Like a polar bear on a receding piece of ice

Last night's Question Time ended with a question about the BBC.

Michael Portillo was particularly punchy about the BBC's prospects and drove on through all of Fiona Bruce's many defensive, pro-BBC interruptions. 

Here's a transcript:

Fiona Bruce: Let's take a question now from Maggie Stansfield. 
Maggie Stansfield: Should we continue to support the BBC as a universal public service broadcaster? 
(AUDIENCE SUCKS AIR THROUGH TEETH. SOME "OOHS"). 
Fiona Bruce: I don't know what that means, that sort of sigh, the noise in the room! Howard, I wanted to come to first on this because you were part of the Charter review for the BBC, the review that happens periodically to work out how much money the BBC should be given, if at all. And you were part of the review in 2004-05, and it looked at the licence fee, didn't it?
Howard Davies: Yes indeed. The short answer to your question, I would say, yes, personally. We looked at this 15 years ago and concluded, the licence fee is a funny thing in a way because it has several things against it. One is, of course, it's a poll tax. So the rich pay the same as the not so rich, and that's not normally the good way of taxing, really, because you like to have taxes which are progressive. So it's not good from that point of view. And the only thing it had going for it at the time... Well, two things really. One, was that actually people actually wanted it. There was a majority in favour of funding the BBC with a licence fee. So as economists, we sat there saying, well, why should we sit there and tell people they can't have what it is clear they actually want, even if it is a slightly odd way of doing it. What's changed now is that it's clear that only about a quarter of the population on recent opinion polls do favour the licence fee. So that has been a change over the 15 years since I last looked at it closely. So I think the question now has to be asked. The problem is that while the BBC appears on Freeview, it is not possible to determine who is watching the BBC at any one time, and determine whether you can have a subscription service or not because you are getting it through Freeview. I think in the long run, in ten or 15 years time, probably the BBC will have to move to some kind of a different funding model, a subscription model, when the technology is available to know exactly who is watching what, and then you can charge them appropriately for it. In the meantime, I have to say, I would stick with the licence fee. 
Fiona Bruce: Alison? 
Alison McGovern: I reserve the right to criticise the BBC when it does things that I don't like and puts on programmes I don't like...
Fiona Bruce: (interrupting) Feel free, don't mind me! 
Alison McGovern: ...but I think we all have to be a bit careful here, because I think there's a tonne of things that the BBC does that I can't see really a subscription service doing. I can't see anyone else doing. Most primary schools in the country watch Newsround now, which is absolutely brilliant. I can't see anybody making that for them for free. There's loads of programming that we all know of that's absolutely brilliant that the BBC does, so I think we have to be careful. Nobody should give the BBC a sort of free pass, and we should engage in our national support...national sport, rather, of complaining about the telly, and even shouting at it. 
Fiona Bruce: I'm sure people do that at this programme. I know they do. 
Alison McGovern: I'm sure they do, but I would say, let's all be a bit careful, because the BBC is an incredible national institution, like the National Health Service. Pretty unique to this country, and I can't see a paid-for subscription service doing some of the things that the BBC does. 
Fiona Bruce: Michael, as a former Conservative Cabinet minister, Secretary of State, what do you make of these briefings that seem to be coming out of Number 10, in the papers at the weekend? 
Michael Portillo: Do you mind if I answer the question, the main question, because I...? 
Fiona Bruce: OK. Will you do that one as well?
Michael Portillo: Yes, if you like, although that's not the area of my expertise. But I have to begin by declaring an interest, because I derive most of my income from the licence payer. (LAUGHTER). And therefore, you might be surprised when I say that I do not believe the licence fee can survive. It's partly, actually, my experience of making films. I make films with very young people. And the young people with whom I make films do not pay the licence fee. They do not have televisions. They consume their media on their mobile phones or on their laptops. And since, I think it was about two years ago, when you went on your laptop to download, to go to iPlayer and catch up, it asks you whether you have a licence fee. You now have to answer that question, so they answer no and that blocks them out of the BBC. Therefore these young people now have no connection with the BBC. They don't even watch the programmes that they make with me because they have no access to the BBC. And the BBC is losing its audience. And why? Because these people have any other number of opportunities to watch television, and they consume it as they wish and when they wish. The other extraordinary thing is that when you are abroad, you cannot consume the BBC. Or not BBC television, anyway. So even though I pay the licence fee, when I go abroad I am blocked from watching the BBC....
Fiona Bruce: (interrupting) Don't forget, the licence fee is not just for television. It's all the radio stations and online as well. 
Michael Portillo: Yes, radio is a different question and a much simpler question. But I also think that if we talk about television for the moment, there's not much evidence now on the BBC that it is performing a public service role. I don't think there is much evidence on the BBC now that they are doing things that other people could not possibly do. I mean, for example, in arts, there is almost no arts programming now on BBC television. If you want to see arts you would watch Sky Arts...
Fiona Bruce: (interrupting) Wouldn't you watch BBC Four? 
Michael Portillo: But I want to the more important point, that not only can British people not watch the BBC abroad when they have paid their licence fee, foreigners can't consume the BBC directly either. And there are eight, nine billion people out there who would be very keen to consume the BBC...
