On Television Part 2 - Cutting The Cord

Those of you who have read THE FIFTH COLUMN: On Television may wonder if the Fifth Columnist has finally decided to cut the cord as it made a pretty good argument for that.

Well we have finally overcome over 40 years of inertia and made the decision and as of the end of the month we will no longer have a cable television service.

Our original plan was simply to replace it with streaming services and some downloads but decided for one time costs only to also add an antenna based over-the-air (OTA) television service.

There was potential for a significant number of channels if we went with a sophisticated rooftop antenna system.

 

However we decided we did not want to deal with a rooftop install and rotor systems and cabling and decided on a simpler indoor antenna that gives us local CBC and CTV and Global and TV Ontario (and sometimes the local french CBC station). This provides us with easy access to local news. As well most of the American broadcast channel programming we watch is on CTV or Global so we will still get that. What we are losing are some programs from cable only channels, though some of these are also available on streaming services like Crave TV.

We added an inexpensive (certainly compared to the purchase price of the equivalent Rogers device) OTA PVR without subscription fees so that we can record programs and watch them when we want them without commercials.

On the streaming front we stayed with the old standard and reliable Netflix, as well as Crave + HBO/Movies, adding Starz, providing a lot of high quality programming.

We also continued the CBC Gem Premium package as a good portion of what we watch is CBC programming and this provides all of that plus more, with no commercials. It also provides live access to all local CBC stations in Canada as well as the CBC News Network.

The newest addition that we did not have before cord cutting is BritBox, a relatively unknown service in Canada that provides programming from the BBC and ITV. If you are not familiar with it you should check it out as a provides a remarkable range of high quality programming.

And if this is not enough we can supplement it with a few free sources of programming.

By cutting the cord we cut our TV budget almost in half while still contributing to the cost of providing programming but providing less subsidy to the middleman cable company.

Thoughts on the police

This post does not claim to have all the answers, or any answers, nor to be a comprehensive, or any kind of analysis, but is simply some thoughts on a subject that our society has finally been forced to deal with.

One's attitude to the police is clearly shaped by the reality one lives in. Unfortunately for too many people that reality is that the police are people who at worst kill them or their family members and at best treat them unfairly and discriminate against them. To others the police are people they depend on to protect them and in some cases to protect their privileged status in society.

Some will say this is an issue that we have imported from a racist United States. We know that to be untrue. Even those that say that know it to be untrue and the best they can argue is that it is relatively worse in the United States. Not being as bad as America is hardly a standard we should want to be judged by in Canada, particularly when strong arguments can be made that this is not true anyway, we just all wish it was.

Many will argue that abolishing or defunding the police are simply ideas that are too radical.

Indeed for untold decades suggestions for community building and crime prevention as an alternative to policing and incarceration have been met with support in principle without funding being provided, while police budgets have increased exponentially with little restraint. Indeed there seemed to have be an unspoken argument that we will find money for crime prevention when we no longer need it for the police because crime has disappeared.

We could of course reduce the need for the police by orders of magnitude if we stopped criminalizing what is a public health issue – drug use and abuse. We have done that for years with alcohol and tobacco use and cannabis just recently. There is no rational reason why all non-medical use of drugs should not been treated in the same way as a public health issue.

The funds are available to provide proper drug rehabilitation programs, sitting there in police budgets being wasted on treating a health matter as a criminal one. We could also use that money to provide mental health workers to deal with mental health crisis so the individuals receive treatment rather than being killed by police.

I dare say we have a huge amount of room to defund the police and put that money to better use.

We could put traffic enforcement in a separate organization with a greater emphasis on road safety rather than collecting fines,

What we have left within the police for traditional policing, crime investigation and law enforcement would still require major reforms. Reforms of the extent that could justifiably be argued would be best done by abolishing the police as they now exist and starting all over.

Why #DeleteFacebook

Not because Mark Zuckerberg is a self-entitled white-privileged frat boy who based Facebook on an app he developed called Facemash to rate students “hotness”.

Not because of Facebook’s Predatory Business Model that leverages users and their friends personal information to maximize profits.

Not because Facebook wants to replace the open Internet with a proprietary for profit service.

And not because Mark Zuckerberg is a Trump enabler who either supports, sympathizes with, or fears the American President's power.

BUT because no corporation should have the kind of control over the amount of personal (and in many cases corporate and government) information and data that Facebook seeks to have for the sole purpose of maximizing profits, and no person should willingly give them that.

Happy International Workers Day #MayDay

Billy Bragg

We've been experiencing what we refer to as 'Andy Warhol Weather' here today: fifteen minutes of rain, fifteen minutes of sun, fifteen minutes of hail etc etc. As a result, I couldn't take my guitar amp out onto the rubble mound this week for the #ClapForNHS #ClapForCarers #ClapForKeyWorkers so I set up in the old garage in case the rain came again.

As it's technically already May 1st - International Workers Day - in some parts of the world, I thought I'd play the riff from There is Power in a Union this week as a salute to all those who are working to keep us healthy, safe, fed and connected. Give them their PPE!

Remember to observe spatial distancing and social solidarity

Filmed 30th April 2020 by Juliet Wills up her ladder

(Source: There is Power in a Union riff - Billy Bragg – YouTube)

(Source: Billy Bragg -There Is Power In A Union – YouTube)

See Also International Workers' Day - Wikipedia