A rant about: THE BBC CLICK SHOW, TRAVEL SHOW AND FOOD WASTE

The BBC should not be modelling behaviours that destroy our planet. Let’s have some more responsible journalism that does not promote damaging  industries.

The BBC seems to think it has to promote digital technology. It has a regular programme on BBC News channel called Click which is trailered with a sequence about throwing away all your old gadgets. The trailer says: ‘’we hate old tech’’. (Do we? I don ’t. I want to keep things going for as long as possible.) Then it shows mountains of electronic waste, as though that is OK and acceptable and is just what happens because we all so much want to buy the latest i-phone or Virtual Reality set. This programme is simply enslaved to this industry and unquestioningly features every piece of useless gadgetry, entertainment, game, VR, AR, AI, robot, and utter junk (apart from medical applications). All of this ends up in the bin in a few months. It is a disgraceful industry that is destroying our planet, with junk that is not recycled. It is also producing disconnected, alienated, neurotic humans who can’t find their way around a woodland. And it is all pumping more greenhouse gases into your atmosphere, wrecking your climate.

Why does the BBC feature all this? Does it get funding from this industry ?

The second big problem on BBC News is the Travel show. It promotes addictive travel: bucket listing, which is acquisitive, self centred, and patronising to people across the planet. Why do people need to go somewhere and photograph themselves there? It is hubristic, showing off, and ultimately deeply empty and unsatisfying. One argument for tourism is that it supports economies in developing and poorer nations. I do not think it is the most dignified or long term way to build resilient local regional economies. Tourism will stop, and start. It will not be reliable. In the future it will be the first thing we drop if we have a spot of trouble at home. Never mind the communities that rely on it. Oh, and by the way, aviation is like pouring oil on a fire. Many flights emit more than 2 tonnes of CO2. That is more than your year’s ration, by the way.

Why does the BBC think it has to promote travel? Is it funded by this industry ?

Instead of the Click programme and the Travel show, why doesn’t the BBC have a Sustainability Show? It could explore: how to plant and explore local jungles. How to grow a food forest. How to build a wind turbine. How to farm without removing the top soil. How to insulate a house. How to turn plastic waste into buildings. How to make a compost toilet. How to mend things. And so on….

And lastly:

Why can’t cookery programmes compost their food waste ? It is now normal to collect all food waste, and local authorities will take it, and anaerobically digest it to make methane bio-gas, and use the sludge on the land.

The messaging, and the example that is portrayed on TV are important. They are acting like proper disposal-dinosaurs when they chuck that food into a bin with a black bin liner, and everything else in it. Please, just place it in a proper caddy or labelled food waste container.

Thank you,

RANT OVER