I was up before the lark this morning, and listened to the Radio 4 programmes before Sunday too.
They began, at 5.45am with Bells on Sunday. The last time I wrote about that programme it turned out the BBC had broadcast the wrong bells. The ensuing scandal shook Radio 4 to its very foundations, and an apology from network manager Denis Nowlan followed (on Feedback.) So hopefully this morning's bells really were those of St Andrew's Church in Hurstbourne Priors, Hampshire - and very lovely they were too.
Then came the repeat of Wednesday night's Four Thought. As I've said before, the previews of Four Thought rarely tempt me to bother listening to the programme. They sound too often like the sort of thing you might read at the Guardian's Comment is Free.
This week's episode, a talk by Professor Heaven Crawley of Swansea University, was exactly that kind of piece. Heaven was talking about refugees and asylum seekers, and wants us to be much nicer to them. She thinks our present hostility towards them is a bad thing, and that our concerns about immigration are pretty much unfounded.
Of course she does. She'd hardly be giving a Four Thought talk on immigration if she thought otherwise, would she?
As evidence for that, it's only about a month since the last Four Thought talk on refugees and asylum seekers, and it came from someone with an almost identical outlook - sympathetic to migrants, wanting us all be be more welcoming, critical of the press and politicians for being unsympathetic, and thinking our concerns are unfounded. That talk was given by Agnes Woolley, an English lecturer at Lincoln University.
As evidence for that, it's only about a month since the last Four Thought talk on refugees and asylum seekers, and it came from someone with an almost identical outlook - sympathetic to migrants, wanting us all be be more welcoming, critical of the press and politicians for being unsympathetic, and thinking our concerns are unfounded. That talk was given by Agnes Woolley, an English lecturer at Lincoln University.
And if you check back through the programme's archive you'll see that Radio 4 has never invited anyone onto Four Thought to give a talk on this subject from the opposing point of view. Never.
The series is evidently called Four Thought for a reason - only those who share Radio 4's way of thinking on this kind of subject seem to get an invite.
BBC bias then. On a controversial issue. Over four whole series. Tut tut.
Boy,she was awful.
ReplyDeleteProfessor?..Professor Heaven?...ye Gods,,,Baal or Gaia, same to me!
How the likes of Mary Beard and Creepy here manage to dance around all the sticky nasty little issues that unfair overloaded and unwanted immigration bring to the poor saps who live here is wonderful to behold.
Only wish we could flood the Polys and the BBC with third rate lunks from Bratislava Tech and boot ours out to Brasov or such.
Call it a cultural exchange if you will-and if we could knock some sense into these lazy bed blockers in the media and common rooms, then it would all be worth it.