Am I the only one who’s starting to think of death as a blessed relief? No. I’ve heard others saying something similar.
Two of the most depressing things I’ve seen recently. (In the interest of balance and fairness, the Guardian is in our sidebar.)
“We should completely close the borders … enough is enough”— BBC Question Time (@bbcquestiontime) February 20, 2020
This audience member says the number of people ’flooding in’ to the UK is costing public services too much. #bbcqt pic.twitter.com/T5EshhWqQu
One. Owen Jones, supposedly railing against ‘hate’ The BBC normalised racism last night, pure and simple
‘Yet Question Time then saw fit to clip the 82 seconds of hate, accompanied by a succinct summary of the audience member’s rant. Lies and hatred, uncorrected and unchallenged, rippled across social media from the account of the BBC’s self-described “flagship political debate programme”
this, followed by a rant against the BBC for ‘allowing it’, a spittle-flecked reference to ”racist thug and convicted fraudster” Tommy Robinson and, in conclusion, something about a prime minister with a history of racism. All in all, an unadulterated outpouring of hate. Pure and simple. (oh for a soupçon of self-awareness)
and
Two: Marina Hyde, in the same publication, writing about Priti Patel’s ‘perma smirk’. It takes one to know one I suppose, but Marina’s perma-expression is more of a sneer than a smirk.
Those two examples of ‘left’ (for virtue) against ‘right’ (for vice) featured high in yesterday’s Guardian’s ‘most popular’ rankings. Incidentally, Matthew Parris has also had a go at Patel in the Times. I’m no particular fan of Priti Patel, and I know nothing of bullying within the Department for International Development, (how could I?) but I do know that her off-piste dealings with Israel showed a spark of independence and imagination that I admired at the time. Parris described this as ‘a monumental error”. Typical.
Then there’s that intellectual giant and philosophical lyricist “Dave” whose brilliance and originality Is being so much admired.
The general downgrading of everything was encapsulated in a snippet on the Today programme within a conversation between Mishal Husain and Chris Mason (why?) extolling the virtues of regional accents. There’s regional accents and there’s lazy, dumbed down, ungrammatical, illiterate patois.
Slightly consoling though, is the knowledge that Douglas Murray has written (in the Speccie) about the Beeb’s dumbed-down arts coverage How low can the BBC go? and Richard Morrison (in the Times) The arts world is tolerant, as long as you’re left wing and anti-Brexit about the arts community’s wokeness and the new totalitarianism of the left. At least there are masses of appreciative responses.
