Random Thoughts for a Sunday Evening

 

I

Lib Dems, lib Dems and Facebook

It's been a while since I've made myself listen to The World This Weekend but I learned something quite interesting from it today - albeit only after a bit of Googling as they didn't disclose it themselves.

The programme's main focus was on demands to regulate Facebook, particularly in light of the murder of Sir David Amess. 

I avoid Facebook like the plague.

Being politically-minded I now associate Facebook with Sir Nick Clegg, as he's become their Vice President for Global Affairs and Communications at Facebook since 2018.

The World This Weekend's sole defender of Facebook today was one Lord Allan, Facebook's Director of Policy in Europe until 2019. 

Like former Lib Dem leader/Deputy PM Sir Nick, Lord Allan is a former Lib Dem MP. So Facebook seems to like UK Liberal Democrats. 

And it gets spookier.

Lord Allan, it turns out from searching for him on the internet, was the MP for Sheffield Hallam from 1997-2005 before giving way to the one Nick Clegg, who remained MP for Sheffield Hallam from 2005-2017. 

What are the chances of that happening?

My random thought here is that maybe the American liberal Democrats at Facebook chose the UK's Liberal Democrats because of their party name, assuming because they call themselves 'Liberal Democrats' they must think like liberal Democrats in the US...and, if so, they should be careful when hiring from Russia and Japan or they might end up with Vladimir Zhirinovsky and Shinzo Abe, and they might un-ban former US president/possible future US president Donald Trump while Mark Zuckerberg isn't looking. 

II

The BBC and the word 'terrorist'

The estimable Scottish blogger Effie Deans has a thoughtful piece on her Lily of St. Leonard's blog about the murder of Sir David. It made me re-think a few things. and is well worth a read. 

If Sue's not seen it yet, it begins: 

Whenever there is a terrorist attack in somewhere like Israel, we are told by the BBC that it carried out by militants. It gives the impression that the far left from the 1980s stopped handing out newspapers to blow himself up. Only when a terrorist attack happens here in Britain will the BBC allow itself to describe it as such. IRA militants after all did not try to blow up Margaret Thatcher. If a word is useful then we must use it consistently. If something is terrorism call it terrorism, otherwise you are lying in which case how can you be trusted on anything.

It then moves on.

It's certainly true that the BBC will use the word 'terrorist' more about terrorist attacks in the UK than anywhere else and that it goes out of its way to avoid applying it to the like of Hamas or Islamic Jihad or Hezbollah.

But the BBC has used it in connection to radical Islamic terrorism in the UK through the most gritted of gritted teeth over the last couple of decades. 

They were very reluctant to begin with post 9/11, and particularly post 7/7 in London. 

All of us hereabouts observed that at the time. 

It made the BBC look terrible and absurd. 

I'm guessing they finally realised that they were dangerously adrift from the public mood, so they eventually eased the prohibition. 

And that's where we are now - with a word that should never had been banned being grudgingly allowed in the UK context - albeit still through gritted teeth on certain BBC reporters' parts - but still being banned [except in heavy inverted commas] when it comes to terrorism against, say, Israel.

III

Sunday, Flipping Sunday

The one Radio 4 programme I've tried to keep up with during my blogging slumbers is Radio 4's Sunday, what with it being the starting point of this very blog. 

It never really changes. 

Todays programme featured:  

[a] Takes on the murder of Sir David Amess which avoided the thorny issue of Islamic terrorism.

[b] An entirely one-sided 'woke' segment on Ethiopian demands for the return of some sacred plaques held by the British Museum where neither context nor the other other side of the argument was given. Presenter Emily Buchanan simply announced that the Ethiopians were demanding them back, said that we [the UK] ''looted'' it, and stated that ''lawyers'' said it was legally right to return them, and then interviewed an Ethiopian Orthodox priest who told listeners how precious these plaques were to the Ethiopians. When it's that one-sided it reeks of abetting a campaign.

[c] A strange piece about how cuddly toy deities might be ''the best way to help children understand faith and culture'', reporting on how a range of cuddly toys of deities like the Hindu god Ganesha is ''expanding to include all major faiths'', including Jesus and Buddha. I googled the company and checked their range of cuddly toys and found that the phrase Sunday kept using - ''all major faiths'' - wasn't quite true. You won't be surprised to hear that Islam was the exception and that the BBC skirted around the point like a cat trying to avoid its fated date with a cage during a trip to the vets. 

