Gordon Brown!

This is getting ridiculous now.

Last September I posted about how Radio 4's Sunday programme “likes giving Gordon Brown a platform to promote his causes”. 

I wrote:

Despite it being a weekly programme featuring very few politicians, the son of the manse has been granted the Sunday bully pulpit no less than three times over the past year, pushing his agenda with the BBC's help.

Last October he was on demanding that the government 'must act to prevent the loss of a million young people to the job market'.

This May he was on advocating for G7 leaders to 'prioritise vaccines for developing countries ahead of the G7 summit'.

And today he was back saying that world leaders need to act now to end the 'moral outrage' that 'rich countries are amassing huge stockpiles of Covid vaccines they don't need'.

It's all very Sunday. In the years that I've covered them, they've always had their favourites and put them centre-stage. 

In January I posted again about the promotion of “their living saint among UK politicians”:

I repeat all this because Gordon Brown was back on Sunday once again this morning pushing a campaign (and an online petition) to compel the UK government to give more aid to the Afghans. 

[He's forever wanting to give our money away.]

Ed Stourton's questioning - or more accurately 'questioning' - was very helpful to the former prime minister.

And so it continues!

And if you recall last month, Edward Stourton went so far as to describe Mr Brown - off his own bat, as an opinion - as  “quite a just steward”.

Well, take a guess how today's edition of Sunday began...

Without a 'good morning' or anything, an excited Ed launched straight in:

And we have an exclusive interview this Sunday. As we heard in the paper review just now, the former prime minister Gordon Brown is in the news this weekend. He says the crisis facing vulnerable people is a moral issue that goes far beyond politics. He's assembled a coalition of charities and faith groups and he'll tell us live why he wants an emergency budget.

What on earth is going on here? 

Sunday's favourite Deadly Sin

This morning's Sunday on Radio 4 ended its month-long celebration of Pride Month. A tweet advertising Part 5 yesterday...

Watching the riot of colour and celebration in London for the 50th anniversary of Pride In London? Join us on @BBCR4Sunday tomorrow for the last in our series featuring LGBTQ people of faith! This week we're covering the topic of celibacy and same-sex attraction.

...drew this response from the man behind the Llandudno jazz festival:

Geoff Burke: Does it ever occur to you that millions of good people do not buy into this nonsense? I suppose not.

To be charitable to the BBC, that probably does occur to them...which will only make them push it even harder. Meanwhile, the splendid Jane Kelly added a response too that struck a chord with me, especially after all these years of monitoring the programme:

Jane Kelly: What sort of programme is #BBCR4Sunday? You just accept everything said & never challenge or even question anything. Makes it rather dull I'm afraid.

Gordon Brown, the Just Steward

There was a revealing moment on this morning's Radio 4 Sunday programme. They were giggling at Boris Johnson's reading at the Jubilee service at St. Paul's and discussing past prime ministers, and one of the guests mentioned Gordon Brown and imagined him being given the Parable of the Unjust Steward to read as a joke. The guest said that it would have been unfair, and Edward Stourton chipped in to agree, saying “Because he was quite a just steward”. 

That's a point of view I don't entirely share.

Time then, I think, to head off down Memory Lane again:

As Sunday also continued to celebrate Pride Month today, maybe Ed and Gordon could 'get a room'?

Listen With MAMA

Radio 4's Sunday had a very odd feature this morning. It concerned a perennial Sunday topic: 'Islamophobia'.

The section began with Emily Buchanan saying:

An organisation which monitors anti-Muslim hatred says it's seeing more cases where Muslim children and their teachers are being prevented from praying on school premises.

That organisation is Tell MAMA (Measuring Anti-Muslim Attacks). It says that half a dozen incidents have been reported to them in the last 6 months.

Emily then interviewed Mohammed from London, whose story has appeared in the papers. 

[Muslim boy ‘ordered to stop praying and told “this is not a religious school” ran Metro's headline.] 

Mohammed claims his 11-year-old son was physically stopped from playing in the playground by a teacher. 

Today's interview revealed the fact that the offending teacher is also Muslim. 

Obvious thoughts for any listener: So a Muslim teacher tells a Muslim pupil to stop praying in the school playground because that Muslim teacher says it's not a religious school, how does that make it an example of anti-Muslim hatred? And what, therefore, was the point of this interview?

Then the programme interviewed someone from Tell MAMA, who - like the programme itself - carried on regardless. 