Fiona Bruce: (interrupting) You know there's BBC World? I don't want to keep butting in in the interests of accuracy... but there is BBC World. In the interests of accuracy. 
Michael Portillo: BBC World is not a real channel. The BBC is not proud of BBC World, seriously. 
Alison McGovern: I think the people who work on BBC World are probably proud of BBC World. 
Michael Portillo: I'm not sure that they are. (LAUGHTER). But the point is that, 20 years ago, Netflix was a corner shop renting video tapes. Today it is spending $10 billion per year on content. 20 years ago, the BBC... 
Fiona Bruce: (interrupting) And it is billions in debt. 
Michael Portillo: 20 years ago the BBC was a global name. Today the BBC is wedded to the licence fee. It is like a polar bear on a receding piece of ice.
Fiona Bruce: Hang on. I need to get the rest of the panel in. Ash?
Ash Sarkar: But look, I've got really strong feelings about this. I think that the BBC needs to adapt or die, but it shouldn't adapt in the direction that Dominic Cummings and his team at Number 10 are angling for it to change, which is to privatise, commercialise and no longer be licence funded model. I think the way it needs to adapt is to first be established on a permanent statutory footing so you don't have this brouhaha every ten years over the Charter renewal, in which the government of the day is able to exert a tremendous amount of political pressure by essentially holding the BBC's continuing existence hostage. I also think we need to look at things like a digital licence fee, and also taxing some of these big digital multinationals like Netflix, like Facebook, like Google, which make tremendous amounts of money in this country. I know there are a lot of people on the left who at the moment are furious with the BBC for elements of its news and current affairs coverage during the general election, and I share a lot of those criticisms. But what I would say to those people on the left who are currently saying they may as well support defunding the BBC on political grounds, is that handing over the British broadcasting environment to Rupert Murdoch, which is what would happen if we no longer had a licence payer funded BBC, is not a credible left-wing position. 
Fiona Bruce: George, what's going on? What is all this, all these briefings going out?
George Eustice: Well, there's going to be a licence fee model until at least 2027, so nothing is being done in a hurry anyway. The BBC is a cherished institution, there is no doubt about that. But I think both Michael and Howard have made good points, which is, just see how media has changed over the last decade with people now getting their content from smartphones, from iPads. Imagine what's going to happen just in the next seven years. So it's appropriate in my view to think about what the funding model should be and how best you should raise money to fund the BBC, because it can't make sense in the long term to still have a licence fee based on sort of conventional televisions that we grew up with in the 60s and 70s. At some point the model will need to change to reflect the changing way people are receiving their content. 
Fiona Bruce: And do you think public service broadcasting is possible under a different model? Does that even matter, do you think? 
George Eustice: I personally think it does, yes. I think there is an important role for public service broadcasting and this is where the difficulty comes. How do you fund that on a subscription only service? These are complex and difficult issues and that's why nothing is being done in a hurry and indeed, nothing much is going to change until 2027, which is when the licence fee model continues to at the very least. 
Ash Sarkar: So what about the sabre-rattling coming from your government, then, talking about the licence fee being under threat? Why do that if it's not in a hurry to change things? Is it just to exert a bit of influence over the appointment of the next director-general? 
George Eustice: I've not seen personally any sabre-rattling...
Ash Sarkar: (interrupting) You've never seen any sabre-rattling?! 
Fiona Bruce: It's all over the papers, the front page of the Sunday Times! 
George Eustice: I've learned not to believe everything you see in the papers...
Fiona Bruce: (interrupting) Come on, George! I mean, no one's going to believe that! You haven't been reading the papers?!
George Eustice: I don't believe everything I read in the papers, that's what I was saying. I never have.
Michael Portillo: Can I just say...Howard has referred to looking at things over ten or 15 years and George has just said everything is going to be the same until 2027. I don't think either one of you has an idea of how quickly this picture is changing and I'm deeply depressed by both those answers. I think the BBC may be in very serious difficulty if we wait until 2027 before we decide on a different model of how the BBC can be carried forward, not just as a means for us to watch television, but as a means of taking the wonders of the BBC to the world, which at the moment are not available in a modern form, that is to say they are not available to the individual who wants to buy a BBC programme at the moment that he or she chooses to watch it. 
Fiona Bruce: We have got very little time left, but you have had your hand up for quite some time. You may end up having the last word. 
Audience member: I just think the BBC is a national institution that we are all proud of. And I don't think anybody should be worrying about paying that licence fee. It's incredibly good value. What I think is the problem is what are we spending that money on, how much do we pay our presenters... And I'm not asking this to you, Fiona! If we are paying six and seven figure salaries to TV presenters, what does that actually say, coming back to the lady's first question of tonight, the people that we value in this country, the people that are doing really hard jobs, day in, day out, for a pittance, and why is that money going to pay people to do something here, when I think anybody in the audience could get up and present a programme brilliantly as well. Nothing controversial! 
Fiona Bruce: It's fighting talk. To me and Michael. 
Audience member: I'll do it for you next week if you like.
Fiona Bruce: OK, watch this space, watch this space. On that bombshell, I won't be sitting here again...What's your name?
Audience member: Michael. 
Fiona Bruce: Michael will be sitting here next week. Our hour is up. Just as well.