[d] A piece on a Jewish comedy Fringe event featuring...and here's the BBC angle...''the only Orthodox Jewish woman on the British comedy circuit''. There's always got to be a bit of identity politics and marking of identity politics milestones. 

[e] The inevitable book-plug for a friend of the programme, here Catholic author Peter Stanford. 

[f] A somewhat campaigning closing segment about aggrieved Muslim women being refused entry to pray within some mosques and how ''conservative'' attitudes in mosques need changing, followed by an interview with Sunday's favourite Muslim, the silky Sheikh Ibrahim Mogra, who positioned himself somewhat vaguely on the matter, as is his way. At least Sunday raised the question of Deobandi influence.

I've been going on about the programme for over a  decade now, but there's now a small legion of people criticising Sunday every single week on Twitter and on blogs hereabouts. It's a growth industry that growing fast. The programme remains the ripest of ripe targets as far as BBC bias is concerned.

IV

Nancy wonders if it's just her

Following today's Sunday was - as ever - Sunday Worship. I was in the mood for hymns and heard it live. 

It provoked a murmur on Twitter when Annunziata Rees-Mogg [sister of Jacob] complained about it being about gender equality today when it should have been a Catholic service in honour of Sir David Amess.

Wouldn’t it have been nice if Sunday Worship on BBC Radio4 had been from a Catholic Church in memory of Sir David Amess? And perhaps a sermon about the value of public service rather than gender equality? Or maybe that’s just me.

Now, I have to say that - much as I can see where she's coming from -  I agreed with those of her critics who pointed out that these things are prepared weeks and months in advance. The BBC publishes the text and running order of the service in full before it's even broadcast. And this was coming live from Ely Cathedral. So this was a juggernaut that's being rolling for weeks ready for this morning, and the BBC couldn't just drop it and swap it with a different service. And, in the event, a pray for Sir David was said at the start before the feminist-influenced, all-women service about women in the Bible began.....though, amusingly, the male dean popped up at the end to read the blessing.

So Annunziata might have been better saying that, yes, the BBC couldn't reasonably have replaced this service at the last minute, but that it's still 'very BBC' that the identity-politics-obsessed BBC Radio 4 prepared yet another service with an 'identity politics' focus today, because Sunday Worship is doing that ever more often as the channel increasingly sinks into a smelly slough of 'woke'.

V

John Simpson says 'this can't go on'

Fantasies, born of childhood/adulthood reading of brave British men rescuing women in peril, have occasionally led me to dream that we British would somehow spring Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe from jail in Iran, literally leaving behind a Carry-On-style black fingernail card of 'two digits rampant' for old 'Smiler' Khamenei to splutter at as his beard caught on fire humorously.

Five years younger than the Supreme Leader of Iran, the BBC's World Affairs Editor John Simpson is unimpressed: 

The rejection of @FreeNazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe's appeal in Tehran is predictable but disgraceful. She is being held hostage for the repayment of a £400m debt the UK owes to Iran. Handing money to Iran is a big problem, given its support for terrorism; but this can't go on.

I do believe that the BBC's Mr Impartiality is demanding, ever so impartially, that the British Government cough up to the terroristic, hostage-holding Ayatollah. 

Hm. 

The night is passed and the day is at hand. Let us therefore cast off the works of darkness and put on the armour of light. Let us walk honestly, as in the day.

    

Story time...

The first Sunday in Advent, for Christians, is when a candle is lit for a world wound in woe.

The first Sunday in Advent - the one on BBC Radio 4 today - give us a world wound in woe and woke, and no candle whatsoever.

Racism, transgender issues, the foreign aid budget, etc, were all present and correct.

In fact, the programme approached self-parody this week: It gave us 40 mins of the usual dreary, worthy, 'liberal' handwringing before ending with a very jolly chap singing Ding, Dong, Merrily On High! 

The programme climaxed in a show trial. 

A socially conservative Christian organisation was in the dock. (Not that anyone from the organisation was actually present. It was tried and convicted in absentia.)

What had that socially conservative Christian organisation done wrong? Well, it had put out a video which misgendered someone.

The unhappily misgendered trans man was duly interviewed by Sunday. 

He kindly granted that socially conservative voices shouldn't be silenced, but...

The "but" was, of course, that in this case - and all such cases like it - such people should be silenced. Or else. 

And then came a nice, waffling Anglican bishop. The poor man was hauled in and placed in the dock in lieu of the condemned-but-absent Christian organisation. 

The Bishop of Coventry, bless him, was completely incomprehensible. (Rowan Atkinson couldn't have made him up.) He bowed and curtsied to the unfortunate misgendered chap but said little else that made sense, and presenter William Crawley got frustrated with him.  