She kept saying that though schools aren't mandated to have prayer spaces it's 'best practice' for all schools to have them. She repeated that at least three times. She clearly wanted prayer spaces in all schools.

I'm not sure this redounded greatly to Tell MAMA's credit.

One after the other

Today's Sunday programme on Radio 4 conformed to type when discussing the Macron government's latest initiative to tackle Islamic radicalism in France. 

The segment began with a clip of a Muslim activist attacking it for being unfair to Muslims and followed it with an interview with an American academic who thought exactly the same, also disapproving of it.

Edward Stourton even inadvertently admitted as much saying, 'And what do you make of the point we just heard from [the Muslim activist], which is very close to what you're saying...'. 

And it was also very close to what nearly all guests say when they've invited to talk about Islam in France on Sunday, where uniformity of thought prevails - especially on these kinds of subject matter.

********

The increasing 'woke' programme also did a feature on the transatlantic slave trade and St Helena and marked Racial Justice Sunday with a feature on racism in the Church of England and talked to a campaigner about it.

********

Another regular element of Sunday is its heavy focus on particular countries. India is one such country regularly in its crosshairs, and the coverage of it is usually from the same angle - one of intense negativity towards the ruling Hindu nationalist BJP. Here a BBC reporter piled on  - nay, positively heaped on - the negatives. The feature attracted a passing comment on Twitter:

Linda Floyd: Discrimination of any religion always wrong & if that’s happening in India it is indeed wrong. However, I fail to understand why same condemnation isn’t directed at the dreadful discrimination of religious minorities in Muslim countries like Pakistan.

Context

As regular readers will know, the BBC News Channel has a new programme in the evening called Context. I'm guessing what follows won't be in its remit...

On hearing this morning's Sunday and reading the headline story about it on the BBC News website - which is as much as I've engaged with the BBC so far today - the following tweet strikes a chord:

Inspector Gadget: Today, the media will not inform the public that between March 1971 and 30th January 1972, republican terrorists in Northern Ireland murdered 52 British soldiers. Hypervigilance was a consequence, and once again, their own population paid the price. #context

I think that should at least be acknowledged by the likes of the BBC. 

Gordon's still alive!!!

I wrote a piece last September about how Radio 4's Sunday “likes giving Gordon Brown a platform to promote his causes”, noting that he'd been “granted the Sunday bully pulpit no less than three times over the past year, pushing his agenda with the BBC's help”.

“It's all very Sunday”, I wrote. “In the years that I've covered them, they've always had their favourites and put them centre-stage.”

I then called Gordon Brown “their living saint among UK politicians.”

I repeat all this because Gordon Brown was back on Sunday once again this morning pushing a campaign (and an online petition) to compel the UK government to give more aid to the Afghans. 

[He's forever wanting to give our money away.]

Ed Stourton's questioning - or more accurately 'questioning' - was very helpful to the former prime minister.

And so it continues!

Talking to people

This morning's Sunday programme on Radio 4 returned to the subject of the antisemitic attack on a synagogue in Texas. 

As that attack was perpetrated by a Muslim man from Blackburn, the BBC attempted some bridge-building between the Jewish and Muslim communities there: 

Edward Stourton: We asked two people from Lancashire's Jewish and Muslim communities to reflect on what happened. Saima Afza is a Muslim from Blackburn. She's a former local councillor and a former Assistant Police and Crime Commissioner for Lancashire. Jeremy Dable is Jewish and lives in Preston. He used to be a member of the town's interfaith forum. 

Though doubtless well-meaning, it struck me as a rather pointless exercise. 

It involved the wrong people. 

Saima is a former Labour councillor who fell out with some male Muslims in her party because they didn't like her progressive views on homophobia, racism and sexism. Jeremy ran as a Liberal Democrat in several council elections, and led an interfaith forum, campaigned against the far-right and was involved with a refugee support group. 

[I had to Google around to find most of this out. Sunday told us only what I quoted Big Ed saying above].

Saima and Jeremy are nice, BBC-friendly people - as liberal a Muslim as you can get, and a liberal Jew. They could even be on Thought For The Day. 

These aren't the people from either community who need bridges building between them. Particularly as Jeremy ran an interfaith forum, reaching out to each other was just the kind of thing they'd naturally do anyhow. 

This is typical BBC, talking to 'people like them', people who the BBC can relate to, & thinking that they are in some way representative of the Jewish and Muslim communities in Blackburn.

