Tag: petition

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Proposed Channel 4 sale highlights “world-beating” ignorance and stupidity of UK government

40 years ago this year, UK tv welcomed a fourth channel to join BBC1, BBC2 and ITV.

Originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority, after establishment the station went on to be owned and operated by Channel Four Television Corporation, a public corporation of the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, which it is to this day.

Channel Four had a bumpy start as it started to find its audience. But what was different in the channel was the desire to provide something different to the other three tv options . Its public service remit included commitments to inclusion, innovation and diversity to reflect the UK population.

Hang on, hang on, is this really a subject for a theatre blog, you may say. Well, Yes it is. From the very beginning, the channel looked for new and interesting work which was happening across the UK, and gave production money and airtime to theatre companies such as the hugely popular National Theatre of Brent (at that time comprised of Patrick Barlow and Jim Broadbent), with their wildly silly but ultimately touching version of THE MESSIAH being a notable early success. This then spawned a series from the same company. Edinburgh shows were given airtime, new innovative production companies sprung up, and many more theatre actors were given work by these small companies, commissioned by Channel Four, than ever before.

Then we must also remember the hugely successful production company Film Four which they established, giving opportunities to countless actors, writers, behind the scenes and technical personnel, creating a whole new generation of established film and tv creatives, and creating many successful and memorable movies along the way.

Ever leading the field in innovation, Channel Four was the first to offer a public streaming service – from which other broadcasters learned valuable insights about how to model and run their own. Public ownership (not funding) allowed it to take risks that commercial operators would never have dared to consider.

Channel Four fulfils an important public service remit which includes innovation and diversity.

Channel Four is funded solely by advertising time that it sells, just like private broadcasters. Channel Four actually makes money for the UK, while all the time not costing the taxpayer a penny.

The incompetent cultural ignoramus that is Nadine Dorries (the most recent mouthy Muppet in a long line of useless and stupid Culture Secretaries) only found out how Channel Four was funded back in November last year, and then she had to be educated by a colleague, Damien Green. See her arrogant blustering performance here.

And now this idiot- who just this week stated that “food doesn’t grow on trees” – wants to sell off Channel Four.

Dumb Dorries says government ownership is “holding Channel Four back”. How? It’s making money. What more could one ask?

Dumb Dorries also says that selling off Channel Four will “allow it to compete with the streamers globally”. What benefit would there be in that? It’s not Netflix, Amazon Prime, or any of the others. And thank goodness for that. We need more diversity, not more vacuous American-style retreads of mindless failing formats, thank you. Just the figures speak for themselves – the only service to be in profit is Channel Four!

Spot-on analysis from ex-MP Denis Skinner

Channel Four stimulates a huge range of independent production companies across the UK by bringing in their series to air. None of Channel Four’s output is in-house. Can you imagine how damaging the sell-off of the channel, with a resulting decimation of independent commissions, will be to a creative industry still reeling from the disruption of two years of Covid. This makes sense to no-one in their right mind.

Diversity is important and TV can change minds. Channel Four has been at the forefront of this many times. Let’s look at just one example – in 2012 just 14% of people in the UK said they were looking forward to the Paralympic Games. After Channel Four’s marketing campaign was seen by 86% of the UK, 40 million of us (66% of the population) tuned in to the games, with 25% of us watching every day. And when they tuned in, Channel Four had also scouted, recruited and supported a wide range of disabled presenters to front the coverage in a pioneering approach which changed UK attitudes. (You can read more in Channel Four’s own document here)

83% of viewers later agreed that Channel 4’s coverage of the Paralympics improved society’s attitude towards people with an impairment, while 64% of viewers felt more positive towards people with a disability. That’s what public service broadcasting is for. And what the Tories don’t want, because they can make a fast buck for their mates out of selling it off, and get a few nice fat backhanders in the process.

That’s not the only reason. Like the BBC, (which the government have been demonising until doing an abrupt about-face over the admirable Ukraine coverage from the century old broadcaster), the Tories are getting pretty sick and tired of being challenged and called out by news teams on their endless lies and scams. They don’t like having to tell the truth about their devastating lack of competence that have caused countless deaths of innocent people from Covid, hardship and worry for millions due to runaway inflation, endless company closures and job losses that scar our country’s future.

