This is an example of what people find absurd about the BBC’s bend-over-backwards policy of not offending the Muslims.
If capitulating to absurdity is allegedly ‘in the name of social cohesion’, who needs social cohesion?
It’s not just absurd that an English hospital would feel the need to keep a uniformed member of the British armed forces - an RAF sergeant to be precise - out of sight in case his presence offended a member of the public. No, the manner in which the BBC perpetuated the exact same absurdity by concealing the hospital staff’s explanation for this nonsense piles absurdity upon absurdity.
The bit they left out was equally absurd, misleading and even more offensive.
Why would the hospital think a man wearing an armed forces uniform might upset the public?
Well, could it be that they associate uniforms with some kind of emergency and might be alarmed? Well, not unless the soldier was standing on guard, perhaps with a big gun, like when they stand around airports at times when there’s a severe threat. No. it couldn’t be that.
Could it be something to do with this altercation that allegedly occurred recently between a uniformed person and a member of the public? Say, a drunken soldier had started a fight and frightened the life out of the outpatients department for evermore?
No. That doesn’t seem likely. either.
Even though it was couched in the best PC language the hospital’s misguided actions were clearly because of an understandable fear of (known) behaviour of angry Muslims.
It’s absurd that some Muslims have managed to elevate into the mainstream their outlandish claim that our ‘foreign policy’ is to blame for their ire against this country. But they have managed it, evidently with the cooperation of the media.
So much so that any unsuspecting Islamophobe who has the temerity to question this bizarre theory is shamed into contrition by the absurdly illogical explanation that we’re hated because we're ‘killing the Muslims’.
This means that a band of loonies can continue burning poppies for years and years with impunity, or that a couple of savages can think they’re entitled to kill and hack at the neck of an off duty soldier in broad daylight.
When the BBC reported the hospital’s shameful treatment of Mark Prendeville they didn’t mention Muslims. Nor did they quote hospital staff saying “they didn’t want to upset people” or they “have lots of different cultures coming in”.”
The BBC chose to leave us guessing.
Concealing the soldier from the eyes of the public because that public might contain “other cultures’ is an absurdity.
Concealing from the audience that this was the real reason for this absurdity is outrageous.
If it was merely absurd you could dismiss it as a crazy aberration, but in fact it is a disgrace. Disgraceful behaviour by the hospital for not standing up for the soldier and disgraceful reporting by the BBC for concealing the truth. Once again, lying by omission.
ReplyDeleteHey, count your blessings. My stupid Government kept armed soldiers away from embassies and consulates in dangerous areas (e.g. Benghazi) because they didn't want to upset the local Muslims.
ReplyDeleteBut I can vividly recall two encounters in the USA.
ReplyDeleteIn the first, I was in a pizza restaurant in Texas when four young uniformed US servicemen came in, including one who had been disabled by an injury: everyone stood up and clapped, and the four were given a free meal.
In the second, embarrassingly for myself, about thirty years ago I had a flat tire on my rental car on a nature reserve in California, and was in a bit of a mess, on my own, away from major roads and before cell-phones existed. A group of local men, out fishing, saw my plight and helped fit the spare. Almost inevitably, when they heard my accent, conversation turned to the War (WWII) and, when they learned that my father had been in the RAF - only as a ground-based engineer, not flying in combat - they insisted on taking me for a free meal with them.
If only we showed the same respect for servicemen as I have observed with the Americans.
Call it code-speak. I heard another example on Any Questions, when they were debating the latest assault on free speech by the government. The I and M words were completely absent. Instead we heard of "some people", "some communities", "sensitivities" and "unprecedented threats" (threats that appeared to have dropped out of the sky, the way they were talking about them!).
ReplyDeleteIt's not just professionally dishonest, it is ultimately self defeating. Leave gaping gaps and they will get filled, often with something worse than what apparently cannot be trusted to the public to contemplate.
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