Ash to ash, dust to dust

I see the BBC continues to champion Ash:

Am I alone in thinking that Ash Sarkar is given vastly disproportionate airtime by @BBC; deployed so frequently solely because she articulates her communism vehemently, thereby polarising debate, adding clicks.. and people tweet to object? Thank God for Michael Portillo. #bbcqt https://t.co/V5QAWp3X6S

— Adrian Hilton (@Adrian_Hilton) February 19, 2020

Liking the way the BBC captions her "journalist".

Ashwatch

For fans of 'Literally a Communist' Ash Sarkar, you'll be pleased to learn that the BBC invited her onto another of its flagship programmes this week - Radio 4's Any Questions? 

I have a question: Why?

Ash dieback

It's a question we've discussed before and now Guido Fawkes is raising the issue too:

Media Guido: In the post-mortems the effect of the platforming of far-left types just because they were extremely active on Twitter on current affairs shows should be reflected on. It normalised people who would in the past have only been only selling Trotskyite papers outside train stations.

So, what's the right balance between encouraging the broadest diversity of opinion and making a star of Ash Sarkar? 

Champion Ash

Interesting fact:

Nigel Farage has been on Question Time once in 2019. Far-left scribbler Ash Sarkar has been on three times. 

Butt of the joke

As Arthur T notes on the open thread, there's a BBC News website article headlined Why we need internet jokes and memes more than ever that makes Jacob Rees-Mogg the butt of all but one of the jokes. And the exception is a joke about Brexit supporters in general. 

Why not feature a range of targets for recent internet jokes or memes, especially if you're meant to be seen as an impartial news source? 

As Monkey Brains notes, the latest retweet from the BBC reporter responsible, Will Chalk (whose name sounds like the personal motto of a fine old-fashioned schoolteacher), is from present-day BBC favourite Ash ("literally a communist") Sarkar, mocking Boris Johnson. And if you scroll on, it's one of several retweets from the BBC's William of our Ash. He also retweeted her saying, "I don’t think 7% of the country should produce 84% of British Prime Ministers. That’s why I’m backing the campaign to integrate fee-paying schools into the state system. #AbolishEton" and also a retweet mocking swimmer Sharron Davies for noting the importance of male-female relationships in the survival of our species.

Now, of course, it may be wrong to impute bias to him from this. Maybe, his inclinations are more romantic in nature - perhaps, ironically, in a Sharron Davies male-female kind of way?

