Hmm. What to make of this morning's Broadcasting House devoting a full twenty minutes to an interview with John Bercow?
It was certainly a nice book plug for the anti-Brexit former Speaker. His book got several mentions.
But Paddy did well in challenging him on the bullying allegations and on picking up on his ad hominem mode of defence, deployed with no little malice against two alleged victims and other former colleagues during the interview, and pursued the bullying question further.
Mr. Bercow is more Marmite than Marmite (calamari?), it seems. Twitter Remainers thought he came across brilliantly. I thought he came across as a thoroughly nasty piece of work.
To use the sort of language which Speaker Bercow was wont to use when presiding:
ReplyDelete"May I offer some civ-il and I hope con-struct-ive advice to the former holder of that most illustrious and let me say res-pon-si-ble of positions within the House, one which carries with it the full weight of hist-or-y and, perhaps equally as important, pub-lic ex-pect-ation. My advice is this, which I offer quite simply as a plausibly good friend, not wishing to see Mr Bercow have to resort to highly elevated prot-est-ations of innocence and good intent but rather to seek the solace of a place of shaded contemplation: let him take that annoying visage of his from our sight, let him then perform some extremely demanding gymnastic contortions and let him finally place the whole of his no doubt highly intellectual cranium up his rear end, where the sun don't shine."
Glad you brought this up, Craig. I'd been intending to comment on the Open Thread. Just how long would you think Bercow was given a platform for? Five or ten minutes perhaps? Well, no. The presenter told us the time immediately afterwards and it was 9 27. He'd been the first item on, after the usual news and intro at 9.
ReplyDeleteThis afforded him ample opportunity to go over and rebut / scoff at the allegations made by several past senior and junior staff in Parliament, review his achievements including being elected four times, airily dismiss the official rebuke for naming individual staff in his book, run down David Cameron and Michael Howard, sounding like some spiteful old gossip and finally make a pitch by informing the world at large of his desire to earn a living and giving a quick run through his various fields of interest. Gizzajob, eh?
How many people in the UK get an opportunity to go on the BBC and do that? Not your poor unemployed youth leaving school without much in the way of qualifications or hope or those with additional barriers such as disability, that's for sure. But for Bercow, happy to be of service.
The BBC operates a double standard: it promotes and gives air time to people whose views it likes and blanks by incuriosity those it disapproves... or if they are given air time, they will be interrupted constantly and asked to apologise for things said or allegedly said decades ago.
DeleteBercow is plugging his book and given a 20 minute advert on the BBC. The BBC claims it doesn't advertise... but for the people it approves as having BBC liberal values, every week their books are advertised. Books written by people who do not share the BBC's worldview are simply ignored as if they didn't exist.
The BBC is a propaganda station Goebbels would be proud of.