. Cut the two-child benefit cap for god’s sake, at least you get to tackle the fact that nobody can afford to have children, because people my age certainly will never afford to start a family.

I could go on. The point of this article isn’t to highlight current failings, even though it’s ripe picking for any political writer. The point is that there are many people who make up governments, including civil servants, activists, policymakers, and we are all involved in politics to some extent. How you involve yourself in politics also makes a difference on how you feel about politics, which is why it’s important to not get absorbed into the nitty-gritty of what’s going on at the moment in the far-right.

As a journalist, I do not feel that the British media as it currently stands is a good barometer of how the country actually feels, or even accuracy. I’m seeing amounts of articles from media outlets that borderline break the traditional rules of journalism and impartiality, and I find that many journalists have honestly given up hope. As a result, ‘journalists’ are absolutely incompetent at performing the basics of their jobs, and doing a disservice to the public, who they are supposed to be serving after all.

How do you even become a journalist?

Journalism in Britain is actually a straight up monopoly, with the National Council for the Training of Journalists overseeing the entire process ritual from the christening of a journalist, all the way to their exorcism by examination. Previously, it used to be the case that colleges and universities actually ran these exams and therefore it was somewhat state-funded through subsidised course fees, however as the costs of the exams have ballooned exponentially, they are no longer able to provide these tests.

Tuition for journalism seems to have been relegated solely to universities, and expensive specialist schools. I hope with how much they cost they absolutely marinate the journalists in the knowledge stew. I couldn’t find a single journalism course in Manchester to go into college for, where working-class people go for education.

That, my friends, is how you end up with an incestuous media, as the NCTJ examination has become a necessity to work in the mainstream papers without considering the fucking idea that maybe, just maybe, working class people belong in journalism as well. Not including the working class by making it prohibitively expensive to sit these exams is how you end up with investigative news in Manchester being centralised to the areas of the city centre, everyone else be damned of course.

And look, I understand to some extent, you need some kind of standardisation of who can, and can’t be a journalist, to ensure that the quality of journalism stays consistent. The regulator Ofcom, of course, not the NCTJ, as when you see the board that runs the national council, and you don’t see a single person on there from the alternative media, you can start seeing the bias right there of exactly who owns the mainstream press. And Ofcom is a shit regulator, refusing to protect the rights of trans people.

As an example, I can see that the Chief Operating Officer is from Reach PLC, a media organisation that keeps gobbling up local papers, and then performing mass redundancy after mass redundancy as part of their business model. This causes local news sites such as the Manchester Evening News to become ad-laden nightmares while trying to find important and key local information about Manchester.

The Murdochian nightmare of the US press is now affecting Britain. I actually made a complaint to the BBC about their coverage of the far-right demonstrations and caused by Stephen Yaxley-Lennon in London a few months back as at one point the headline did not show the counter-fascism demonstration happening at the same time, and all I got was a half-assed corporate reply that stated that journalists edit their articles as they write them. Of course they fucking do. But they also have the responsibility as journalists to provide and present information to the public in an unbiased way.

I know that I am not the only journalist to complain the BBC about bias. The BBC is now only interested in covering its own backside instead of acknowledging mistakes as we, the public, point them out via the complaints procedure. They pretend to be shocked & surprised as people opt out of the license as the service has gone to shit.

From David Attenbourgh, to becoming a Rotten Borough.

It is an absolute travesty to see what the British Broadcasting Corporation has become.

Of course, I don’t mean the people who work on the rebooted Doctor Who series, who are genuinely trying to steer the BBC onto the right path. I mean the good journalists that used to work there that have since fled on a Chocobo out of BBC Television Studios due to news output bias. And, quite frankly, I cannot blame them.

I could literally click on any article about politics on the BBC News website. Examining a random article on the front page, about the UK seeking Danish inspiration to shake up immigration system, reveals that most of the talking points are about Denmark’s racist policy involving ‘parallel societies’ and the journalist has taken a completely uncritical view on that, maintaining ‘BBC neutrality’, which isn’t a real form of neutrality.

The problem is, BBC neutrality does not mean what you think it means, and indeed can be quite misleading. By just uncritically reporting the news, and then placing this on a front page, is giving disproportionate airtime to far-right views, even if the BBC attempts to write articles arguing for both sides. It doesn’t work as a form of balance.

I don’t think any respectable, responsible news outlet should be giving any consideration to far-right views without allowing the same article a comprehensive rebuttal of those views. Simply providing one view in opposition to the policies by Nadia Whittome, the Labour MP for Nottingham East at the end of the article is not what I would consider a balanced take on this issue that underpins the very political situation in Britain at this moment in time. One bad take can cause serious chaos.

And this is where we get to today’s resignation of Tim Davie, the Director General of the British Broadcasting Corporation. The Guardian says this is a shock move, but quite frankly, I am not surprised by this as this has been coming for quite some time.

I think it’s about time he fucking resigned. This isn’t an acceptable way to run a news organisation. I don’t want to fund this shit through the licence fee, and neither should you. This is putting taxpayers’ public money towards amplifying the right.

This is what happens when you run the media into the fucking ground, why we are doing this at Queer Love Riot, a collective of trans activists who have had enough of the status quo. We believe the media should be free, and fair to all.

Mark the day on your calendars. 17th November. That’s when our new website will go live, with discussion forums, trans resources, as well as a community-led focus. We will allow any queer person to submit an article to us, providing it fits our editorial guidelines. An allied media is our key to survival, and we will not stand down in the face of the far right. We, as queer people, know the truth of what’s going on.

You can find out what we’re doing on Bluesky here. If you subscribe to this Substack, you will be automatically signed up to the new and improved QLR mailing list as well!

If you would like to get more formally involved in Queer Love Riot, please email us at admin@queerloveriot.com with your expression of interest. We take all offers of help. Please help us build a queer-focused, independent media in the United Kingdom.