Ash Sarkar again

Bruce Lawson (modern day follower of Montaigne): Someone very senior at the BBC recently said the whole corporation has become obsessed with diversity quotas. That’s the only charitable reason I can think of as to why BBC Two decided to have anti-Semite Ash Sarkar, a non-expert and non-historian on a Holocaust programme.

Tracy Ann Oberman (actress): Dear Patrick Holland, BBC2, as someone who lost family during The Rise of The Nazis I am deeply disturbed that of all knowledgable experts/historians, you use Ash Sarkar, a woman who endorsed the spray painting of the remaining Watsaw Ghetto wall - an open grave for our families. Why? Her friend Ewa spray painted FreeGaza on my family's grave. They died for being Jewish long before Israel even was a thought of existence. Ash Sarkar is not a Holocaust historian or expert. She is a Momentum Propagandist. Why have her on as an expert voice? So upsetting. BBC Two, Patrick Holland, rethink your ‘experts’ please. Too much insensitivity and lack of diligence on this.

Euan Phillips (Labour Against AS): What the hell are BBC Two doing making a programme called ‘Rise of the Nazis’ and featuring Ash Sarkar, who supported the desecration of the Warsaw Ghetto and opposes the IHRA definition of antisemitism? How tone deaf/insulting/outright racist are you?? 

Yes. This isn't another (albeit sick) joke about the ubiquity of Ash Sarkar ("literally a communist") on the BBC.

She really is an expert 'talking head' in the major new three-part BBC Two series The Rise of the Nazis.

Even by the standards of the present-day BBC, that's truly extraordinary, isn't it?

Balance deficit

Further to Craig’s piece about the fab regularity of Ash Sarkar’s TV appearances, I was thinking the very same thing only yesterday. 

Not only in respect of our favourite literal commie - but what about the plethora of other glottal-stopping far-left political pundits, several (but not all) of whom are funny-tinged. (As I’m neither Angela Smith nor pale and interesting myself, I claim my privilege to use the phrase.)

The thing is, has the political median shifted so far to the left that the BBC believes it already includes a sufficient ration of ‘right-wing’ contributors to provide its charter’s obligatory balance? 

If that’s what they think, then which individuals do they see as the alt-right equivalent to the Novara Media brigade?

Unavailable for comment

We don’t see much of Nick Griffin these days, thankfully, and when Michal Szewczuk and Oskar Dunn-Koczorowski appeared on our screens in wasn’t in the capacity of political punditry. Anyway, they’re currently unavailable.  But neither can we see, say, Tommy Robinson, unless he’s in the news for some other reason. 

I’m not at all anxious to have a tidal wave of right-wing faces beamed into my living area, but we rarely even see Douglas Murray, and I can’t say that Toby Young is literally a fascist or even an alt-right reactionary. Nor is JR-M. 

We do see Melanie Phillips occasionally, but she’s not on every single edition of Politics Live, now is she?

So who do you think balances out the left-leaning overload, or if you think ‘no-one’ who do you think we should see more of? 

Ash on the BBC's sleeve

Literally a BBC regular

“Ash on an old man's sleeve,
Is all the ash the burnt roses leave.
Dust in the air suspended
Marks the place where a story ended,
Dust inbreathed was a house -
The wall, the wainscot and the mouse.
The death of hope and despair,
This is the death of air.”

Rob Burley, the BBC's head of live political programmes, is known for his entirely reasonable-sounding catchphrase, "So, here's the thing, people you don't agree with will sometimes be on TV."

Ah but, Rob, surely sometimes people I don't agree with will be on TV to a degree that perhaps merits questioning?

Take (self-professed 'literally a communist') Ash Sarkar of the tiny extreme-left website Novara Media, who we here at ITBB keep joking about because of her fabulous regularity on the BBC. 

Well, guess what? Yes, she's on The Andrew Marr Show again this weekend!

So - and once more to re-channel my inner Samira Ahmed - let's ask the question again: What on earth is the BBC doing normalising and making a star of Ash Sarkar, a far-left figure from an extreme, controversial website with a very small readership?

Now, I'm very pro-free speech and am far from unhappy to see Our Ash yet again on the BBC. I like watching her. But...

...Questions surely remain about why certain extremist people are plucked from semi-obscurity and 'platformed' while others from the supposed other end of the political spectrum (often far less extreme than Ash) aren't given licence-fee-funded licence to be an 'uncontroversial BBC regular'.

There are strong implications of soggy-left BBC double standards here, of course.