Like all the great things still in public ownership, the Tories know, in the words of Oscar Wilde, “the cost of everything and the value of nothing”. They are shamelessly strip-mining the UK, hellbent on selling off anything that isn’t nailed down, to their Russian, US, Chinese and Arab pals, sticking two fingers up to democracy, accountability, public morality, the wellbeing of the poor and sick, laughing all the way to the bank as they trample over those they see no profit in caring about. We need to stop them.

Help stop the unnecessary and immoral sale of OUR Channel Four. Please sign the petition here and here.

Just think of all the wasted energy spent defending Channel Four that could have gone to more productive use. This ignorant and incompetent government is destroying the Britain we knew and they must go before they destroy all that’s best about the UK and sell it off to their offshore cronies.

JANUARY 2023 UPDATE. The idiotic decision to sell off Channel Four has been officially dropped, according to this piece in the Guardian newspaper.

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Sign the petition to stop cutting arts education for our young people

It seems ludicrous that we have to sign petitions to get anything done, but such is the corrupt, incompetent and disengaged government that that is our current reality. With that in mind, the Chancellor is trying to starve your kids education. Let’s tell him to lay off our kids – please sign the petition- details below. Thank You.

Secondary schools are missing £90 million of pledged Government funding for arts programmes and activities this academic year. 

Chancellor Rishi Sunak promised the Arts Premium in March 2020, “to fund enriching activities for all pupils”[1]. It was due to reach schools last month at a crucial moment in young people’s recovery from the pandemic.

Instead the schools minister said “the Arts Premium is now subject to this year’s Spending Review”[2], which Rishi Sunak is conducting now and concluding on 27th October. The Department for Education could not confirm whether the Arts Premium will be scrapped.[3]

Meanwhile youth centres and services, which face mounting financial pressures to keep delivering extra-curricular activities, are still waiting to receive any of the £500 million Youth Investment Fund they were promised by the Government in 2019.[4]

Young people have suffered enough during the pandemic, which has taken a devastating toll on mental health and educational inequality.[5] Now more than ever, every child must have the opportunity to express and develop their creativity, inside and outside school.

[1]Conservative Manifesto 2019, p13; Budget 2020[2]Written reply, Nick Gibb MP[3]Arts Professional[4]Civil Society News[5]Inequalities in education, skills, and incomes in the UK: The implications of the COVID-19 pandemic, IFS

We urge the Chancellor Rishi Sunak to:

  1. Keep the Government’s manifesto promise to deliver an Arts Premium of at least £90 million a year to secondary schools, distributing this much-needed funding as soon as possible.
  2. Keep the Government’s manifesto promise to deliver a £500m Youth Investment Fund to support youth centres and services, including the extra-curricular arts activities they provide.
  3. Increase national investment in the arts, and revenue funding of local and combined authorities, so everybody can benefit from high-quality arts and cultural services in their local community at this crucial time of recovery

Please sign the petition to help give our kids a better chance at better futures. We can afford it – we need to remind the Chancellor that it’s OUR money he’s playing with!

Find more information and sign the petition here

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You can help save the Chaplin-linked home of London’s Cinema Museum – November 5th deadline

The historic building housing London’s award-winning Cinema Museum

Supporters are fighting to save the much-loved, Time Out Award-winning and Internationally-respected Cinema Museum. Will you join us by signing their petition – the goal is to get to 60,000 signatures before it closes on November 5th. As of today, they are only 1500 signatures short. We can do it- but only with YOUR help.

A statement from the Museum reads as follows: “The old Lambeth Workhouse where Charlie Chaplin spent some of his childhood has been home to The Cinema Museum for 20 years.

Despite numerous attempts to buy the building over the years and promises in writing from our former landlords SLaM (South London and Maudsley NHS Trust) that they would sell it to the Museum for a fair and independent price, they eventually sold it to developers (a company called Anthology – now called Lifestory), telling them our lease expired in March 2018 and implying we can be easily evicted. Lifestory then promised they would agree sustainable terms of ownership with The Cinema Museum by May 2018. However, we still remain in situ on a short lease, due to expire in May 2021. Our latest public statement outlining our position is available HERE.

We are calling out to Anthology/Lifestory; Lambeth Council; The Mayor of London and The Greater London Authority (GLA) to work with The Cinema Museum and the local community to secure an appropriate and sustainable future for the site that will not result in the demise of the Museum.

Please help us to save this beautiful building, this wonderful collection and our important work, by signing the petition HERE; by spreading the word through social media and by donating to our Save The Cinema Museum fund HERE.

Thank you.”