William's a true pro though. He stuck to Sunday's guns and pushed the bishop to condemn the head of the socially conservative Christian charity - a lady who also sits on the Church of England's General Synod. William's line of questioning was: Why is she still on the General Synod? Shouldn't disciplinary action be taken against her?

The bishop waffled and said nothing that anyone other than God could possibly understand. 

 

Blog favourite Jane Kelly of The Salisbury Review/The Conservative Woman sums it all up:

Sunday was truly outrageous today, suggesting any criticism of transgendered men should be silence in case it 'gives offence.'

It won the programme plaudits from a few Twitter folk though.

Meanwhile, this week's Sunday also contained yet another plug for a book written or co-written by someone from the left-leaning Catholic magazine The Tablet, of which Sunday's main presenter Ed Stourton remains a trustee. 

I've counted four such book plugs for senior Tablet folk, past and present, in the past couple of months. 

We've been here before. 

Still, at least the Advent edition of Sunday Worship that followed featured one of my favourite choral pieces - Ubi Caritas by the French composer Maurice Duruflé. Unfortunately, the reader talked all over it. So, to make up for that, here's the full thing - uninterrupted:

And there's more...

While I'm at it, I might as well introduce a third lady I follow on Twitter and let her have her say on this morning's Sunday Worship on Radio 4. After the Sunday programme had marked International Woman's Day, Sunday Worship celebrated the 25th anniversary of women's ordination in the Church of England. Anyhow, here's Jane:

Adverts on the BBC

I had to grin, while listening to this morning's Broadcasting House paper review, when  Anneka Rice took the BBC to task for product placement on Strictly Come Dancing:

I noticed on Strictly Come Dancing last night that they mentioned The Bodyguard three times, which is extraordinary, and it just makes me wonder where it will all end. Will we have Craig Revel Horwood saying "I'm the best a man can get" while he uses a Gillette razor? 

It's long been a (minor) bugbear of mine that the BBC boasts, at it's rivals' expense', about being free of irritating adverts yet you usually get 2-4 irritating adverts between every BBC TV show. The fact that they're all adverts for the BBC itself can't hide the fact that they're still adverts. 

It was even funnier as Broadcasting House itself had done a Bodyguard-related feature just a few minutes earlier, thus doing its own bit of BBC self-advertising.

And guess what happened on today's The World This Weekend? Yes, the starting point for its final feature was also Bodyguard. 

I'm only surprised that Radio 4 didn't ask the The Rev. Dr. Peter Stevenson to slip in a mention of Bodyguard during his sermon on this morning's Sunday Worship:

But that doesn’t exhaust the meaning of this exciting and hopeful  message. For when the apostle Paul uses that particular phrase he’s trying to convey the mind-boggling truth that Bodyguard on BBC One is the one to watch tonight. And with an awareness of a world in anticipation of its final episode we pray as Jesus taught his disciples to pray. Our father, who art in Heaven, etc...".

The perfect bias-free BBC day (Part II)

Continuing...

After Sunday and the Radio 4 Appeal - Mariella Frostrup appealing on behalf of the BBC's Sports Relief - came Sunday Worship (8.05am). 

I'm entirely with Chrish (in the comments) in describing this Syrian Orthodox Service as powerful, and full of interesting information. I also thought the call to prayer/extemporising of Christian song at the end of communion was stunning, and enjoyed the hymns in in Arabic and Aramaic. The weaving of voices - including the head of the Syrian Orthodox Church in Britain, the kidnapped/very probably murdered Archbishop of Aleppo [a "dear friend" of the presenter Martin Palmer], the Grand Mufti of Syria [whose own son was assassinated by terrorists], and our very own Prince Charles - was well wrought, and the nature of the persecution faced by Christians in the countries surrounding Israel has rarely been so forcefully conveyed on the BBC before. 

The essential message was (courtesy of Ephesians 4):

Be ye angry, but sin not. Let not the sun go down upon your wrath, yet do not make room for the devil. Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, together with all malice: And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you.

Why should a Christian act of service find its place in a post describing an unbiased day at the BBC? Isn't it biased in favour of Christianity and, therefore, against non-Christian religions and atheists? 

To which the obvious reply is that the vast majority of Radio 4's output is secular (despite Thought for the Day each day), so a small space for a weekly Christian service in a country that many listeners (like me) still think of as a Judeo-Christian country is surely acceptable to all but the most intransigent atheist.

