Tony Garnett’s piece about the BBC’s London bias did not go nearly far enough (“The BBC should explore the world beyond London”, Comment): the London bias can be seen not only on the BBC, but in all the “national” media. All our national newspapers seem to assume that their readers live within spitting distance of London, read their papers while commuting into the capital by train or tube, before working all day in an office. We are also assumed to be familiar with the geography of obscure parts of London and with the latest trendy places to eat.
There was just one part of the article that jarred with me. That was when Tony Garnett used the word “southerners” as if it meant “Londoners”. I am proudly a southerner, having lived most of my life in the south or south-west of England. But I am not a Londoner and usually only go there to change trains, since our railway system is also London-centric, and more or less insists that I go there to get a connection to anywhere else in the country. Britain does not have a north/south divide: the problem is that it has a London/everywhere else divide.
John Williams
Chichester
As a viewer of BBC North West, I agree with the gist of Tony Garnett’s article on the centralising of the BBC.
Here in the north-west, we have perfectly good reporters and presenters on our news programme, but if something “newsworthy” to central office (ie London) happens, as in the recent floods in Cumbria, we get a reporter from London telling us about it on the national news to be followed 30 minutes later by a local reporter. This is not only a waste of resources but demeaning to our local reporters and insulting to us, the local viewers, who by inference are entitled only to second-tier reportage.
Tom Watson
Kendal
Tony Garnett is wrong in respect of London in history. Far from being dominant for centuries, London was very much the poor relation in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The cities of the north and Midlands were richer and more vigorous than the capital. Even as late as the 1970s, the West Midlands had the highest family income in the UK, based on larger family size but, more importantly, on well-paid and skilled jobs in manufacturing.
Then, in the late 1970s, it was as if the City of London decided that there was more to be made from asset-stripping than from investment in real wealth creation and declared war on the rest of the country. Industry in the West Midlands was butchered, shut down and demolished, creating a wasteland between Coventry and Wolverhampton.
It is not just in drama that we have a bleak landscape created by the dominance of London and, as Tony Garnett suggests, we need a wholesale rediscovery of the talent that lies beyond its borders for the nation to prosper again. It’s not only the BBC that should explore the world beyond London.
Roy Boffy
Aldridge, Walsall
How can the media possibly expect to explore the wealth of experience available across Britain when they themselves are closeted in a London bubble, their horizons limited by the opportunities that can afforded by a day-return ticket or, at best, an overnight stay?
Thus, really important strategic issues such as the future of our domestic coal and steel industries get rendered down to the not-so-cosy impact on those individuals who can be stopped on the street and interviewed over a latte.
Dr Jim Ford
Southport
