Showing posts with label Caroline Wyatt. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Caroline Wyatt. Show all posts

Saturday, 22 June 2019

Which UK political party's membership is over 95% white?


For our many collectors of examples of the BBC repeatedly pushing the 'maleness, paleness and staleness' of those 160,000 Conservative Party members who are eligible to choose Our Next Prime Minister, tonight's PM on Radio 4 gave us another gem:
Jeremy Hunt is still taking questions from the audience while we're on air and they are some of the 160,000 or so Conservative Party members who will decide which of the two men becomes the next Prime Minister. According to research by Queen Mary University London last year that membership is three-quarters men, while 9 out of 10 are middle-class, 97% are white, and just over half live in London and the South of England. 
That 97% figure, much quoted by the BBC, prompted me to actually find the source of it - and PM's citing of Queen Mary University of London helped me find it

And what an eye-opener it is!:


Yes, it does find that Conservative Party members are 97% white, but it also finds that the SNP is similarly 97% white and that the Labour Party is 96% white and the Lib Dems are 96% white.

The Lib Dems turn out to be even more middle-class than the Conservatives, with Labour over three-quarters middle-class too. 

Every party has a majority male membership too, though the Conservatives do stand out a little there.

So why are we getting BBC news bulletins (like yesterday's BBC One News at Six) and BBC reporters like Matthew Price and PM hosts like Caroline Wyatt (etc) making so much of the 'whiteness' and 'wealthiness' of the Tory Party membership when all the other big parties'  memberships are just as white and roughly as wealthy? 

And, not to be self-promoting (something it's usually hard to accuse us of being!), but why is this tiny, unfunded two-person blog able to find this out - and point this out - while the massively-funded BBC simply just parrots it about the Tories without mentioning the figures for the other parties?

I'm so glad I listened to PM tonight. I feel as if I've busted an endlessly-parroted Big Lie. 

Sunday, 26 August 2018

Gone tomorrow

You can’t say it’s never worth listening to the BBC. This morning I heard a speaker mention (on Paddy O’Connell’s Broadcasting House) a brilliant piece in today’s Telegraph by Sir John Jenkins, British Consul-General in Jerusalem, 2003-06. 

As I haven’t subscribed to that newspaper since their self-declared ‘move to the left’ I was pleased to be able to access it online by simply ‘registering’. 

Under the heading: “For Islamists, Jeremy Corbyn is a useful idiot”, this erudite piece by a person who actually knows what he’s talking about sums up Jeremy Corbyn and his ridiculous claims about ‘working for peace’.

In the interests of the greater good, I’ll respectfully steal as many passages from it as I dare. 
“When confronted with the evidence of his close association with senior figures from Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood and Hizbollah, and his presence in Tunis at the 2014 wreath laying for Palestinians killed by Israel, including those responsible for the 1974 Munich atrocity, Corbyn says he does it all for Middle Eastern peace: if only we’d all talk to each other more, there would be no more conflict. 
Fine words. But perhaps Corbyn might start by explaining how exactly his meetings with these groups, his clear sympathies with at least some of their aims and activities, and his public support for them has helped promote the peace he claims to want – though has failed so far to achieve. “

How well I remember the BBC’s continual plea - that we should “Talk to Hamas’. It was one of Sarah Montague’s recurring themes.
“When Hamas won the last Palestinian legislative council elections, in January 2006, I was British consul-general in Jerusalem. Progressive opinion immediately demanded that the West should abandon its policy of decades, talk directly to the new Palestinian government and continue funding it – irrespective of its commitment to the politics of physical force, including suicide bombings and other terror acts, its refusal to recognise Israel, its rejection of instructions from the Palestinian president and its structural anti-Semitism. 
And yet the only thing that ever really mattered was for Hamas to talk to Israel. There is no evidence that Western governments or individuals talking to Hamas had the slightest effect on its policies, any more than our talking to Hizbollah in Lebanon, the violent Shia militias in Iraq or the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt had the slightest effect on them. 
The reverse was the case. These organisations used those who talked to them as useful idiots, persuading them against all the evidence that they were committed to peace while continuing to do what they had always done and believe what they had always believed: that the problems they faced could be resolved at the right time through force.[…] 
It may be that I too don’t get Corbyn’s exquisite irony (anti-Semitism as the new anti-racism: who knew?). But for anyone with a normal moral compass, it is hard not to think that Corbyn’s account of his activities is deliberately evasive and deeply troubling. He can clear all this up tomorrow by releasing records of his meetings and revealing himself as the man of peace he claims to be. If he doesn’t, many may unfortunately conclude that he’s just another delusional, virtue-signalling, right-on poseur. “