Joe Biden's First Year Report, BBC-Sunday-style (among other things)

Sunday on Radio 4 exemplifies Ben Harris-Quinney's comment that the BBC uses "the same people with the same views over and over again". 

For example, I've joked before that David Walker, Bishop of Manchester, is on the programme so often that he should be officially enthroned as The Bishop of Radio 4's 'Sunday'. He was on it yet again today as part of the closing discussion on morality in public life in the wake of the Partygate scandal. 

It was a classic BBC religious discussion: a nice liberal Anglican bishop in discussion with a nice imam and a nice liberal rabbi, all saying nice things. 

The programme also had a bit on the amendment to the Policing Bill intended to tackle the likes of Insulate Britain, featuring an opponent of the amendment - a 'woke'-spouting Quaker - but no one in support of it. 

And the programme marked a year of President Joe Biden by interviewing an African-American professor who campaigned for Catholics for Biden and a Catholic journalist - another very 'BBC' discussion, with the journalist (Christopher White, NCR) being all 'impartial' and the other guest (Prof Anthea Butler, who teaches about slavery) critiquing Joe Biden from the left for being a 'right-leaning' president (yes, really!) and 'no better than Trump' on things like immigration. It's so often like that on Sunday. On their programme right-leaning Americans [about half the country] are rarer than refugees in a Gary Lineker property. 

We also got a cautious interview on the Jewish synagogue hostage situation, a piece on how chaplain in schools and hospitals have dealt with the pandemic featuring only women and a black man, an interview about China's crackdown on religion and an interview with a campaigner from the Romero Trust about a Salvadoran assassinated liberation theology priest who's being beatified by Pope Francis [a topic Sunday's been closely covering for at least a decade].

I see from the blurb on the programme's website that something got dropped. We didn't get to hear this week from Naomi Verber, Head of Environmental Policy at the United Synagogue, about ‘Dorot’, their year-long environmental initiative to tackle climate change. I'm guessing we'll be hearing that next week, so put it in your diary.

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

The BBC is caught fibbing

   

So the BBC was flat-out lying it appears.

Here's the editor of the Jewish Chronicle Jake Wallis Simons:

1/ It is with a heavy heart — I love the BBC and it has always been a privilege to work there — that the JC reports on the corporation again this week…

2/ We reveal that the BBC fully recorded an incendiary radio debate about whether anti-Zionism should be a “protected characteristic” despite claiming just hours later that no such item was planned for broadcast.

3/ The discussion for Radio 4 (for which I’ve worked quite a bit), in which Rabbi Jonathan Romain opposed Jewish anti-Israel blogger Robert Cohen, took place last Friday and was set to go out on Sunday.

4/ Later that day, responding to widespread criticism, the BBC told the JC: “We are always exploring a range of possible topics but there’s no planned item about anti-Zionism on the Sunday programme.”

5/ However, Rabbi Romain told the JC that after the segment was recorded, producers told him it would be broadcast on Sunday. It was later pulled.

6/ Read full story, written by Rosa Doherty, here: 

BBC did record the ‘anti-Zionism’ debate which it said it wasn’t planning

Celebrating

Radio 4's Sunday programme is achieving the impossible by getting even worse. It's transitioning from being 'the most liberal programme on Radio 4' to being 'the wokest programme on Radio 4'. A thoroughly one-sided piece this morning from the Khanate of London by Sunday reporter Vishva Samani dealt with the “heated debate” over removing 'controversial' public statues by celebrating a project funded by the Great Khan himself [well, funded by UK taxpayers actually] to 'diversify' statues, murals, etc, in the capital in the wake of the BLM protests. [Or as Douglas Murray put in the Sunday Telegraph today, “As the Mayor of our capital city attempts to rewrite all of British history to suit his particular political and cultural preferences...”]. Everyone was enthusiastic about it; no one was critical. The Great Khan got two uncritical plugs along the way. I'm not sure licence fee payers' money should be funding Sunday if this continues.

[P.S. Among other things, Sunday also plugged a book by a Muslim poet and discussed far-right extremism's appropriation of pagan symbols in the wake of the Capitol 6 January riot.]

H'm

On a related theme, also mentioned in an earlier post, here's Jake Wallis Simons, editor of the Jewish Chronicle, this evening discussing 'my favourite Radio 4 programme':

1/ So now the BBC… is running a debate on whether “anti-Zionism” should be a “protected characteristic”.

2/ Board President Marie van der Zyl called the debate, planned for Radio 4’s Sunday programme, a “grotesque insult to an overwhelming majority of British Jews”.

