Sunday, 24 February 2019

Tommy's takedown

Part of my frustration is due to our snails-pace broadband. We live in an area that’s supposed to be fast. I understand certain vital parts are housed miles away in some Godforsaken roadside box. Oh well. Can’t odds it, as people round here will say. (it means we can’t do anything about it except spend a whole day fruitlessly hanging on the old fashioned landline waiting for someone in India to pick up.)

On The Big Questions, they’re talking about reincarnation. It occurred to me that I want to be reincarnated. When do I want it? Now! I want to be reincarnated straight away, this minute because I feel so depressed and unable to 'make-a-difference' in the here and now. Maybe I could come back as John Sweeney. (But I guess there’d be two of us, which might cause problems)


I spent a whole load of hours yesterday trying to find a direct link to Tommy Robinson’s documentary PanoDrama, so that I could see whether he’s really got his teeth into something new and chewy. I failed.

All I have to go on at the time of writing is yesterday’s live stream, which broke almost as often and annoyingly as my connectivity.

I did watch what seemed like hours of a pretty shambolic preamble. The upside was that no visible aggression could be seen. After all that fretting about BBC staff‘s safety. This time at least, nothing of the sort materialised. 

I have to say that the speeches were  - in the words of someone I can’t identify - lacklustre. Specifically Gerrard Batten’s. I can’t quite see what they were for in this particular context. Yes, try and recruit for UKIP if you must, but not at the unveiling of the much anticipated PanoDrama. 

Everyone was waiting patiently; all they wanted to see was Tommy’s takedown. But no. After that interminable wait, the sound was unintelligible and the visuals were worse. We need to see the real unfiltered article before passing our verdict. Meanwhile, the jury’s out. However, if I’m pushed, I will just say a few more lacklustre words. 

If there was something in there about Sweeney fabricating a sexual element to finesse his takedown, that’s pretty damning. I couldn’t quite hear it. However, the methods, ‘sting’ and ‘honeytrap’, weaken the case and possibly engender sympathy for Sweeney, the ‘victim’….although the PanoDrama team could plead they’re deliberately turning the tables to make their point.

The whole BBC, and in particular the once-respected Panorama remit, has dumbed down. It’s a tabloid version of its former self. Intelligent probing, if it ever existed, has been abandoned and replaced by lazy, agenda-driven, superficial and cherry-picked gossip. In this case, it was a straightforward character assassination, using all the low-hanging fruit at its disposal and abandoning any attempt at deeper investigative analysis. What’s the point in that? If that’s not bad enough,  they seem to have stooped low enough to lie.

Anyway, maybe the actual video is available now. If so, I might have to retract. Don’t watch this space though, in case I don’t actually bother. I could have written most of the last paragraph with or without Tommy’s Takedown.

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Update (Craig): And here it is...: