11 mins to 8. Today Programme.
Justin Webb “And welcome back to Nottingham Trent University”
What do ‘they’ want, the working class oiks who voted Conservative, wondered Justin as he ventured out to talk about fairness in a florist’s in Kirkby.
What do you want, oh working-class voters? Never mind your petty little worries about t’high street - do you care about inequality perchance? Do you think money should be redistributed from the people at the top to the people at the bottom?
Working-class voter 1: “Some of these fat cats, as we call them, I think their salaries are absolutely criminal. They’re in companies that are losing money but they’re earning millions !!! .............
(blushing a little, Justin?)
…….but people who are creating wealth are worth the money.”
Working-class voter 2: “If you work hard you shouldn’t be penalised, should you?”
Justin: “Your new MP, and he got a bit of stick for this in the Guardian, didn’t he — and probably from the BBC - he said council tenants who misbehave should be made to go out and live in tents and pick potatoes - were you horrified? Were you pleased?”
Working-class voters 1 & 2 “That’s why he is where he is now, in’t it?”
*****
New MP for Ashfield Lee Anderson “People love Boris. He resonates with the people here.”
Why did I find that short segment absurdly entertaining?
********
Now for Sima Kotecha. This is a transcript of something much more absurd but in a different way.
Justin again: “It brings us to quarter to nine. More than two years ago a man drove a van into a crowd of Muslim worshippers near a mosque in London, killing one person. The imam of that mosque was praised at the time for protecting the attacker from others while waiting for the police to take him into custody. Now Mohammed Mahmoud has responded to the recent attack in Streatham saying he’s worried it’s going to fuel the far right. Our reporter Sima Kotecha has been speaking to him.
(Indistinct recorded sound-bite from the fateful day.)
Sima Kotecha “It was a hot evening in Finsbury Park when a man ploughed a van into a crowd of Muslim worshippers during the holy month of Ramadan. An eyewitness, speaking to the BBC at the time (sound-bite) “….escaped runaway saying I wanna kill Muslims I wanna kill Muslims” Imam Mohammed Mahmoud had just finished praying when he was told about the commotion outside his mosque. He rushed to see what was going on”
Mohammed Mahmoud “What I saw was something reminiscent of a post-bombing in a conflict zone. People wailing and crying and moaning, out of pain”
SK "The attack led to politicians from all sides relaying a message of unity at a time when they argued somebody had tried to divide people. The Imam says there are parallels with the motivation behind the attack in Streatham.
MM "Whether an attack is perpetrated due to a perverted and distorted view and understanding of Islam or due to a perverted and distorted view of Christian identity and white identity, which exists in the far right, the result is hatred and violence, which culminates in a terrorist attack.
SK "In recent days, Muslims are back in the spotlight with daily reports exploring how the authorities can help those to support those who’ve adopted a toxic ideology, which many argue has nothing to do with Islam. Is there a danger that South Asian communities can be generalised if communities don’t say this man did not represent true Islam?
MM "The reality is, is that the majority of people in the UK do not have meaningful engagement and interactions with Muslims, which means that their views are informed by such incidents and that saddens me because I wish that they can see the Islam that I see and practice on a daily basis.
(sirens)
SK "Police figures show that there’s been a 10% rise in hate crime in England and Wales over the last year with most of those offences relating to a racial crime. The imam says it’s inevitable that what happened on Sunday will fuel the far-right.
MM "Their views are informed by these incidents, and they are then exploited by the far-right who will use such incidents to fuel their propaganda, and that propaganda, of course, culminates in action.
SK "Jacob Davey is from the think tank The Institute of Strategic Dialogue and says the evidence is likely to show a surge in anger.
JD "After any attack like the one last Sunday, we notice a significant increase in violent, hateful and dehumanising language targeting minority groups.
(call to prayer)
SK "The call to prayer echoes around the mosque. For the imam whose philosophy and challenge is clear. Different communities may have their disagreements but actually, everybody is the same.
(call to prayer.)
If you can’t be doing with transcriptions, make an exception for that one. There are too many absurd examples of the BBC’s upside down and inside-out thinking in that item to choose from. Projection, understatement and overstatement, absence of self-awareness, delusion, insensitivity and over-sensitivity, increasingly irrelevant, out-of-touch and absolute cloth-eared deafness from the possibly soon to be put-out-of-its-misery Beeb.