Let me be bold and hazard a guess as to why Ash is a BBC favourite: She's a young, good-looking female Corbynista who mostly manages to appear much more moderate when she's appearing on TV than she does when she's on social media. And she's non-hideously BAME ('black, Asian and minority ethnic'). Bingo for the BBC's tick boxes?

Thursday Night Quiz

For those who want a quiz and some jokes tonight, BBC favourite Ash Sarkar has tweeted a couple of rib-tickling Islamophobic quips this evening (ambulances required lest sides literally split), and I've been inspired by R Ash to match her - beautifully-sculpted communist finger nail to shabby reactionary running-dog capitalist lickspittle finger nail (so to speak) - with two hot-off-the-presses jokes of my very own. 

So ITBB's quiz tonight is to see if you can guess which two are Ash's jokes and which two are mine. (Warning: I may not come off better):

1. What do you call a halal menu? Allah carte.
2. “Waiter, why is my dessert just the Quran served with a dollop of ice cream? Because you ordered Allah mode.”
3. What is the favourite French novel for Muslims nostalgic for the Caliphate? Proust's 'Allah recherche du temps perdu'.
4. What did Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdoğan name as his favourite piece by Mozart? The finale of the Piano Sonata No. 11 in A major, K311, the 'Rondo Allah Turca'. 

A final quip beginning "What almost-rhyming Muslim cry provokes panic in most snack bars?" has been banned by Facebook, Twitter and the BBC. 

BBC One Schedule, Friday 19 April 2019

Some people seem to get everywhere on the BBC...

19:00 For the Many not the One Show
Alex Jones and Ore Oduba are joined by Ash Sarkar and The Vamps.

19:30 Still On TV At All Hours
Granville's selling 'designer' sausages, and Ash and Cyril go on TV again.

20:00 A Question of Communism
With Sue Barker, Matt Dawson, Phil Tufnell. Colin Jackson, Jazz Carlin, Ash Sarkar and Dom Parsons.

20:30 NorthLondoners
Louise is put in danger, and Denise and Ash's nail technician shop opens for business.

21:00 Have I Got News for You
Team captains Paul Merton and Ian Hislop are joined by guest host Ash Sarker and panellists Ash Sarkar and Ash Sarkar.

21:30 Would I Lie to Jeremy?
With Olivia Colman, Ash Sarkar, Jon Richardson and Michaela Strachan.

22:00 BBC News at Ten
The latest national and international news from the BBC.

22:30 The Graham Norton Show
With guests Pol Pot, Chairman Mao, Joe Stalin, Ash Sarkar and Daniel Radcliffe.

23:20 Killing Ash
Ash joins a secret KGB unit tracking Villanelle and the shady organisation she works for (the BBC).

BBC normalising far-left extremism

Ash 'Madame Mao' Sarkar

So, here's the thing, people you don't agree with will sometimes be on TV...

And sometimes people you don't agree with will be on TV a lot.

Take self-professed communist Ash Sarkar from the extreme-Left website Novara Media. 

She's all over the BBC these days. 

Even Politics Live presenter Elizabeth Glinka said to her today, "You're on programmes like this. You're all over the place". 

And Elizabeth wasn't wrong. This year alone she's been on Question Time, The Andrew Marr Show, Newsnight and Politics Live (repeatedly).

Isn't the BBC enabling far-left extremism by giving her a platform so often? 

Anyhow, a chap from Guido Fawkes, Tom Harwood, has been complaining about this on Twitter:

• BBC justifying talking about communism because the BBC invites communists onto its programmes. Incredible circular logic.
• By how much they're on TV you'd be forgiven for thinking Novara Media a massively popular site, but they're simply not:

• The media coverage these guys get compared to their actual popularity is pretty staggering, to be quite honest. 

Now, it's possible, of course, that Tom is partly angling here for BBC to hand out more invites to people from Guido Fawkes, but he probably has a point. 

Anyhow, in honour of Elizabeth Glinka, here's Mikhail Glinka's beautiful 'Lullaby' from A Farewell to St. Petersburg (one of my favourite Russian songs):

Free PR

Ash Sarkar

I can't hear them all now - all the outraged Samira Ahmeds and Alastair Campbells - denouncing the BBC for giving Ash 'I'm literally a communist, you idiot' Sarkar of Novara Media (aka 'Norovirus Media') a platform on last night's Question Time, but 'borrowing' some of their earlier comments and re-fitting them for purpose, such tweets might have gone something like this: 

• "Sorry BBC QT, but really disagree with giving this woman a platform".
• "Why is the BBC enabling far-left extremism?"
• "Here they go again, the BBC normalising communists. 100 million dead because of communists like her".
• "The voice of the Communists. That’s the BBC".
• "It's editors' decision to give her airtime. It's free PR for her and her extremist site".