Since this is bound to be a long post, bear with me or scroll past the following snip from Justin Webb and Tom Barton speaking on BBC Today 24/08/2018

TB
“Labour’s defence of that point in context is that he was talking about a group of people, pro-Israel activists who were made up of both Jewish people and non-Jewish people and he was using….. 
JW
“I see….. 
TB
“…..to refer to…. this particular group of activists and not, they say,  to the Jewish community.

See? Here we’re talking about a group of activists, not just Richard Millett the blogger who apparently confronted Manuel Hassassian because he didn’t get the irony in the Palestinian Ambassador to the UK's comment: 
“You know I’m reaching the conclusion that the Jews are the children of God, the only children of God and the Promised Land is being paid by God!
I have started to believe this because nobody is stopping Israel building its messianic dream of Eretz Israel to the point I believe that maybe God is on their side. Maybe God is partial on this issue.”
Yes, it’s that old “Chosen People” meme, which is deliberately misinterpreted by most antisemites to infer a nasty kind of Jewish supremacy. 
However, it was Richard Millett himself  - he who supposedly doesn’t understand English irony - who, in his 2013 blog, pointed out the actual irony.  Which is, of course, that Hassassian started that particular rant - the one that Jeremy Corbyn thought demonstrated real English irony - with this gem:
 “We, the Palestinians, the most highly educated and intellectual in the Middle East, are still struggling for the basic right of self-determination.” 
If one needed to spell it out, which one really shouldn’t need to do - one would remind the good Ambassador that he has projected a bucketload of wishful thinking about who’s educated and intellectual and who ain’t. That’s pretty ironic - not the kindergarten-level ‘joke’ about “Children of God”. You know, when little kids crease up when pretending something false is true, that something big is small, or something black is white. Hilarious, if you’re three years old. 
Hassassian's joke is that “God” must be on the side of the devil. Ha very ha. But it’s not irony.

Anyway, for good measure, here’s the last part of the Today banter:

 JW
“Do you think this statement will make a difference, within the party - I mean I’m thinking about his own MPs

TB
“Well, y’know I think there is, within the Labour Party a group of MPs, Jewish MPs in particular who have and are, taking an increasingly dim view of the party’s approach to - y’know - this broader issue of antisemitism. There’s the…. the broader row around the code of conduct within the party, whether they should adopt all of the examples that are included in the internationally accepted definition of antisemitism and I think, incrementally, each of these new revelations, and I have to say I think this one, in particular, is causing many to draw breath whether that statement will ease their concerns, frankly I think it’s quite unlikely.


Here’s another report this time introduced by an old BBC favourite, Caroline Wyatt. 

She too introduced Tom Barton.
TB
“I’ve been speaking to Richard Millett who writes a blog about antisemitism, and for that blog he regularly attends pro-Palestinian events - events he where he thinks people might use antisemitic language in order to record what people say and write about to on his blog and it’s in that capacity that the was at a speech in 2013 y the Palestinian representative to the UK Manuel Hassassian, now, in that video that you mentioned Caroline, when Jeremy Corbyn was talking about Zionists who attended that event failing to understand English irony, now Mr Millet, who’s Jewish, said that that characterisation strongly implied that he was not English, and was, therefore an antisemitic statement.” 
R M
When they say that I have no sense of English irony, it strongly implies that I’m not English and that obviously is strongly offensive. It was unnecessary to do it, and racist” 
TB

And to be clear, you’ve lived in Britain all your life and you are Jewish but you also feel English?”
RM
I’m very English - member of the Marylebone Cricket Club, big supporter of Yorkshire Cricket Club, Leeds United Football Club,  my dad served in the army towards the end of the second world war, he built up a fashion chain and gave employment to thousands of people, he’s provided more for this country than Jeremy Corbyn could ever dream that he could provide for the people of this country.