3/ She added: “Our community is not here to dance for your amusement.” Pretty strong stuff.

4/ Among the guests due to debate the controversial issue is Jewish Voice for Labour member Diana Nelsen, who was given a formal warning by the governing NEC body last February.

5/ Ms Nelsen, who is Jewish, has denied that former Labour MPs Luciana Berger and Dame Louise Ellman were “hounded out” of the party under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership and has posted on social media there is a “symbiotic relationship between Zionism and antisemitism”. 6/ She has also posted: “Zionism is not Judaism. It is blasphemy”.

Update: BBC has seemingly had second thoughts. Press officer: “We are always exploring a range of possible topics but there's no planned item about anti-Zionism on the Sunday programme."

Boxing Day Smorgasbord

Here are a few random thoughts for Boxing Day...

I

Catching up with a discussion on the open thread...

The BBC News website article Climate change: Small army of volunteers keeping deniers off Wikipedia by Marco Silva, BBC climate change disinformation specialist, featured discussion of Femke Nijsse from The Netherlands - “one of the most influential editors in the Wikipedia climate change community”. This “Dutch volunteer” is described as:

...a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Exeter, studying the transition to green energy - so global warming is something she's been thinking about for a while.

What Marco doesn't mention about this “clinical” academic crusader for truth is that Femke used to be deputy leader of DWARS, GroenLinkse Jongeren, the youth wing of the Dutch political party GreenLeft. 

I guessed she'd has a political activist side to her, but I'd rather have been openly told that by the BBC rather than have to Google around to find it.

II

🎄I really must clear up all the potato snacks I trod into my carpet yesterday... 

It's beginning to look a lot like crisp mush.🎄

III

As Charlie noted, also on the open thread, the cancel culture comments made by Maureen Lipman induced the BBC's new culture editor Katie Razzell to do a News at Ten report that featured the mighty Maureen before balancing her concerns with comedian Russell Kane's outright dismissal of them. [In passing, let's note that Russell has done very well out of the BBC over the years]. What wasn't so balanced was Katie's use of two vox pops - the first of which said, “I'm not worried about being judged. I would just far rather not say something because I don't think it's right”, and the second of which said, “At the end of the day, making offensive remarks is bullying.” 

She rounded off her report by saying:

What's happening on the comedy stage and in real life is a sign outdated views are being weeded out. Or a worrying assault on free speech, depending on your perspective. Culture often leads the way on the big issues of our time as we all navigate what we can say, and what it's best not to. 

 IV

🎄Just got kicked out of my ornithology group...
...for using fowl language.🎄

V

A few months back I wrote, “It's surely time now for David Walker, the go-ahead Bishop of Manchester, to be officially installed as Bishop of Radio 4's Sunday.” When I heard this morning that Archbishop Desmond Tutu has died, aged 90, I wondered who Radio 4's Sunday would invite onto this morning's edition to talk about him. Inevitably it was the go-ahead Bishop of Manchester. That programme's contacts list is even more limited than mine these days.

VI

🎄I was going to have Bucks Fizz for an aperitif this afternoon...

...but I'm having trouble making my mind up.🎄

VII

Quiz time: Which departing BBC broadcaster painted this work of art entitled Cleaning Windows?

Clue: The answer is an anagram of Man, draw, err.

VIII

To develop a point Winter George made earlier today,...

When box-ticking and talent collide everyone sort of wins, possibly. I was thinking after having switched on my TV during Countryfile and watched Anita and Matt swoon over some lovely Elgar from cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason. Sheku, if you recall, became famous after performing at Harry and Meghan's wedding. I also watched the last moments of the Andrew Marr show and Andrew departed the BBC to music from Konya and Jeneba Kanneh-Mason performing an arrangement of Tchaikovsky's Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy. And it that wasn't enough Christmas Day on BBC Two saw an hour-long programme called A Musical Family Christmas with the Kanneh-Masons. It raises the inevitable question that always arises when 'positive discrimination' is a strong possibility: Is their success with the BBC partly, even mainly, cos they is black? 

IX

🎄I was struggling to think of what to get someone for a Christmas gift. So I got them a fridge and watched their face light up when they opened it.🎄

[P.S. All the jokes in this post come courtesy of The Dad Joke Man].