As a believe in free speech, I've no problems whatsoever with her being on. 

Triple A (Ayesha, Ash and Alexandria) updated

My heart sank a tiny bit when I saw that Ayesha Hazarika was on Politics Live (again!!) (30:38) but I cheered up a little when I realised that Camilla Tominey was on as well. 

To her great credit, (Ayesha that is) gave a cracking speech  - a  mini-rant - about last night’s PLP antisemitism debacle. I don’t know if she was present at the meeting, but she described the atmosphere  - I can’t remember the exact word she used and I can’t get iPlayer (or whatever it’s restyled itself as) to load, but it was something like “heated, toxic, fraught”. I might chase it up sometime.  

Ah! The iPad will play the iPlayer. The word I temporarily forgot was ‘stormy’. 

“Antisemitism has cast a great stain over the Labour Party” […] They have to do better - there was a very stormy meeting last night at the PLP where the General Secretary was under fire and I think - you know - we should not be defensive about this. We are the party of equality. We are the party of social justice. We take anti-discrimination - incredibly important (sic)  and we can’t have a hierarchy of racism in our party, we have to take this seriously.[…] 

You also have to give the public trust in your disputes resolution system and […] 

and not attack people who raise the issue of antisemitism - so many, particularly Jewish MPs, have been hounded on social media by Corbyn supporters saying, “oh you’re weaponising antisemitism” - that is a gross insult particularly when we’ve just celebrated, you know, Holocaust Memorial Day.”

I happened to be watching Sky yesterday - not my choice -  but, you know, ‘democracy’, and there on the screen was Ash Sarkar discussing “Fake News’ with Dermot Murgnathingy. She was sitting beside ex-BBC Head of news and Current Affairs James Harding who was there to plug his new ‘slow news’ project, ‘Tortoise’ or some such. 

Both men were exceedingly deferential to Ms Sarkar. I can see why. She’s very articulate - talons a-flailing - and full of passion. Everyone seems to want her on their show.  

You never know though. As Grant Shapps MP joked mischievously on Politics Live, (and somewhat inappropriately directed at new gal on the block Dominique) "young, black and….Conservative!!!" by repeating that well-known philosophical remark attributed to Churchill: “If You Are Not a Liberal at 25, You Have No Heart. If You Are Not a Conservative at 35 You Have No Brain.”

Hmm. How old is Ash? About 26 I think - (going on 40) so maybe she’ll come to her senses in seven or eight years or so. Then she might be worth deferring to.

Did you catch that cringeworthy tete-a-tete (via old fashioned telephone) between Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Corbs? Maybe Jezza’s star is on the wane. First Venezuela, now this. It’s quite a big story everywhere but the Beeb.

 Or maybe it’s just the BBC’s obstructive search engine. I wouldn’t put it past the BBC to make that, as well as BBC Sounds, inaccessible just for me.

Update:

I’ve just seen the kind of thing that must have inspired, or contributed, to Ayesha Hazarika’s outburst. Remarks made by prominent Corbynista Chris Williamson MP.  BBC Watch has this:

“In a 2017 interview with the Guardian: 

“He said rows over Corbyn’s handling of antisemitism within Labour and his approach to Venezuela were “proxy wars and bullshit”.

“I’m not saying it never ever happens but it is a really dirty, lowdown trick, particularly the antisemitism smears. Many people in the Jewish community are appalled by what they see as the weaponisation of antisemitism for political ends.”

Free Speech

It’s all very well arguing about free speech, no-platforming, diversity, safe spaces, being/not being triggered, positive discrimination and having the chance to see and hear others’ points of view before making up your own mind about controversial issues. I get all that, and I do realise that you can’t have everything your own way. (Bit like Brexit)

However, the BBC’s over-exposure of Ash Sarkar is verging on ‘diversity of opinion too far’.