(Hmm! Sterling credentials for Englishness, what? I’m obviously a bit foreign) 

TB
And Mr Millet called on Jeremy Corbyn to apologise to the Jewish community for those comments. 
CW
But Tom, labour sources have told the BBC that Mr Corbyn’s comments were taken out of context. What have other Labour MPs been saying, and has there been any further comment from the Labour leadership? 
TB
Well some Labour MPs have been very critical of Jeremy Corbyn. Wes Streeting said that the language used here was inexcusable and abhorrent while Luciana Berger said the video contained inexcusable comments - it’s also worth noting though that less frequent critics of Jeremy Corbyn, people like Catherine McKinnell MP from Newcastle North, Phil Wilson the Sedgefield MP also tweeted their support for Luciana Berger, which underlines I think, the concern among some Labour MPs.

There is some confusion about whether Corbyn’s irony comment was about a ‘group of Jewish and non-Jewish Zionists’ or just one solitary Richard Millett, but let’s let that go. The most ironic thing of all is that Corbs thinks only the Pro-Palestinians amongst us (and the Palestinians themselves, obvs) “know history.” 
That's so telling. I mean, it’s tantamount to a public declaration of ignorance about, (not to mention complete disregard for)  the whole “other side of the narrative”. 

Anyway, back to the superficial and typically shallow way the BBC has treated this entire here- today-gone-tomorrow debacle. (It looks as if it’s off the agenda already)

The way John McDonnell has repeatedly stated, unchallenged, that Corbyn’s remarks were taken out of context. 

Well, what is the context then? Isn’t it that the remarks were made in the context of an antisemitic conference amongst a whole bunch of virulent antisemites. That puts it in its proper context. There; “fixed it for you”, as they say on the interweb.

As for using the word ‘Zionist’ in its true, political sense - the term ‘Zionist’ may not be a convenient substitute for “Jew” every single time someone utters it, but nowadays it is nearly always used in a derogatory (and antisemitic) manner.  The true political sense is all but forgotten, if not totally toxified.

Back to my opening topic, "Peace." Jeremy Corbyn’s version of peace looks to me like this.  At the very time - the first time since W W ll - that his party is helping to create a more urgent need than ever for a refuge for British and European Jews - Corbyn’s vision of peace means there can be no specifically Jewish state in the Middle East. 

His vision of justice for the Palestinians means the Right of Return and/or international recognition of a hostile, predominantly Islamic, aggressive Palestinian State side by side with a weakened, vulnerable, indefensible Israel. Corbyn’s aspirations for peace amount to the creation of yet another of the most undemocratic, war-like, antisemitic states on the planet. 

Sunday, 20 May 2018

Views my own


Caroline Wyatt

The World This Weekendpresented this week by Caroline Wyatt, ran a long segment today on antisemitism in the UK (now and then) with a particular focus on antisemitism in the Labour Party.

Furious Corbynista activists immediately took to social media to accuse the BBC of "propaganda not news," of "making it all about Labour", of "weaponising" antisemitism against Labour, of "having an agenda", and of "despising Corbyn".

But elsewhere I've read an equally furious comment from 'the opposite side' (and from someone I like) saying that this was a "hit piece" against Jews and Israel and is that blamed Israel for causing antisemitism and gave Corbyn's Labour a clean bill of health.

The former used such words as "disgraceful" to describe the piece; the latter called it "appalling".

So was this report a partisan hatchet job on Corbyn's Labour or a defence of it? And did it "weaponise" antisemitism spuriously or did the report actually come close to being antisemitic itself? And is this 'complaints from both sides' proof that the BBC must be getting it about right?

Well, I think this time the 'complaints from both sides' argument actually holds water (for once). And, putting on my oh-so-impartial blogger's hat, I believe from the evidence before me that Caroline Wyatt actually made a valiant attempt here to be both thoughtful and fair, and that she succeeded.