As a non-intransigent atheist, I love such services - just as I love hymns, Christmas carols, churches and cathedrals, church choirs, church rituals, baptisms, marriages and funeral services, the King James Bible, the Book of Common Prayer, religious poetry (George Herbert, T.S. Eliot), fine sermons, great works of Christian apology (C.S. Lewis and his Screwtape Letters), etc.

I think it's wonderful that Radio 4 broadcasts a weekly Christian Sunday service. So that's going into my idea of a good, unbiased day of BBC broadcasting.

A Point of View (8.45am) might also have a place - as short, intelligent 'think pieces' are perfect for radio.

Regular readers of Is the BBC biased? will, however, be well aware of that list...the one that proved the programme's left-liberal bias in the clearest terms possible: A Point of View went nearly four years without a single right-of-centre presenter. There were plenty of left-leaning ones of course). Only when Roger Scruton came along did that very long, bias-provoked drought finally come to an end.

Since then (August 2013), Roger Scruton has re-appeared but remains the only right-winger in the A Point of View village, with additional left-leaning speakers adding to that list (William Dalrymple, AL Kennedy) to reinforce the programme's overwhelming left-liberal bias.

So for A Point of View to take its place in my 'perfect day' of BBC broadcasting, it would have to very radically address its own failings when it comes to providing a proper range of points of views appropriate to an 'impartial' broadcaster...and that obviously means not just inviting Roger Scruton into the studio for a short run every eight months.

Variety should be the spice of BBC life. A dozen blossoming flowers from the left, a dozen from the right, a dozen from nowhere-easily-identifiable - that would do nicely, wouldn't it?

So, having (in my imagination) listened to Will Self's fourth A Point of View the week before, my imaginary perfect BBC day would have me waking up to the start of a run of talks from Theodore Dalrymple. Imagine that at the BBC! (Hard, isn't it?)


And, yes, Tweet of the Day would definitely be there, representing natural history - regardless of the voting habits of its presenter (if that presenter keeps those political beliefs out of her/her talk about the sand martin, goldeneye, house sparrow, lesser-spotted oddie and rook. Tweet of the Day is a fabulous series. (Should have mentioned that earlier perhaps).

Ah, but could Paddy O'Connell and Broadcasting House (9.00am) ever find a place in my idea of a good, unbiased day of BBC broadcasting? Surely not?

Oh, I certainly used to have a right go at Broadcasting House for bias on a very regular basis, especially in 2009-10 (when I used to call it Gordcasting House on the strength of Paddy's apparent pro-Labour proclivities), then at Biased BBC [in very regular comments] and, yes, we at Is the BBC biased? are still at it [not quite so very regularly], making the case that there's still a problem with bias at BH....

...but, speak it softly, I've come round to the view that the programme isn't as bad as it used to be and - above anything else on Sunday 23 March - this particular edition of the programme spurred me into making a PARTIAL defence of that day's BBC broadcasting on an earlier post as....speak it very softly....I thought it was absolutely superb - and I didn't smell even the faintest whiff of bias from it either. No, not even from Paddy.

There was Professor Mark Almond on Russia (fascinating, unexpected), The Sky of Night's Maggie Aderin-Pocock judging Lord West, Dame Ann Leslie and Nigel Havers's explanations of the discovery of gravitational waves (funny), that fine piece on the youth orchestra of Afghanistan (inspiring, worrying), an interview about Magna Carta (informative), and an entertaining paper review featuring a Labour baroness, a Conservative lord and Maggie Aderin-Pocock (balanced). Plus Paddy kept his opinions to himself, and made me laugh on several occasions too.


Diversion: The Magna Carta.

The 800th anniversary of Magna Carta next year prompted the Magna Carta bit...

From BH, I learned that there are four existing copies of the Magna Carta - two in the British Library, one in Lincoln and one in Salisbury. All four will be gathered together for the very first time next year to mark the anniversary.

The copy Paddy looked at was, as he put it, about the size of a tabloid newspaper - if entirely spread out. The Latin writing is brown, and feint on brown paper, using a very compact script. The medieval scribes, the lady from the British Library told us, used many abbreviated words to save space and there are two-and-a-half thousand words crammed into a single sheet of parchment.

There were 63 clauses in Magna Carta. Only three of them are still valid in law today: the very first one, protecting the rights and liberties of the English Church; the one that protects the rights and liberties of the City of London, and other towns, ports and boroughs; and - buried away in the middle, without any prominence - the most famous clause of all, the one that says that no free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, except by the judgement of his equals or by the law of the land, and no one shall justice delayed or denied to him.

