Naturally, this morning's Broadcasting House began with Nelson Mandela.
If it hadn't started with Nelson I'd have died of shock. This is the BBC, and BH after all. Some things are simply inevitable (like Kian from Westlife winning I'm a Celebrity tonight).
The BBC's highly opinionated Hugh Sykes had been dispatched (at license fee payers' expense) to join the other 15,000 BBC reporters down in South Africa at the moment.
Hugh did what Hugh does, expressing his impeccably left-of-centre personal feelings with some panache.
Apartheid v Nelson Mandela - ironically, a totally black and white issue. Hugh exalted in the latter, the light.
His final barb laid into Mrs Thatcher's government with a sharpness even Neil Kinnock or Peter Hain would have been hard pushed to rival:
The world owns Nelson now, as will become clear when all those world leaders arrive.
Including a representative, possibly Prince Charles, of a nation where a former government conspired with Apartheid by dismissing Nelson Mandela as a terrorist.
A sharp word that, 'conspired'.
Good old BBC impartiality.
If you can't picture Hugh by the way, here's a photo of him wearing a Palestinian keffiyeh:
God, that man is so impartial!!!
Heard the World Service at 2.40 this morning as they "celebrated the lives" of the four "church workers" who were raped, tortured and then murdered by Government affiliated barbarians in El Salvador these days in 1980.
ReplyDelete"CHURCH WORKERS"?...these were NUNS!(birds of Pray if you prefer, arf!).
Why did the BBC refuse to use that old word we`d all know...NUN...preferring the new construct of church admin facilitators devised for them 33 years later?
Truly Orwellian and sinister, IMHO. Something very badly afoot being waged on the catholics and their very "officers of the Vatican".
Basically the BBC used their poor bodies to lilypad about and pin it all on Reagan...utterly disgusting.
Hi Craig
ReplyDeleteI heard the Sykes unctious comments - and like you I choked on his throwaway line at the end about a UK Government "conspiring with aparrtheid" and calling call Mandela a terrorist.
The DEEP problem with the BBC is that there had been many references to Margaret Thatcher's record - the factual record - on dealings at that time with South Africa. Mandela himself recognised Thatcher's contribution to the ending of apartheid - based on her detestation of it. But no BBC editors are bringing this in to the record.
The plain facts is that Thatcher did more than Mandela to bring an end to apartheid. Mandela said that she was more effective than any previous UK Prime Minister.
Thatcher with Reagan helped to topple the USSR, the biggest threat to world safety for many decades. The BBC never tells us that - no, she was controversial, divisive etc. She also played a key role in ending apartheid. She is surely one of the greatest statespeople of the 20th century. But not in the BBC's eyes. Instead, Mandela is being cited time after time on the BBC as the greatest statesman - indeed a "saint".
Mandela in his later years was a great man. He urged reconciliation, he strongly stood for the rule of law, and he resigned after just 5 years as President. A greater example of leadership than we have ever seen in Africa. But he was not a saint - and Thatcher was not a devil.
Hopefully, Hugh Sykes will retire soon. He is a disgraceful example of endless BBC bias.
Hello
DeleteYes, BBC types like Hugh Sykes have their deeply ingrained, black-and-white ways of thinking about things, and these surface from time to time - here very blatantly.
DB at 'Biased BBC' recently got into a remarkable Twitter debate with him after he mouthed off about immigration, tweeting:
#Romania #Bulgaria I know it's all about 'politics', but it's dangerous talk, isn't it? It may give permission for prejudic #Cameron
DB responded:
.@HughSykes Brush it all under the PC carpet and everything will be OK. Mustn't "give permission".
The full exchange can be read here:
http://biasedbbc.org/blog/2013/11/27/mid-week-open-thread-5/#comment-357739