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.
Meanwhile the trial of the 2nd bomber of the Manchester arena (oh, the one that targeted and killed young girls for not being Islamic) proceeds with brief mention in BBC reports usually at 6th or 7th item in the bulletin.
ReplyDeleteIs the rise in hate crime real, or is it that definition of hate crime has broadened to include forms of offence, which in a sane world would be regarded as ridiculous?
ReplyDeleteAmazing, isn't it?...we get one terrorist incident referenced time and time again, but the 9-11 attack - in which 67 British citizens were murdered by Islamic terrorists - hardly ever gets mentioned by the BBC and when it does, it is referred to nearly always as purely an American tragedy.
ReplyDeleteThe BBC - Biased, Beneath Contempt.
Also - Kotecha fails to mention the immediate cause of the Finsbury Park Mosque incident - the perpetrator had been moved to murderous outrage by the BBC's drama "Three Girls" dealing with the activities of a "grooming gang" preying on young vulnerable girls. Without that drama, which came out of the blue after the BBC had spent two decades or more covering up grooming scandals, the muderous attack on the worshippers might never have happened.
DeleteAnd as for dehumanising language - Kotecha seems to have forgotten the dehumanising language used about Americans by Muslim extremists in the audience during that infamous Question Time after 9-11. Or doesn't that count?
hosted by David Dimbleby
Everyday the BBC use their programmes to educate us about Islam - it’s the ROP, Muslims are victims, the attacks are nothing to do with Islam, it’s the far right who are the real problem, and so on.
ReplyDeleteHowever on this topic there is no balance, both sides of the story are not told. Any criticism is suppressed and off topic.
People are not stupid but the BBC won’t engage or debate. It’s one of the reasons why trust with the BBC is further eroded by the day.
Yes - I think it's one of the MAIN reasons. People can see the disconnect. They know about how people who oriticise Islam in Saudi Arabia or Pakistan or Egypt or Iran are treated (executed, lashed, imprisoned for life, murdered etc). They know about the hundreds of grooming gangs. They know that in all Muslim majority countries, religious minorities suffer discrimination and worse. They know about Islamic terrorist attacks all around the world. They know how hundreds of millions of Muslims despite Jewish people and want Israel destroyed.
DeleteBut the BBC resolutely refuses to connect up any dots and prefers to draw its own pretty pictures of their favourite religion.
It isn't the far-right erecting bollards in our streets. it isn't the far-right that is creating resentment by promoting a belief system that makes no accommodation for anyone else.
ReplyDeleteIf non-Muslims in the UK were as intolerant as the Muslims are there would have been hundreds of attacks on Muslims by now.