X

Is their a more put-on, disliked family in the world than Mrs Brown's? It's become a new Christmas tradition for the snootily 'progressive' to join hands with the tasteful to traduce the BBC for putting her and her boys on TV, every single year without fail, on Christmas Day. Did you have turkey, those pigs-in-blankets that we weren't supposed to be able to buy, and sing Christmas songs, and criticise Mrs Brown's Boy while poor Tiny Tim Davie sat in the naughty corner sarcastically muttering, 'God bless us, every one!'? If so, God bless you, every one!

And is if to prove David Blunkett right...

Lord Blunkett's claim that BBC Radio 4 is “playing into the hands of its critics by becoming almost the caricature its opponents think it is” certainly rings true with regards to Radio 4's Sunday. 

Today's programme (a) discussed the West's culpability regarding vaccine inequality in Africa [sample question from presenter Emily Buchanan to a South African bishop:  “Do you have any message for leaders here about the fact that there is this inequality in availability and people here in Europe are having their third jab?”], (b) dealt with the migrant crisis by avoiding the word 'migrant', (c)  told “a refugee story with a happy ending”' about Afghan girl footballers arriving in the UK [from Pakistan], (d) talked about domestic abuse in connection to faith whilst being vague about specifics, (e) looked at the problems faced by deaf people in churches, and (f) returned to the migrant crisis by talking of “Britain's obligations” towards unattended children and the shortage of Muslim foster parents, before ending by (g) interviewing the former Archbishop of York John Sentamu in the context of him being “the first person of African descent to head Christian Aid” [i.e. the 'identity' angle]. 

P.S. Here are two social media reactions to one moment in the closing interview: 

(1) There seemed to be note of alarm or panic in voice of Emily Buchanan as Archbishop Sentamu threatened to go off script suggesting asylum seekers might actually be grateful for receiving sanctuary.  

(2) I note the presenter moved rapidly on when he suggested Muslim asylum seekers should not prioritise maintaining their Islamic faith but should instead be first concerned about just being safe in whatever foster home, Christian or otherwise, they found themselves placed in.

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 BBC goes too far in point-scoring in drama even for 'The New Statesman'

I don't watch many [i.e. any] BBC dramas these days but heard Radio 4's Sunday plugging BBC One's Ridley Road yesterday.

The Sunday interview about Jewish people standing up to fight fascism in the UK in and around the 1960s was interesting but left a lot of questions unanswered, including how big a threat the far-right actually was back then. 

And on hearing the segment I suspected that the BBC would draw modern parallels, and that those parallels wouldn't even hint at Corbynite Labour / Muslim antisemitism.

I see from the New Statesman that my suspicions of present day political point-scoring appear justified.

The New Statesman says that Ridley Road “inadvertently glamourizes neo-Nazis” by taking the National Socialist Movement “far too seriously.”

It also says that “the script strains predictably hard for parallels with our own times” - and adds “you will hear the words 'we want our country back' more than once”.

So I think we can gather from that that this BBC drama went too far even for the New Statesman in trying to score present-day political points, including about Brexit.

I'll have to trust The New Statesman on this, because I won't be watching it.

The Bishop of Radio 4's 'Sunday'

  

It's surely time now for David Walker, the go-ahead Bishop of Manchester, to be officially installed as Bishop of Radio 4's Sunday. 

He's on the programme so often, usually receiving the BBC's blessing for one of his campaigns.

This week Sunday helped publicise his campaign against the Government's latest immigration bill. 

If you didn't hear it yourself, here's a flavour of how it was framed today:

William Crawley: Good morning. On this week's Sunday, is the medieval idea of sanctuary coming back in a world of asylum seekers and refugees? 

William Crawley: Still to come on Sunday, why being a Good Samaritan may soon be a criminal offence, according to the Church of England. 

William Crawley: The Nationality and Borders Bill currently going through Parliament has angered some Church of England bishops. 12 bishops have signed a public letter this week accusing the government of effectively criminalising Good Samaritans. They say the bill would criminalise not only attempts to cross the border irregularly, nor even simply people-smuggling, but even those who take part in the rescue of boats in distress at sea. This week churches have also been welcoming Afghans who fled their homeland last month after the Taliban took control. The BBC's Carolyn Atkinson was at St Paul's church in Marylebone as volunteers welcome some of those refugees.

Naturally for Sunday, no one who thought differently on the issue was heard from, so here's a flavour of the response on Twitter instead:

• The Bishop of Manchester once again managed to walk past the issue that the people he is discussing are effectively fleeing France & by extension the EU & are in no way "compelled" to risk "perilous" crossing over Channel from which everybody arrives safely in Kent, so parallels [with the Good Samaritan story] seem weak.

