Go back to Prime Minister's Questions on February 10th. Jeremy Corbyn's opening question went as follows:
I have a question on housing. I've got an email from Rosie. She's in her 20s and she says: "I work incredibly hard at my job yet I'm still having to live at home with my parents." The lack of housing options, Mr Speaker, are forcing her to consider moving, even leaving the country. She asks the Prime Minister what action he's going to take to help young people and families suffering from unrealistic house prices and uncapped rents to get somewhere safe and secure to live.
In response to Mr Cameron's reply, Mr Corbyn continued:
Mr Speaker, I'm very pleased that the Prime Minister wants to help deliver decent housing for Rosie. She lives and works in London and, as the Prime Minister knows, London is very, very expensive.
'Rosie' herself later took to Facebook to give her response:
Where I work staff are regularly warned that what we put on Facebook must not bring any discredit to our company. We can be disciplined, even dismissed, for serious breaches.
The place where Rosie works - the BBC -
- has a similar policy:
1. Personal social media use(d) You shouldn't state your political preferences or say anything that compromises yourimpartiality. Don't sound off about things in an openly partisan way. Don't be seduced by the informality of social media into bringing the BBC into disrepute.
...and yet, having emailed Mr Corbyn, she then went onto Facebook and sounded off.
If you go public on Facebook, having already engaged in a high-profile partisan political gesture, you run the risk of being exposed by the myriad eyes of zealous partisans across the internet...
...and it's doubly risky for you to do if you're supposed to be an impartial BBC editorial assistant but are behaving like a zealous partisan yourself!
The highest-rated comment at Order Order noticed something else too:
If you go public on Facebook, having already engaged in a high-profile partisan political gesture, you run the risk of being exposed by the myriad eyes of zealous partisans across the internet...
...and it's doubly risky for you to do if you're supposed to be an impartial BBC editorial assistant but are behaving like a zealous partisan yourself!
******
Jasmine Lawrence has inspired so much, bless her.
ReplyDeleteWhat was it another famous BBC lady, Helen Boaden, once said about the Corporation and impartiality?
Ah, yes...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/2010/09/impartiality_is_in_our_genes.html
To be fair, she probably thought she was only posting it to the BBC private Facebook group, where it would be mainstream opinion and duly praised.
ReplyDeleteYou have to wonder how many of her BBC colleagues she told when she sent in the question, and now has bragging rights for helping him nail Cameron.
PS: This is clearly evidence of how poorly the BBC pays the lower level workers. Executives, middle management, and all the on-air talent are paid handsomely, while the people who do the real work behind the scenes aren't even paid a living wage.
ReplyDeleteGovernment announces that net migration is again over 300,000 this year - meaning we need to build the equivalent of a city the size of Cardiff just to keep pace - in ONE year!
ReplyDeleteSo no doubt our national broadcaster is exercised at the enormity of the task facing us - on a par with a national disaster, a tsunami wiping out one of our great port cities say...what will be teh impact on schools, houses, hospitals, roads, trains, green belt land, the natural environment, waste, and so on.
Well not on the Victoria Derbyshire programme.
Their immediate response was to go to a carrot packer to find out just exactly why it was they need to use imported labour. And that wasn't exactly an incisive interview. The BBC presenter just let him prattle on about 7 day freshness...She never asked directly "Before you had all this imported labour did you let the carrots rot in the ground?" No, all soft deliveries easily batted away.
Spot on. Your second paragraph outlines exactly why, even if all immigrants are the saints the media portrays them as, mass-migration is hugely detrimental to our country. Question is, why don't politicians admit to this - are they delusional or just lying to us?
DeleteI know this is a BBC-focussed site, but I think it is worth pointing out just how weak the response of the leading conservative periodocal in the UK is to the migration crisis. Take a look at this:
ReplyDeletehttp://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2016/02/can-david-cameron-really-stick-by-his-net-migration-target-now-his-eu-deal-is-done/
Following Fraser Nelson's pro-migration lead, Isabel Hardman is completely insouciant about the implications taking in over 600,000 migrant or 323,000 net if you prefer (though that underestimates the problem).
Her main - no, her ONLY - concern is simply how it will impact on the fibber-in-chief and his party.
"The net migration statistics have, for quite a while, been an awkward quarterly occurrence that the Tories just have to sit through and pretend isn’t happening."
She is worried about how "Now his renegotiation is over, he has no excuses left." - obviously concerned it might moves votes to the Leave option.
Isn't this a terrible abdication of moral responsibility on the part of elites?
Why are tehy so blind to the negative impacts of migration - is it because they only meet high-flying migrants in the world of business, medicine, the arts, politics and the like? Is it because they personally benefit from domestic servants who migrate here - doing their household work for them for next to nothing? It can't be because Russian, Chinese and Arab oligarchs are paying them handsomely to talk up the positive effects of migration, can it? Or is it because they just like this fantasy of Britain being a super-prosperous multi-cultural migration magnet, a new USA...? - despite all the evidence of falling living and health standards pointing to the contrary.
I really don't know. I can't understand it. I just wonder at the spectacle of a once patriotic periodical seemingly ready to follow Merkel's disastrous policy.