We heard from David Feldman of the Pears Institute for the Study of Antisemitism (and vice-chair of Shami Chakrabarti's much-criticised review into Labour Party antisemitism), three worried Jewish shoppers in Barnet, Dave Rich of the Community Security Trust, Tanya Sakhnovich and Sajid Mohammed from a Nottingham food bank, Angie Mindel of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the outgoing resident of the Board of Deputies of British Jews Jonathan Arkush and the national secretary of the Jewish Labour Movement Peter Mason

If we were to draw up a 'balance sheet' (so to speak), in one column (the anti-Corbyn column you might call it) I suppose we would have to put those three worried Jewish shoppers, Dave Rich, Jonathan Arkush and Peter Mason and in the other column (the pro-Corbyn column you might call it) would be Angie Mindel and David Feldman. Tanya and Sajid might arguably also go into the second column as they equated antisemitism with so-called Islamophobia. 

All in all, I think it was a reasonable spread of opinion (if you're into that kind of thing).

What do I know though? I'm just a bean-counting blogger. So, putting on your impartial blog reader's hat, what do you think? Did Caroline Wyatt disgrace the BBC here or do it proud (or neither)? 

Friday, 8 April 2016

A wringing of hands



Another report on tonight's BBC One News at Six that struck me as worth blogging about was Caroline Wyatt's piece on Pope Francis's opinions on the family.

Admirable as Caroline Wyatt's reporting can often be, this piece leant heavily towards the concerns of liberal Catholics - who were hoping for more from Pope Francis.

She mentioned such people's hopes but didn't mention (or consider) the reactions of conservative Catholics, who might have been hoping for less from Pope Francis...

....which is par for the course for the BBC.

And her chosen 'vox pop' (alongside the liberal cardinal) was a (male) gay couple unhappy with how things have turned out. Their family includes three children - two young boys and a little girl - and they wanted the Pope to give them his blessing.

I saw that and saw red. It seemed like typical BBC thoughtlessness (and naked BBC bias). 

Though socially liberal myself (libertarian even), the thought of a little girl and her two little brothers growing up without a mother filled me with deep unease. No young family should lack a mother.

It's only while writing this post that it struck me that circumstances might have intervened. It might not have been a 'lifestyle choice' matter. 

Maybe the mother died, leaving the father to look after the children. Maybe the father then found love with another man. Maybe the children are better off with their (loving) remaining biological parent and his (male) partner. And maybe that unhappy situation should be blessed by a loving church?

And maybe I should give up being 'a right-wing, anti-BBC blogger' and apply to co-present Sunday on Radio 4 instead.

Sunday, 18 October 2015

Unaltering images


Returning to a familiar theme - the BBC's relentless use of unrepresentative images of women and children and the disabled to 'represent' the migrant/refugee crisis (the vast majority of whom are actually young adult males)...

Here are screenshots of all the various close-up images being used on the BBC's main migrant crisis report tonight (from Caroline Wyatt), re those 84 protesting bishops. See if you spot a pattern:













Saturday, 1 August 2015

"Part of it is explaining this fantastic multi-faith, multi-cultural society that we have back to Britain"


Christine Morgan, BBC 

This week's Feedback on Radio 4 was a 'religion special'.

Some listeners felt that Radio 4 is "too Christian" and that "more religions should be represented", and in was their concerns which formed the starting point for the programme's main discussion.

The three people included in that discussion were all senior BBC figures:
  • Caroline Wyatt, BBC religious affairs correspondent 
  • Ashley Peatfield, BBC editor, religion and ethics
  • Christine Morgan, BBC head of radio, religion and ethics

Christine Morgan, the most senior of the three, made the following statement, explaining that one of the main purposes of the BBC's coverage of religion is to promote multiculturalism to the British people:
Part of it is helping people to articulate what they want to do, part of it is explaining this fantastic multi-faith, multi-cultural society that we have back to Britain, if you like...
To those people who think the BBC still has a missionary zeal to show us all how "fantastic" multiculturalism is, well, here's pretty clear evidence that they do.

Ashley Peatfield added:
It's equally important for people in non-diverse areas to hear about people they don't rub shoulders with day to day.
Feedback report shadowing BBC Radio Sheffield's recent (positive) reporting from the largest mosque in that part of Yorkshire followed, doubtless aimed at those very people.