First there was saturation-point Paul Mason, a subversive hard-left pundit whom the Beeb couldn’t seem to get enough of - but his appearances have thankfully subsided, (although he was on this morning’s Broadcasting House) but even he seems more moderate these days, perhaps in comparison to the likes of Sarkar, assorted Asian women and that weirdo from Squawkbox. 
I feel triggered by Ash Sarkar, with those terrifying talons that she keeps waving in the air, although I suppose I must defend her right to wave them. 

Talking of Broadcasting House, they too touched on the aforementioned Rod Liddle, namely his recent, controversial article about missing dads. Absent dads, I mean - and to be more specific, absent black dads.

So they brought along that internet sensation of a black dad who made a video that went viral, in which he stated what could be described as the bleedin’ obvious, which is that if someone threatens you with a knife, if possible, scarper! Do as the Satnav says, and turn around where possible.

However, to most victims of the stabbing epidemic, not losing face seems to have taken priority over not losing your life. (Which would you rather save?) 

That inability to lose face reminds me of the continuing conflict in the Middle East - peace or intractability, that’s the choice. I digress.

Anyway, the wise dad, whose video stating the bleedin’ obvious went viral, has plans. He wants to set up youth projects to give kids something to do. Excellent! But not new.

Remember Camila Batmanghelidjh? I think I’m her one remaining supporter. Yes, she messed up, but her original approach to feral youth was promising.

See the way the BBC’s Chris Cook completely vilifies her. His article drips with rancour.  He states that the service she provided was unnecessary. 

“As its end approached, local charities, councils, child psychiatrists and officials all steeled themselves for the end of a £20m-a-year enterprise that had said it was in the same business as them. 

But the flood of need never came.”

“We can also now definitively say that local youth crime statistics have given the lie to a prediction from the charity that its collapse would lead to a descent into "savagery". None of the ups and downs coincide with the charity's collapse. Changes in city-wide crime, policing approaches and gangland economics matter much more than Kids Company did. 

I would suggest that this is a matter of opinion. The spate of knife crime, gangs, drugs and absent dads is hardly consistent with “The flood of need never came”.

I do know this viewpoint won’t go down well with many of you but there it is. I claim it in the name of free speech.

Extremist backer of mass-murderous 20th Century totalitarian ideology become BBC regular. What larks!

Sometimes BBC banners go askew, to simply hilarious effect. 

For example - coming up shortly. Stay with us (as they say on the BBC News Channel) - here's self-declared communist Ash Sarkar:...

...(despite Communism killing over 100 million people over the previous century - a statistic that speaks of over one hundred million individual tragedies.

It's like Ash herself had been murdered for political, class or religious reasons, or intentionally starved to death, or starved to death though policy errors or torture, not just once, or a hundred times, or a thousand times, or 100 thousand times, or a million times, or 10 million times, but over 100 million times.

To be fair, I suspect she really wouldn't enjoy dying that many times, even for the Corbyn cause).

So, you may ask, who's this Ash? Well, she's a new regular on the BBC from the extreme alt-left website Norovirus.Media:

Oddly, I've not seen the likes of Samira Ahmed protesting furiously about such a fringe extremist being 'normalised' by the BBC.

As you'll all doubtless be well aware, the whole hilarious mess-up arose here because the lead singer from Wheatus - who, m'lud, I'm informed by my learned friend, Mr Rees-Mogg QC, had a hit in 2000, rather charmingly, one thinks, entitled Teenage Dirtbag (though a dirtbag, I'm informed, is not a superior brand of vacuum cleaner) - was up next.

And that banner just happened to appear above the face of Norovirus's early-middle-aged, extreme-left, communist, BBC regular Ash. 

How we all laughed.

I, being a fan of free speech, am glad that Ash seems to have become 'Our Ash' at the BBC. There's nothing nicer than listening to barely-thinking apologists for the most mass-murderous ideology in human history chewing the cud on BBC politics programmes, being glamorous and getting away with it because they're (fairly) young, female, BAME and (very) left-wing.

Ticks, ticks and ticks for the BBC, no doubt.

What though if you're white, working class, non-racist, male, not glamorous, hard-to-place politically, but - to the annoyance of 'them' - not keen on Islam or heavy levels of disruptive mass migration? 

Do you get a regular spot on the BBC? 

No. You don't.

You really, really don't - despite you not supporting any murderous 20th Century ideologies. 

Funny old world, isn't it, BBC-wise?