I have signed. Will you please join me? sign here

Cinema Museum co-founder Ronald Grant amongst some of his cinema treasures
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Failed fireplace salesman wants to kill your kids’ dreams. Stop him.

This is the alleged Education Secretary. Gavin Williamson is his name, although most people seem to refer to him as Private Pike, after the ineffectual milksop character in the BBC comedy Dad’s Army. And no wonder. He’s a failed fireplace salesman. And boy, doesn’t he look it? And now he’s acting like it too.

The Government wants to impose a catastrophic 50% funding cut to arts subjects at higher education (HE) level in England. Williamson thinks this is a great idea. But of course Williamson wouldn’t know a creative idea if it arrived on a unicorn accompanied by the sound of klaxons.

So the government, not satisfied with refusing to grant insurance to live theatre, as it so quickly did for film and TV, is now intent on kneecapping the new intake into creative industries which bring our country vastly more than £100 billion EACH YEAR. Sure, we can easily do without that, when we can play with our gunboats to distract “the masses”.

That’s a plan all right. A plan for disaster. A plan to cripple thinking and innovation and to keep those who have to work for a living where they belong- in soul-destroying call centres, factory work, low-paid, menial jobs with no prospects which crush their hopes and pour acid on their dreams. What a country…..

In case anyone hasn’t been to an optician recently – Open your Eyes Britain!

This is the Tories working from the American Republican playbook – keep ’em poor, keep ’em sick, keep ’em dumb, keep ’em distracted. They can only win if YOU let them.

Please SIGN the petition NOW to stop Britain becoming as dead and joyless as the Tories want it to be.

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Take a look inside the V&A’s Theatre and Performance archive which is under threat

Since the appalling decision to greatly reduce access to the V&A’s Theatre and Performance collection and fire two-thirds of the specialist staff and curators, there has been a justifiable outcry from academic institutions and the general public.

While this is to be expected, many of this blog’s readers have contacted me to ask about the archive as they have never personally visited it themselves, and so find it hard to fully appreciate what treasure lies within its parameters.

And so now you can go inside the collection, thanks to a short film called ENCOUNTERS IN THE ARCHIVE which takes you inside the collection, to look at some of the costumes, with expert curators discussing the works and their significance.

The film lasts 17 minutes. ENCOUNTERS IN THE ARCHIVE was conceived and produced by Donatella Barbieri and filmed and edited by filmmaker Netia Jones.

I am confident that after just a few minutes of this fascinating viewing, you’ll want to ask all your friends and colleagues to sign the petition to save the collection from being locked away from public sight potentially forever.

Watch ENCOUNTERS IN THE ARCHIVE here

Please sign the petition to save the V&A collection and its staff here

LATE ADDITION – Lord Smith has tabled a question in the House of Lords, which you can find here . While useful for drawing attention to this attempted cultural vandalism, if you share my wary opinion of our corrupt parliamentary system you may well agree with me that this has very little real value.

UPDATE

Statement upon the proposed restructuring & job losses at the V&A Theatre & Performance Department. 30 March

Statement

The V&A internal consultation process with its staff is concluding at the end of March.  To my knowledge there has been no consultation with the industry or related bodies in the SIBMAS community. This is very disappointing for a museum with the reputation of the V&A, who say they value their performing arts collections, which are internationally so important.
 
SIBMAS continues to have concerns about what is going on as suddenly the Theatre & Performance Department, which are part of a distinct unit/department are now tied into the National Art Library review, when there is no obvious connection between National Art Library and Theatre & Performance Department.  Indeed, National Art Library does not collect performing arts library materials. It is the Theatre & Performance team of experts that cover it within their remit in a different location & departmental structure. This is evident through V&A annual reports and museum’s collection policy. SIBMAS finds this confusing, and we ask for clarification, over potential jobs losses or furloughing of Theatre & Performance staff.  We continue to ask for the V&A to have a consultation with SIBMAS & the industry it serves. In such a consultation we would emphasize once again that the V&A should make sure the Theatre & Performance Department is saved as an actual specialist entity within its restructuring.
 
The V&A management and Board of Trustees have been appointed well after the Theatre Museum closure in 2007 to save money.  They may not be aware of the great uproar at that time. It was seen then that the Theatre Museum closure was the sacrificial cow to save the V&A money. Theatre & Performance should not take disproportionate cuts in any reorganisation.  I believe that they have forgotten that performing arts collections needs a different approach to the decorative arts and crafts, to keep their unique character, as recognised by UNESCO.

Alan R. Jones ( President of SIBMAS )