Caroline Wyatt, characteristically, went somewhat against the BBC grain at one point though (thus reinforcing me and Sue's occasional past praise for her):
Television news...sometimes there is, amongst individual editors, a certain resistance to seeing things within a religious context, and I think partly because of fears of giving offence. 
So if you are, for example, covering Islamist extremism, a lot of the time people say, "Ah, yes, but it's nothing to do with Islam". You say, "Well, actually, if you look at the theology, there is a theology there that we should be examining." 
And I think that is something where sometimes people get nervous and they worry about giving offence, they worry about pigeon-holing. 
And some of those worries are coming from a good place, but I think there is a realisation increasingly that to understand how we live together, how we identify ourselves, that people now realise they do need to know. 
The rest of this edition of Feedback was taken up with a puff-like piece for Radio 4's Sunday and more on the Tim Farron-John Humphrys interview about the former's Christian faith (criticising the latter's lack of sensitivity). [Does Roger Bolton have it in for John Humphrys? Humph-bashing has become quite a regular feature of Feedback recently, as we've observed before - see here and here]. 

Sunday, 7 June 2015

Caroline in Putinland



In the spirit of open and honest blogging, I think I'm duty bound to record that this morning's Sunday on Radio 4 was excellent.

Putting my yellow (jaundiced) hat on, however...

...the programme certainly lived up to my caricature of it as being Tablet-fixated on Pope Francis: This edition was a special from Russia whose explicit starting point was the Pope's meeting with President Putin.

And it also allowed me to triumph again at the popular game of Sunday Bingo by having a Muslim representative (this time speaking with a strong meerkat accent) assert (without challenge) that there's no such thing as extreme or radical Islam and that people like Islamic State aren't true Muslims (#it'snothingtodowithIslam, #bingo!).

I am, of course, being somewhat flippant here (as you may perhaps have noticed). Yet, all in all, this was a seriously informative edition of Sunday, and I was impressed by it

And it was full of Russian Orthodox choral music too (a real favourite of mine).

It was presented by Caroline Wyatt rather than Ed Stourton and (for once) Pope Francis's actions received some proper questioning. (Was Ed listening? Did he faint?) 

Caroline was superb throughout.

Did you know that Moscow might possibly have a Muslim population of over one million - four times as many as its Jewish population - but only four mosques (shame!)? 

Or that there's a revival of Old Style unison chant in modern Russia (as opposed to all that chordal, polyphonic stuff that we Westerners take to so readily)? 

Or that the increasingly anti-Semitic Stalin created an autonomous Jewish region way out east? 

From the potted history of the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour (which Stalin dynamited and Yeltsin resurrected) to the interview with Moscow's Chief Rabbi, this was the kind of BBC broadcasting I wholly approve of.

And it would obviously be wrong not to say so.


This post is KremTroll-approved. 

Wednesday, 7 January 2015

Caroline Wyatt's take on the attack in Paris


Sue has written before of her "instinctive feeling...that Caroline Wyatt’s outlook is not, how shall I put it, run of the mill BBC". 

This article on the BBC News website reinforces that point and does great credit to Caroline Wyatt:



By Caroline Wyatt
Religious affairs correspondent, BBC News

In the heart of Europe in 2015, the killing of cartoonists and journalists for allegedly insulting God still comes as a shock, despite the rising number of such attacks in recent years.

In rational, post-Enlightenment Europe, religion has long since been relegated to a safe space, with Judaism and Christianity the safe targets of satire in secular western societies.

Not so Islam. The battle within Islam itself between Sunni and Shia, so evident in the wars of the Middle East, and the fight between extremist interpretations of Islam such as those of Islamic State and Muslims who wish to practice their religion in peace, is now being played out on the streets of Europe with potentially devastating consequences for social cohesion.

These latest shootings may be the work of "lone wolves" but their consequences will ripple across Europe and provoke much soul-searching about the failure of integration over the past decades.

Immigrant communities are already being viewed with increasing suspicion in both France and Germany, with their significant Muslim populations, and even in the UK.

France has the largest Muslim population in Europe, some five million or 7.5% of the population, compared with Germany's four million or 5% of the population, and the UK's three million, also 5% of the population.

