Unless you read the Southern Daily Echo (and who doesn't?) you might have missed some comments made by the BBC's John Simpson (best known for liberating Kabul from the Taliban single-handed). He was giving at a talk at a fundraiser for Winchester Cathedral, but had some things to say about the BBC's funding too - and Saddam Hussein and the UK's leaders.
On the BBC, he thinks it is “in its last stages” because of funding cuts:
Cuts that we have been seeing will be nothing to the cuts that we are going to see, because the government will ensure that the license fee is cut back massively and this ten years will be the last effective as we know it. To continue it will have to take advertising and other ways of funding itself.
He says that British newspapers ‘have it in for’ the taxpayer-funded corporation with “story after story about the BBC’s waste of money”:
The people of this country would not agree with it, or the large numbers won’t, but there’s a desire to see the end of public service broadcasting paid for by the license fee.
As for Saddam, John Simpson said he “rather liked” him. According to the Echo's Charlotte Neal,
Mr Simpson also had the audience in fits of laughter after relaying an encounter with the Iraqi leader violently forcing an old man in the street to say he loved him.
It must be the well 'e tells 'em.
"We are not talking about a liberal democrat politician here. I know it’s an ugly story but it does show a sense of humour, doesn’t it?”
Does it?
Charlotte continues,
The outspoken journalist also said he tries not to “have an agenda” and thinks the UK’s leaders are “useless”.
I think Charlotte knows what she's up to with that sentence - and probably all her other sentences too. Maybe the Southern Daily Echo is out to get the BBC too.
Good grief. It shows a sickness, not a common touch.
ReplyDeleteThis is what happens when you indulge your emotions and humanize monsters, because somehow it makes you feel good about yourself for seeing the humanity.