United Kingdom V: Son of a beach

[Anpanman]

Whatever happens with HS2, I reckon I will be a rotten corpse in the ground before railways in the north get full electrification.

Yes our trains are woeful, just seen on Beyond 100 Days during the time we've been faffing with HS2 the French have built something similar for a tenth of the cost.

What pisses me off royally with this country is that governments sign up for these schemes at the lowest cost then end up having to pay loads more.

[charlesr]

Bank pulls out of UK completely, stating it will be too expensive to operate here after Brexit.

https://n26.com/en-gb

[QualityChimp]

Obviously, the standard Leaver responses on Twitter are:
"Never heard of them and who cares anyway, there’s loads of British banks to choose from?"
"This is total nonsense. It isn't down to Brexit at all, they launched in the UK in October 2018. Over 2 years on from our vote for Brexit and six months before our withdrawal from the EU was due to take place."
"It's a failing bank, wonder how many more banks are tittering on the brink in Germany"

All totally missing the point that the bank is closing the UK because of Brexit.

Plenty more years of this type of denial ahead.

[Neon Ignition]

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/feb/11/keir-starmer-calls-for-end-to-scandal-of-spiralling-student-debt

Starmer says he would continue to pursue an end to tuition fees

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/feb/11/bbc-boss-warns-end-of-licence-fee-would-mean-no-cbeebies

Whilst the BBC's Chairman has said that ending the license fee would mean effectively shutting down CBBC and CBeebies in their current forms.

[Asura]

https://www.theguardian.com/media/20...an-no-cbeebies
Whilst the BBC's Chairman has said that ending the license fee would mean effectively shutting down CBBC and CBeebies in their current forms.

Well, yeah? I mean they have no adverts, and the strength of those channels is that you can put your kids in front of them for half an hour while you make the dinner or whatever without them being exposed to advertising. The programmes themselves are certainly of value to the viewer, but it's the service which is chief.

I imagine without the license fee they'd have to turn it into an online, paid-for streaming service.

[QualityChimp]

https://www.theguardian.com/media/20...an-no-cbeebies
Whilst the BBC's Chairman has said that ending the license fee would mean effectively shutting down CBBC and CBeebies in their current forms.

This is not something that would scare Johnson as he's unsure just how many children he's sired, let alone had to raise them.

[Neon Ignition]

Johnson would probably sell it as a positive by saying that the end of the channels would mean a return of the BBC teatime broom cupboard format with Ed the Duck and Schofield...

... actually that sounds ace.

[Hirst]

The new CBBC output will be Johnson making buses out of cardboard boxes.

[QualityChimp]

Johnson would probably sell it as a positive by saying that the end of the channels would mean a return of the BBC teatime broom cupboard format with Ed the Duck and Schofield...

It's more likely that Johnson would claim "they" stopped all the good shows, to continue his "Me Vs. The Establishment" shtick and claim we should "bring back golliwogs."

[Dogg Thang]

I imagine without the license fee they'd have to turn it into an online, paid-for streaming service.

Which would kill it. One of the things that is very apparent being in the kids' media space for a couple of decades is that the unfortunate reality is that, with some exceptions of course, the majority of parents won't pay for kids' content. They'll consider it an important buying factor in conjunction with their content (hence Netflix doing a push on kids' media although notably Amazon have pulled the plug on theirs having spent a lot building up some impressive shows) but it's incredibly difficult to get parents to reliably pay for children's content. Which on the commercial end, means either you have to strongly contribute to a catalogue (Netflix) or you have to lead with the commercial interests which is why Mattel and Hasbro are two huge players in kids' media - it would not be unfair to call some of them glorified ads. CBeebies and CBBC content is not only mostly untainted by that but the quality of content as a result is particularly high, including their own in-house output. Basically, without state support kids' content is a very dark place. Which is why most EU countries have a lot of support for kids' media, why (in spite of a lack of support generally in the US) Sesame Street began as a government-funded initiative and why CBeebies and CBBC are, without a doubt now that I think about it, the best places for good children's content on the entire planet and they put the output of many other countries (including my own) to shame.

[Neon Ignition]

It'll presumably be the Youtube effect. Youtube is such a staggering scaled free access point to a bottomless sea of kids content and most of it is the worst kind of drivel but kids find it utterly mesmerising making the idea of paying for content that many kids quickly show less interest in than a quickly flipped on app hard to convince for.

[Dogg Thang]

Yep but it's the difference between letting kids pick up a tasty bit of chewed bubble gum off the street and giving them a decent dinner. One is free and kids may like it but there are some strong merits to the other route.

[Neon Ignition]

Man, the stuff I've seen on Youtube that passes as kids content is just awful. It's scary how engaging kids find it as well. Our kids couldn't care less about Iggle Piggle but would happily waste an hour watching a spanish kid in a bad princess dress play with corporate provided free toys if we let them. I'd say we try to protect them from awful content but I'll wait till we're out the other end of Sonic the Hedgehog before I commit to that statement

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/feb/12/ofcom-to-be-put-in-charge-of-regulating-internet-in-uk

Offcom are to be tasked with regulating the Internet

[wakka]

I don't have kids but I feel like if/when I do, I'll want to keep them as far away from YouTube as humanly possible for as long as possible.

When I was a kid we had Sky and my parents used to say a lot of the stuff on Nickelodeon, Fox Kids etc was 'junk', but it's high art compared to Spiderman/Elsa videos!

(And besides, they were mostly wrong, stuff like Clarissa and Hey Arnold was great)

[prinnysquad]

CBeebies is excellent. Daft lad loves it. He doesn’t like the noisy garish rubbish on other channels.

Spaffer probably has more kids than the Pontipines and Wottingers combined.