• Suggest these bishops look at a world map. We are a tiny island. Across the world millions face war & prejudice but, realistically, it’s just not possible to accommodate, integrate, house, educate & offer free healthcare to them all in the UK. 

• The clueless bishop who doesn't think before opening his mouth. Encouraging people to risk their lives illegally crossing one of the busiest shipping lanes in an inflatable. Placing themselves & others at risk. And what of the poor, whose jobs they would take, he doesn't care.

And the Bishop of Manchester wasn't the only bishop given a bit of free advertising for his campaign this week. The programme began with Mark Strange, the go-ahead Bishop of Moray, Ross & Caithness campaigning about climate change, and here's how that was framed by Sunday:

William Crawley: Ahead of Cop26, the UN climate Change Conference in Glasgow taking place next month, faith leaders across the UK have united in a declaration, which they hope will raise up a new generation of advocates for climate justice. The Glasgow Multi-Faith Declaration calls on faith communities to make transformational changes in their lives for the sake of the planet and to speak truth to the politically powerful about their responsibilities. But what does transformational change look like in practical terms, electric cars, avoiding air travel, moving away from meat based diets, reusing clothing. I asked Bishop Mark Strange, Primus of the Scottish Episcopal Church, the Anglican communion's delegate to COP26 and one of the architects of this new multi-faith declaration.

William Crawley: Well, on this third commitment of speaking truth to power, when the UK Government, when Boris Johnson's government effectively, says the Government's most international priority is dealing with with the climate crisis and at the same time the Government is supporting a new coal mine or cutting taxes on flights in response to what we've been through with Covid, some have used the term 'hypocrisy' of this Government in describing what they say and what they are doing. Would you use that term? 

Bishop Strange: I think I probably have used that term.

Again, no alternative voice was heard from.

Very Sunday.

🤣

It also wouldn't be Radio 4's Sunday without what I used to call "the usual airing of Muslim grievances". This week's programme plugged a book by two Muslim sisters. William Crawley described it as "very funny". The funny thing for me was that the passage they read out was "the usual airing of Muslim grievances":

Tariq: Sufya, there's enough bad press about Muslims without us joining in as well.

Me: I wasn't singling out Muslims.

Tariq: Look, it was OK when we were young, right. We could pretend it didn't matter then. We were just harmless Asians. But things have changed. I go into those meetings with the Home Secretary and all those excellent liberals that advise the big man. To them we are book burners, wife abusers, terrorists. That's how they see us. Most of them don't count me on their team, even though I'm sitting right in the middle of them.

Me: But I can't be on a team with all the fundis.

Tariq: They won't have you in the Islamophobes.

Did you🤣?

The Farhud

BBC Radio 4's Sunday marked the 80th anniversary of the Farhud - the murderous expulsion of Jews from Baghdad by pro-Nazi Arabs. I agree with these tweets about the feature:

 

• Almost interesting, but not enough on background politics.

• Yes, interesting report on something little known about. In fact, the programme makers were careful to refer to this "holocaust" without actually describing what happened, I suppose so as not to offend Arab or Iraqi sensibilities.

It's a remarkable thing that there are now just 3 Jews left in Iraq. 

Backlashes, peace, submission and the BBC

Radio 4's Sunday had a very Sunday take today.

I saw a tweet which summed it up very well:

David Robertson: The weekend of 9/11, the thought crossed my mind that the BBC’s right-on religious affairs programme would use it to talk about Islamaphobia. But no, surely they wouldn’t be so crass? It was worse. No mention of victims. No commemoration. Just Islamaphobia in Bradford.

That said, there was even more, as there was also a piece on how Sikhs got mixed up in the original 'backlash against innocent Muslims' after  9/11. 

The 'backlash' angle has been a classic BBC kneejerk take on such events for twenty years now. It seems to be their default angle.

The piece David mentions was a massive, uncritical plug - an advert, pure and simple - for Peaceophobia, a Bradford-based theatrical self-declared ''unapologetic response to rising Islamophobia around the world''. 

[So much for the BBC not featuring third-party advertising].

The piece featured someone explaining the title. She said that, as 'Islam' means 'peace', if you're 'phobic' about Islam you're also 'phobic' about peace.

Though doesn't 'Islam' actually mean 'submission'? 

'Submission' is something people might rightly be 'phobic' about, surely?