That's what I learned from this particular edition of Broadcasting House. It's the sort of thing that my idea of an unbiased day of BBC broadcasting would (and should) provide - along with the rest of the features of this present edition.


Hopefully, even though I'm using just one day of BBC Radio 4 broadcasting as an example, you're getting a very strong sense of what I want from the BBC - and what I don't want. More tomorrow.

A (Sun)Day in the Life (of the BBC) - 3.

Onwards and Jedwards, trudging through last Sunday morning on BBC Radio 4....

08:10 Sunday Worship

Radio 4 continued to mark the start of Advent with a live service from Kelvinside Hillhead Parish Church in Glasgow, led by a Gay vicar - the Rev. Doug Gay.

It was a rather beautiful service, and I even enjoyed the sermon. (Aren't they supposed to be boring?). It reflected on the relevance of the seasons of the church year.

It was the music though that really brightened up my day. The opening hymn - O come, O come Emmanuel - has long been a favourite of mine. There was also a recently-written hymn, set to the music of the Iona Boat Song, by one John Bell - presumably the left-wing Thought for the Day John Bell. That was lovely too. And looking at the website afterwards, it turned out that the organist was none other than Kevin Bowyer - a stellar name in the world of organ music. The standard of performance by all concerned was excellent throughout. Amen.

The housebound (and the bone idle) Christian has long relied on Radio 4's Sunday Worship, and long may it continue. Amen.

Incidentally, I opened the fifth door of my advent calendar this morning. I really wasn't expecting Tom Daley to come out.

Another sermon followed, albeit of a very different kind....

08:48 A Point of View

Yes, it was time for the Rev Will Self's point of view.

Hmm, A Point of View. 

I will admit to thinking that my long lists of all the lefties and non-righties who Radio 4 chose to invite to present this particular programme over the last three years provided particularly compelling evidence for proving just where the station's political centre truly lies - i.e. on the Left - especially given that not a single right-leaning contributor appeared between 1st Jan 2010 and 8 Aug 2013. (Yes, not a single one.)

Then, in August 2013, lo and behold!, Roger Scruton - a man firmly of the Right - appeared (for four weeks).

That will probably be counted as 'reasonable balance' by the BBC!!!!!

I scoff, yet...I did note that one of the BBC's defenders at Biased BBC (was it Conspiracy Theory Central?) recently defended the programme by citing Roger Scruton's appearance on the programme!!! (He/she did have the good grace, however, to concede that this was not typical, and that the programme's choice of non-right-wing guests was predictable).

Will's talk was a Jeremiad about modern politics.

It began in a balanced fashion, claiming that the Left used the scrapping of the 11-plus as a Trojan Horse to sneak in radical egalitarian ideology while the Right used the sale of council houses as a Trojan Horse to sneak in radical free market ideology. He then claimed that contemporary politicians keep offering us such Trojan Horses.

The latest Trojan Horse being advanced, he said, is the idea that economic growth and sustainability can go together. He then advanced a Trojan Horse of his own, sneaking in the 'watermelon' (green on the outside, red on the inside) argument that economic growth isn't a good thing whilst pretending he was still merely talking about other people's Trojan Horses.

Was he even aware that his own Trojan Horse was a Trojan Horse at all? He strikes me as being the sort of man who is quite capable of not being able to see the Trojan Horse in his own eye whilst loudly pointing out all the My Little Ponies in the eyes of others. (Rev. Gay could quote him something to that effect.)

You can read a transcript of Will Self's talk here.

In it you won't find the following joke:

A horse walks into a bar. The barman says, "Why the long face?"
The horse replies, "I came first in the Grand National and they gave the prize money to that idiot on my back."

From horses to birds...

08:58 Tweet of the Day

Springwatch's Martin Games-Hughes talked about the Long-Tailed Dipshit, a bird that can imitate every Elton John song by...ah, sorry, no, no...he talked about the Black-Tailed Godwit - and they, apparently, are blissfully unaware of Elton John (hence their name). 

According to Martin, godwits get married in the summer, separate in the winter, then get remarried in the summer...but, alas, if poor old Mr Godwit arrives back more than three days late in the summer, flighty Mrs Godwit storms off in a huff, immediately files for divorce and then shacks up with some other male godwit instead. 

Yes, it's all about timing for male godwits. Coming back four days late with a box of Belgian chocolates isn't a good idea. (She doesn't like Belgian chocolates anyway).

Not a bad hour of Radio 4 listening then, but the dreaded Broadcasting House was waiting around the corner...