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The Guardian - RTD Interview
tiger2000
Posts: 8,541 Forum Member
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The Doctor Who screenwriter has been in LA working on a new-look Torchwood – with a revolutionary funding model.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jun/26/interview-russell-t-davies
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Meh. Just an excuse for Davies to foist his own politics on us and attack the coalition Government. Unless he has some miraculous way of dragging the country out of the shit without making spending cuts anywhere, I'd suggest he sticks to making crap TV and keeps his opinions to himself.
So you won't be watching Torchwood then. At all. Funny, because I thought that you were making a song and dance about not having to wait behind the US to see it ........
I suspect the result Davies is dreading is if "Torchwood:Miracle Day" doesn't do well with US
audiences, since the bulk of the funding is coming from Starz (and it's his first attempt to break
into US TV).
Are you suggesting that no-one other than the Prime Minister be allowed to have opinions? That unless you have all the answers, you're not allowed to ask the questions?
He wasn't asking questions, just demonizing the Tories for being Tories, from what I could see. Hardly constructive.
His criticism was very much less scatter gun than that. It was his belief that the Government used the current economic situation as a smoke screen to take the BBC down a peg or two, saddle them with financial responsibilities not held before and cut their budget (not because it was essential for the wider economy, but because it suits the government to show the BBC who's boss). It's a fairly mainstream opinion. But he does think they're frightening, which is a bit sweeping but sincerely held opinion. (edit)
Unfortunatly the goverment seem to be doing this alot at the mo. This Economic crisis we are apprantly in is a good excuse to cut and cull alot of jobs and services look at the MOD and Frontline services....Not saying only the tories do this but they are quite underhand at doing these things
Seems to me the usual suspect(s) peddling their usual anti RTD agenda as far as this thread is concerned....
Not underhand at all. When they got in, they said cuts would be needed. And they are, so they're making them. You can't spend money you don't have. That's what this country has been doing for years now, which is why we're in the state we're in.
I understand cust needed to be made BUT why cut MOD funding when we are fighting 4 wars at the mo? Also all these banks we bailed out that have posted huge profits i dont see them going after them for that bailout money back.
I know we have spent and spent but i do thisnk some of the cuts are ways to get longstanding things like Civil worker pensions stopped
The Guardian extract is composed of much more than that.
The financial crisis was not confined to the UK, it was a global event, caused mainly by the poor operations of international banks.
Whilst cuts are necessary, too much too soon will almost certainly damage our long term recovery.
The point that RTD (and many others) are making is that the Tories are using the deficit to drive through a measure of cuts that they would have applied anyway, only they now have the excuse to push through even more savage cuts at an even quicker pace.
P.S, sorry about the diversion into politics, wrong forum I know....
Quite right, too. Why should the Civil Service continue to ride the gravy train when the rest of us are tied to the tracks in front of it?
As will not cutting quickly enough.
Mind you we have current examples of countries going down the pan due to not cutting quickly enough. Fewer examples the other way round.
Which is a remarkably stupid comment. Governments are not 'intelligent' or 'evil' since they are not monolithic independent entities-they are collections of individuals, mostly trying to do what they personally believe to be the right thing. They may be right, they may be wrong, but they are not collectively 'good' or 'evil'. He seems to have a rather naive view of Government, likening it in his own mind to some sort of James Bond villain.
You only have to look at any job-search website to see that the Civil Service is a very low paying employer for those "normal" jobs. The people working there could have taken a higher-paying job and paid for their pension out of the extra income. They took the lower salary because the index-linked pension was factored into their lower earnings during their working life.
All that's happened is that successive governments have told the top Civil Servants to reduce their wage bill and then let those same people decide where to make the cuts. The end result has been that the Whitehall elite have stayed and ordinary workers have lost their jobs while we - the public - are left to deal with call-centres.
When talking about "Civil Servants" - be sure you know who and what you are actually referring to. Since the late 1970's, there have been more jobs lost in the Civil Service than there were in mining and steel combined and in some cases, it has had the same effect on entire towns. When you want to talk to a human being about your tax or retirement pension and are left with nothing but 0845 numbers and impenetrable .gov websites - it's because too many people bought into the bigotted image of "Civil Servants" as bowler-hat wearing Times readers who all went to the same colleges at Oxbridge - an image encouraged by governments to stop people from noticing that they were actually just shutting down local services and laying off huge numbers of ordinary, hard-working people. They are now trying to remove a pension that those people paid for by taking below average wages each month.
Incidentally - the Guardian has it's own agenda - it's slightly to the left of Chairman Mao.
Pinch of salt time.
Working within the public sector, I can assure you the cuts go way beyond sorting out the UK's current financial woes (caused, I might remind you, by the banks and not the public sector). This is about the coalition using the financial crisis to deconstruct the public sector , not sort out our financial woes by making reasonable cuts.
Just an opinion. Well done RTD, that's what I think.
I agree with this as well.
but overall this is a good interview about Torchwood, and it will be interesting to see how it does stateside. the last "Series" of torchwood, really raised the bar, will this be able to keep it there
not constructive but true, they are deamons
well said.
let-down.
things about "The Pillars of the Earth" and "Party Down".