Harmony

It's been a funny old morning on the BBC. 

Sunday went with a campaign group to Calais and only gave us the voices of supporters of their campaign (for unaccompanied migrant children to be brought to Britain). 

Then Broadcasting House discussed Jeremy Corbyn's week with two loyal Corbyn supporters (Paul Mason and Rhea Wolfson). Even the Corbynistas on Twitter seemed pleased at that. (Paul Mason was floating in an alternate universe here, even more than usual). 

And then Sunday Morning Live discussed the burkini ban with four people (Deborah Orr, Faeeza Vaid, Tim Stanley, and Kate Williams), all of whom oppose the ban - a remarkable thing for an 'impartial' programme to have brought about. (And there was no Douglas Murray, David Vance or Jon Gaunt today to balance things out either).

Even Broadcasting House's paper review discussed Brexit with a gaggle of like-minded people. All three were Remain supporters (Sir Vince Cable, Daniel Glaser and Val McDermid), and they duly moaned about/sneered at Brexit. They then moved on to discuss the burkini ban and, inevitably, all three of them opposed that too.

And as for The Papers on the BBC News Channel at 9.30 (with two strongly pro-Remain journalists - Matthew Green and Yasmin Alibhai Brown), well, let's just say that the meeting of minds over the folly of Brexit and Brexiteers was quite something to behold. 

Outbreaks of BBC-style harmony everywhere!

Sunday Morning Live's burkini debate began with Naga introducing the burkini as "a cover-all costume of choice for some Muslim women". Then Tommy Sandhu went to canvass opinion at the beach in (Clacton) Brighton, Britain's most liberal seaside resort. And Tommy's selection of viewer comments ended with Tommy questioning the truth of the last comment he read out (a comment critical of burkini wearers) and Naga and her panel agreeing that the comment wasn't sound. Nice. 

Broadcasting House also ended with a comic piece based on The War of the Worlds which mocked a particular politician (I bet you can guess who. Clue: His surname rhymes with 'Barrage') and joked about the British holding a referendum on whether to allow the invading alien force to blow them up or not, and "incredibly, the nation voted by a small margin for Brexplosion". Very droll. 

Apparently The World This Weekend is going to lead on the UK Black Lives Matter campaign. Must go and listen to that. 

Such fun!

PS Oddly, The World This Weekend continued in the same vein.

There were two main topics: (1) Black Lives Matter/Mrs May's diversity audit and (2) the unrepresentative nature of our present electoral system.

On the first subject, everyone agreed that there's a serious issue that needs tackling, and on the second subject, everyone agreed that there's a serious issue that needs tackling (the answer to the latter presumably being proportional representation).

There may well be serious issues that need tackling on both subjects, but having everyone roughly singing from the same hymn sheet on them (including the presenter) doesn't really strike me as being the sort of thing the BBC ought to be doing (as it doesn't seem at all impartial)...

...and yet they've been doing it all day so far.