S4C ... The Westminster Hall Debate

This is a video of Wednesday afternoon's debate in Westminster Hall on the funding of S4C. It was arranged by Guto Bebb before the news about the DCMS/BBC agreement, but took place the day after the news had broken.

     

A few lowlights that struck me were:

•  Guto Bebb saying that an important element of S4C's early success was its mix of Welsh language and Channel 4 programmes. To me, that appears to indicate that he does not see S4C as a purely Welsh language channel in future.

•  Guto Bebb later claiming that S4C should serve non-Welsh speakers, and that it wasn't serving the people it was meant to serve. That seems to remove any doubts about what he meant before. To me, that is as ludicrous as saying that CBeebies was set up to serve those who want to watch news and current affairs programmes, or that Sky Sports 1 was set up to serve those who want to watch ballet and opera. But to be fair to him, he did make some rather more worthy points.

•  And Ed Vaizey, the minister responsible, winding up with a remarkably authentic impersonation of bombastic pomposity ... though I'm sure he was only acting out the part.

•  Alun Cairns congratulating the minister on the cuts, which the DCMS then went on to claim are "generous" to S4C ... obviously an orchestrated attempt to divert attention from the fact that the proposed cuts to S4C are much greater than those agreed with the BBC.

Alwyn has linked to the transcript, here.

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1 comments:

Ian Titherington said...

Isn't it funny how the Tories appear to be boasting about creating S4C and also about destroying it?

Very odd.

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