In all three, mainstream political parties are being forced to confront popular discontent over levels of immigration and the apparent desire of some younger, often disaffected children or grandchildren of immigrant families not to conform to western, liberal lifestyles - including traditions of religious tolerance and free speech.

In the UK, that unease has largely played out on the public stage in a more peaceable manner, in the debate over "British values" and the recent Trojan horse schools affair.

The fatwa against the writer Salman Rushdie over 20 years ago following the publication of The Satanic Verses, forcing him into hiding for several years, was perhaps the first time the issue impinged on British consciousness, though the attacks of 7/7 were a reminder that extremist violence could also hit the heart of the UK.

However, France has already seen much more violence on its streets carried out in the name of religion over the past decades, although it has tried to write off most of its recent "lone wolf" attacks as the acts of mentally-unhinged individuals.

But some in its Jewish community have responded to increasing anti-Semitism and the killing of Jews in France and Belgium by Islamist extremists by emigrating to Israel and elsewhere.

Recent physical attacks on synagogues and Jews in the suburbs of Paris, where Jews and Muslims often live side by side in poorer areas such as Sarcelles, only exacerbated fears that the violence in the name of religion that grips parts of Africa and the Middle East, and which so many flee to Europe to escape, has followed them here.

Germany, too, has seen a rising surge of anti-Islam sentiment in its cities, with worries about young radicalized Muslims moving from a concern confined to far right and neo-Nazi parties into the mainstream, as seen in the recent popularity of the Pegida movement, which campaigns against the "Islamisation" of Europe.

Both political and religious leaders in Germany have spoken out against the movement, and counter-marches have been held, but Pegida's fears have brought thousands onto the streets.

The killings at Charlie Hebdo are a deeply unwelcome reminder to the west that for some, mainly young radicalised men, their fundamentalist interpretation of their religion matters enough to kill those who offend it.

As a result, across western Europe, liberally-minded societies are beginning to divide over how best to deal with radical Islamism and its impact on their countries, while governments agonise over the potential for a backlash against Muslims living in Europe.

Today, mainstream Muslim organisations in the UK and France have unequivocally condemned the killings, saying that terrorism is an affront to Islam.

But the potential backlash, including support for far right parties and groups, may well hurt ordinary Muslims more than anyone else, leaving the authorities and religious leaders in western Europe wondering how to confront violence in the name of religion without victimizing minorities or being accused of 'Islamophobia'.

Saturday, 3 January 2015

Reflective observations

Right on cue PMW and BBC Watch published Fatah’s 50th anniversary graphics, which shed new light on Jeremy Bowen’s statement that Abbas’s party has renounced violence, which looks ever more  fanciful to say the least.


"If the ground of Mecca is for worship, the ground of Jerusalem is for Martyrdom-death (Shahada)."
 “O young [Palestinians], Fatah is calling you”
 "Take up your arms again, so that your enemy won't find rest"
 "We were created to resist - the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades (Fatah's military wing) - Al-Asifa Army"
 "Fatah will carry on the struggle in all its forms until the liberation of the land and the man."
 "Load the machine gun with bullets - the machine gun is the path to my salvation."
Do any of the above slogans indicate that Fatah has given up the armed struggle? 

 Bowen in a bandage

********
I read BBC Watch’s article about Caroline Wyatt with interest. I have no evidence to support my instinctive feeling, which is that Caroline Wyatt’s outlook is not, how shall I put it, run of the mill BBC  - as far as Israel is concerned at any rate.

She had considerable credibility as the BBC’s defence correspondent, with the relevant facts and figures always (it seemed to me) at her fingertips, and I was surprised to find that her talents were suddenly diverted away from defence to religious affairs. She seems more suited to temporal than spiritual matters, if you ask me. (You didn’t, I know)

What did strike me was that by acknowledging that Bowen and co. have ‘improved’, she was at the same time recognising their previous 'guilt'. 


I completely agree with BBC Watch that Bowen has no business whatsoever quantifying amounts of suffering and worse still comparing one with another and thereby insinuating that Israel hasn’t suffered enough to justify retaliating. It’s way above his pay grade, in poor taste, motivated by bias and inappropriate for all kinds of other reasons. 

