This was where the ITV programme This Morning used to be broadcast from. There was a weather map floating on the dock’s surface.

Weather Map photo (from Wikipedia) taken by Mike Pennington:-

Many years after its weather presenter spent his mornings leaping from Britain to Ireland and back again he was prosecuted for child abuse, found guilty and jailed. Liverpool is most likely glad ITV moved from there some time ago.

Albert Dock, Liverpool:-

The dock is now home to a variety of pleasure boats while the old warehouses on the docks are filled with shops and eateries.

Boat in Albert Dock:-

View of and from Albert Dock, Liverpool with Museum of Liverpool, Cunard Building and Royal Liver Building in the background:-

Arthur of the Britons, starring Oliver Tobias, was an agreeably gritty early 1970s TV series made by the Welsh ITV company Harlech and broadcast in the children’s “hour.” The theme was written by prolific film composer Elmer Bernstein. I always thought it had similarities to the theme of my mother’s favourite soap Emmerdale Farm (which only became Emmerdale in 1989.)

Arthur of the Britons theme tune

The first is engineering rather than architecture. The Clyde Arc – immediately dubbed by local wags the Squinty Bridge as it crosses the River Clyde on a diagonal. Also in the photo is the Finnieston crane – all that remains of the shipyards that once lined the River Clyde here.

Right next to the Glasgow Science Centre (see previous posts) on the south bank of the Clyde is the new BBC Scotland building. It looks externally like a giant shoe box. Internally it’s more interesting as anyone who’s seen television interviews given inside will know.

The entrance is on the west side and is adorned with BBC Alba as well as BBC Scotland. There is a largeish scuptural thingy here too on the right of the photo. (Squinty Bridge in background on left.)

This is how the BBC building looks from the north bank of the Clyde.

Just a touch along the south bank towards the Squinty Bridge lies the premises of STV (Scottish Television) part of the Independent Television network, ITV. This shows the STV logo at the access road (and the Finnieston Crane.)

This is a closer view of the STV building. Another shoe box, though smaller than the BBC Scotland one. The round building to the right was I believe once an entrance to a pedestrian tunnel under the Clyde. (There is a similar rotunda building where it debouched on the north bank which now houses four restaurants.)

George Entwistle has resigned as Director-General of the BBC.

Why?

He wasn’t personally responsible for the output of any news programmes which the BBC has broadcast. And nor should he have been. It is not the Director-General’s job to second guess every jot and tittle of the BBC’s output.

The BBC (or more particularly Newsnight) has now been damned for not broadcasting allegations of sexual abuse (in the Jimmy Savile case) and now for broadcasting such allegations (against a Senior Tory.)

What message does this send to the BBC news outlets? Keep your head down. Which I believe is precisely the point. No-one in government likes the BBC poking its nose into their business. This is true for governments of either stamp. It was Greg Dyke of the BBC, not anyone in government, who resigned over the David Kelly affair.

And so again. How come in all this saga has the only person to go been at the BBC?

And do you see any other news organisations beating themselves up over mistakes they have made (News International I’m thinking of you) as the BBC does?

David Cameron (aka Mr Irresponsible) said on ITV’s This Morning last week that he didn’t want a witch hunt (of people who happen to be gay.) I agree that witch hunts are unedifying. But a witch hunt of the BBC has been exactly what has occurred since the Savile allegations broke.

When he appointed Andy Coulson to his staff at Number Ten Cameron himself made a much greater error than any George Entwistle might have. This put Mr Cameron in the frame of a scandal that reached into the heart of British society as it involved the possible (nay, probable) suborning of the police by news editors and journalists – possibly the most egregious of activities in a democracy. I have yet to see Mr Cameron resign over his association with that.

To the BBC I say; stop going along with the news agenda of those who have it in for you. To those who attack it I say; you may not miss it when it’s gone, but plenty will.

I see and hear a film has been made about a certain former Prime Minister of the UK.

I must say at the outset that I shall not be going to see it – not least because the good lady (my good lady) is still too scarred by that woman’s actions that she cannot bear or contemplate anything to do with her.

I gather the film portrays its heroine as frail and dotty. (I suspect this may be a dramatic necessity for the purposes of making the film.) I have heard a speaker on Radio Scotland – a Tory MP – English of course – complain that it went beyond good taste as the person concerned was still alive and it therefore compromised her dignity. Well, that was rich.

Firstly and brutally, if she is frail and dotty she won’t know, will she?

Secondly, did she in her prime give a shit about the human dignity of all those she condemned to hardship and penury, everything she destroyed, as a result of her policies? You could call it karma.

In any case there were signs in her late Premiership that she was unhinged, if not deranged, so it’s not surprising she’s not all there in her dotage.

Yet none of this is to do with the thrust of this post.

Coincidentally I read an article from Tuesday’s Guardian that, as part of the setting up of Sky, Thatcher made the BBC pay £10 million a year to have their channels broadcast on Sky’s platform. Yet one more example of the baleful influence the woman had on British public life. And these payments persist: they are happening now.

Is this circumstance more widely known? Because I was outraged.

Does any other broadcaster – anywhere – have to pay another to have its own programmes shown on that other’s channels? Surely not.

Doesn’t the BBC sell programmes/formats around the world rather than pay others to broadcast them? Don’t the BBC, ITV and Channels 4 and 5 pay to the originator for US (or Australian or whatever) generated programmes? And doesn’t Virgin have to pay Sky to have Sky channels on its (Virgin’s) service? Doesn’t Sky itself pay HBO hefty amounts for their programmes?

We all know the reason why there would not have been much protest from the BBC at such an arrangement. The perceived power of the Murdoch Press. The pusillanimity of politicians of all parties with respect to that power.

That power may now be a busted flush and despite the Tories’ antipathy to anything that smacks of public endeavour surely the BBC ought to be demanding an end to this public subsidy of a private company. For that is what the arrangement amounts to.

As it stands it is – and always has been – a total waste of licence fee payers’ money to throw it away on Sky for no content in return.

The boot should be firmly on the other foot. Sky ought to be paying the BBC – and handsomely – for any access at all to BBC programming. Not to mention providing adequate compensation for all the years in which money has been shamefully drained away from the BBC in this way.

Edited to add:- my good lady says the speaker on the radio was none other than Jeremy (H)unt – her parentheses.