It's all an absolutely huge disaster (says Norman Smith)

Norman Smith (and friend)

There's an absolutely colossal, planet-sized mound of BBC-related stuff to catch up on at the moment. 

Let's start with Norman Smith though...

Alan at Biased BBC has already tackled Norman Smith's absolutely staggering contribution to Monday morning's Today programme, so I won't dwell on it too much - except to note Alan's employment of a word I once loved using in connection with Norman: "hyperbole"... 

...and to quote (for the record) exactly what Norman said:

It also does open up the danger of landlords thinking, "Crikey! I've got to go through all this immigration stuff. Why bother? Why bother renting to someone who may be here perfectly legally?" In other words, it does open up the danger that you end up with, you know, the bad old days of 'No blacks, no Jews, no gays'. Why bother tak[ing] the risk of renting to immigrants when you simply do not know if you're going to fine or jailed if you don't carry out all the proper procedures? So there is that risk....

"It does open up the danger that you end up with, you know, the bad old days of 'No blacks, no Jews, no gays'". Does it really, Norman? Or is that largely hyperbole?

Incidentally, he then went on to give his (wholly negative) commentary on the government's Monday morning measures to tackle the crisis in Calais (more dogs, etc).

This is worth quoting in full too, especially for the way he asserts that it "stems from, you know, chaotic, violent regimes in North Africa, with people desperately fleeing" (which is questionable), and the way he then makes a concrete proposal: "To tackle that you need EU-wide cooperation".

Well, the difficulty, John, is, you know, these are palliatives. The problem is much more profound and stems from, you know, chaotic, violent regimes in North Africa, with people desperately fleeing, and the difficulty we face, it seems to me, is this: to tackle that you need EU-wide cooperation. However, we are not flavour of the month in Europe. Why? Because of our renegotiation strategy and because we won't sign up to the EU quota system for refugees. On top of which, we are over a barrel when in comes to the French. We are ABSOLUTELY obliged to sort of go along with their approach because if we don't - and the deputy mayor of Calais alluded to this yesterday - they will simply tear up the agreement whereby UK border checks are carried out at Calais rather than at Dover. And if that agreement is torn up then the problems at Calais come to Dover.

Is that impartial?