But if he is going to go down that road he's opening a Pandora’s box and asking for much harsher criticism for not making similar, broader comparisons, and not quantifying all suffering, everywhere. In particular for not comparing I/P related suffering, now and from all time, with suffering the world over caused by Islamic or religiously based wars. 
While we’re on the subject of the Limmud 2014 conference - not being part of any community, Jewish or otherwise, I didn’t know anything about this - never even heard of it - I immediately assumed Caroline Wyatt’s presence was a token gesture, like when politicians make sycophantic speeches at Friends of Israel conventions.
But Mr Google tells me that it’s not quite like that. Then I noticed this . What is going on here? 


Back to the JC online. The BBC ‘agonises’ so it does. Good. Jolly good. To the BBC we wish the same amount of agony as the BBC hath bestowed upon others amen. Equal quantities of course.
 “There’s a genuine attempt to get it right” she said. I believe her. I actually believe there is a genuine attempt in many cases to get it right. But how can you get something right without intelligent understanding of the basics?

My own cracked record is nearly worn to a stump, but I’ll say it once more. There is no moral equivalence here. Giving equal credence to all views regardless of merit is not a very desirable kind of impartiality. Oh dear. 

+++++++++

No-one is likely to be persuaded by a polemic, diatribe, rant, written or verbal onslaught. Many people, including Johann Hari have realised this.

“It’s struck me that, actually, polemic very rarely changes people’s minds about anything.”

It’s particularly relevant with regard to the Israel Palestine situation, which invariably affects people’s reasoning.  

“The word of reason is not going to be listened to on this issue” says Kevin Myers in an interesting conversation on the Melanie Phillips Show. Voice of Israel is a valuable discovery by the way. 

Maybe we should rename this blog ‘Pointless.’ God bless her and all who sail in her and smash a bottle of champagne against our hull.

A requisite attribute of a reliable blog is longevity. We’re in reflective mode. 
Better crack on.........



Sunday, 28 December 2014

Celebrating women bishops



This morning's edition of Sunday was a celebration of the Church of England's historic decision to appoint woman bishops. 

It was guest-hosted by the BBC's religious affairs correspondent Caroline Wyatt. Her studio guests  - two Anglican vicars, a Jewish Orthodox feminist and the vice-president of the Islamic Society of Britain - were all women too. There was also an interview with Justin Welby. 

Everyone was highly enthusiastic about the move. There was much talk from Caroline of "diversity" and whether the Church "is finally an equal opportunity employer", plus considerable use of the word "conservative" to describe those still opposed to the move.

Indeed, traditionalist opponents of women bishops were much talked about but largely absent. Liberal voices dominated the discussion to the almost total exclusion of that other point of view. The brief exception came during a report from Trevor Barnes during which the BBC reporter talked to two such 'conservatives' and adopted a very different tone to that prevailing elsewhere - a more questioning, challenging tone, putting them both firmly on the defensive. (They got about two minutes or so in total).

I see that several 'conservatives' have already taken to Twitter to condemn this edition as "unbalanced" and "particularly partisan" and it's hard to disagree with that. 

Such broadcasting doesn't do much to confront the perception that the BBC - and its flagship Radio 4 religious affairs programme above all - has a very pronounced liberal bias on such matters. The fact that most of society and the Church and, very probably, both you and I may strongly agree with them here still doesn't make it right, does it?

Monday, 11 August 2014

Today’s menu

A strange, superficial kind of balance was in evidence on the Today programme this morning. I suspect the producers, or the editors or whomsoever is responsible for selecting the morning menu are the thirteen-year-olds that Jeremy Paxman was complaining about the other day.
On the face of it they could claim they were pitching an item about antisemitism against a few about Gaza. But that would be facile.


An item presented by Caroline Wyatt about antisemitism in France preceded the usual Israel-bashing items. I hadn’t realised that Ms. Wyatt is now the BBC’s religious affairs (instead of defence) correspondent. She was an excellent defence correspondent. I mean it as a compliment when I say that  she reported on military matters with, dare I say it, distinctly masculine authority. She’s highly articulate, and I’d venture, accurate, thorough and truthful, though I’d hardly know if she weren’t. At any rate she always sounded knowledgeable to a trusting, military-matters ignoramus like me.

