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Weren't the BBC in the crap a while ago for basically doing just what Stoner suggests over things as important as naming the Blue Peter cat? You can't have it both ways.
I wasn't being serious mrsflash, I've no idea what education they've had. What I will hazard a guess on is that if the situation were reversed and Manchester had broken the rules in this way and had won the majority on here would be saying they should keep the title. But as Monty Python showed all those years ago with Upper Class Twit Of The Year there is nothing funnier than seeing the percieved posh fall on their arse. The real problem with the competition is that the filming schedule bares no relation to the academic year. The final was apparently recorded in November. Bamber was on radio 4 last night saying how absurd the filming was and how it restricted who was elligable to participate.
Anybody else see Starter for Ten when it was on the telly recently. Not a bad film with a great soundtrack and a disqualified team.
I'll let you off then 🙂I wasn't being serious mrsflash, I've
ps thought starter for ten was rubbish.
Well I liked the music, perhaps it's an age thing
Wonderful chip/shoulder moment from the cap'n there.
As one absolutely sick of flash's chip/shoulder when I've been perceived to have a tap at the inbreds, well said that man!
The Guardian, no matter what the right wing press say, is no friend of the BBC, it is a direct competitor.
It is also a business, it's purpose is to make money, not to reflect the truth.
That really is a load of nonsense.
The Guardian is [i]not[/i] 'a direct competitor' to the BBC. For a start the Guardian does not produce programmes for broadcast, and the BBC doesn't produce a daily newspaper. Yes they are both news providers, but most people can handle reading a newspaper and watching TV - although obviously not necessarily at the same time.
The Guardian is very much in the business of 'telling the truth' - as it perceives it. In fact that's why it was set up in the first place - to tell the truth about social conditions after the Peterloo massacre. It's central objectives are today, the same as they were when it was first founded, and any profit it makes is only solely to further those objectives.
BTW - none of this detracts from the fact that I am not a supporter of the Guardian's general editorial stances, which I consider to be hopelessly romantic idealism - I don't buy into the bourgeois liberal concept of a benevolent capitalist society.
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Getting back to the OP, I agree with Stoner that BBC got it wrong. Yes 'rules are rules', but the time to worry about that was [i]before[/i] the contest, too late worrying about them [i]after[/i] the contest. As I said before it's only a quiz show, and there isn't even any cash prizes involved. Taking the title from Corpus Christi College was petty imo. Anyway, if everyone now wants to start getting petty, why was Corpus Christi College even allowed to compete ? After all it's called University Challenge' [i]not[/i] 'College Challenge' and I'm pretty sure that Corpus Christi is not the name of a university.
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Unlike Drac, I [i]do[/i] see the connection referred to in the Guardian article between this 'wrong decision' and previous 'wrong decisions'. IMO opinion there has been a radical change in the confidence of the BBC in recent years. And the responsibility for this I firmly place with New Labour. Ever since the Director General of the BBC was sacked for offending New Labour, the BBC has imo become neurotic, nervous, and jittery of making decisions which it might be slated for. Now when people become neurotic, nervous, and jittery about making wrong decisions and screwing up, they invariably make the wrong decisions and screw up.
I think it's of supreme irony that the BBC having survived a decade of Thatcher more or less intact, got shafted by New Labour, for telling the truth about New Labour lies. Unbelievably, the only person who lost their job because an illegal war based on lies, was the head of the BBC 😯
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Incidentally for me, watching University Challenge is only really worthwhile if it results in posh upper-class public school educated toffs, being humiliated by sons and daughters of the common people 8)