I realise I have just alienated feminists, the people’s resistance against gender specific generalisation,  supporters of the BBC, enemies of Julie Burchill, my own opponents and all posters of cryptic one-liners on defunct threads on this blog.  Now I’m going to compound the offence and say that religious affairs doesn’t strike me as a topic that presents the same challenges for Caroline as defence did. Religion is a slippery subject; like ..... like....  as feminine a topic as defence is masculine.  

Okay, now that’s over, I have to say that Caroline Wyatt had her other hat on as well during the Today programme. Some sort of overlap, maybe. Anyway she was talking about the Yazidi refugees stranded on a mountain  after fleeing from the murdering savages of Islamic State, and others who are stuck in villages, surrounded by ‘militants’.
I may be mistaken, but I thought I heard something about Libya, another place that Islamists have managed to turn into a hell-hole. 

The only way to deal with the Islamic State, a death cult, is to help the Sunnis and the Kurds defeat them says Richard Dannatt. Air strikes and so on. To make sure the Islamic State is not allowed to commit a genocide, he says. Of course we might accidentally kill some civilians, but it’s the right thing to do.

So a large number of French Jews have moved to Israel, or made aliyah, because of the intimidating atmosphere, largely caused by Muslim immigrants from North Africa. Immigration is a delicate subject, the negative aspects of which the BBC normally steers clear of. 
Caroline interviewed some French Jews who live with a sense of threat. A rabbi said there is freedom for Jews in Britain, unlike in France. A man from a French radio station implied that tensions are exacerbated by something called the Jewish Defence League. It’s all a little exaggerated said he. Not sure if he means it’s the Jews’ fault.

However, there were several items about the wounded in Gaza, particularly the children. Rachel Craven, a volunteer doctor from Bristol, and another doctor described the injuries in heartrending detail. 
But, and it’s a bloody great but, as long as the BBC continues to wallow in this stuff, which the thirteen-year-old editors would doubtless defend on the basis that it’s ‘in the public interest’, they are ensuring that injuries to children and more deaths keep on coming. By making a show of it they, the media,  perpetuate it. That is why corpses are dragged from one place to another and paraded in front of your cameras.

Why does Mrs Heartless say this? Well, I’m not being heartless. The opposite. Hamas regards the airtime that the media eagerly devotes to the maimed and wounded as a bonus. They use it as a deliberate strategy. They need to do it to solicit sympathy, and sway public opinion to gain support for their cause. Without it the public might just see them as a Islamist Jew-hating outfit that worships death. By dwelling on the injuries of babies and children you are making a success of Hamas’s Modus Operandi and making certain there will be more of the same.

By all means  publicise these horrific injuries. But do so with honesty. Put it in context. If Hamas wanted to protect civilians it would have done so. They haven’t. They could have. Get it? No? 
It’s much easier to just repeat the mindless mantra that “Israel are the killers.” If they didn’t kill them, they simply wouldn’t be killed.” That’s it. Or else they say: “You’re blaming the victim.” No. Not the victim. The people who hide behind them.

They believe Israelis should live their lives in a permanent state of fear. Always on alert. Fifteen seconds to drop everything and run. Not just in exceptional circumstances, in a state of emergency or in a state of war, but on a war footing forever. In normal time. Ad infinitum. Why? because of a 66 year-long war of attrition, and all because of Arab rejectionist, Judeophobic politics and a death cult. 

And if Israelis refuse to submit? If they retaliate? Hamas will simply sacrifice more babies, more children, more women, more disabled. They will put them in harm’s way and parade what’s left of them in front of the cameras.



Unbelievably, we then heard Clifford Longley’s TFTD. He said that Islam was the religion of Peace, that Muslims are well-known for living peacefully with other religions and that for some reason the real Muslims wouldn’t like the name “Islamic State”. 

It’s as if we’ve decided that we have to kill the death-cult ‘Islamic State’ to protect the Yazidis, but the thirteen year olds at the BBC think:  “Jews. You had it coming.”