A Trollopian tale

Historic Jersey

It wasn't just Cardinal Newman on Sunday today. 

There were also features on a new Muslim male voice choir and the return of far-right antisemitism in Germany, with the BBC's Damien McGuinness claiming that AfD have been misusing Muslim antisemitic attacks to mislead the public on where the greater threat comes from. 

And...a rather fascinating bit on the history of the Church in the Channel Islands - so fascinating that I'll quote you the start of it:

I'm standing looking out across the sea to St Aubin's Bay. Ahead of me, alongside Elizabeth Castle, is the Hermitage Rock where the Belgian monk Helier is said to have watched over the islands' early Christians. Murdered for his beliefs by marauding pirates, he gave his name to the capital St Helier and set a precedent for holy oversight of these scattered islands off the coast of France. Before the Reformation the Catholic Church here was part of the diocese of Coutanche then, briefly after the dissolution of the monasteries, they were part of Salisbury diocese. But for the last 500 years the Diocese of Winchester has exercised an arms-length ministry here.  

The story continues:

Safeguarding concerns came up over the handling of an abuse complaint in 2008. This led to members of the Anglican Church in the islands feeling uncertain about their relationship with the Winchester diocese. A strained relationship between the then Dean of Jersey and the Bishop of Winchester meant the Dean was suspended for a time. He was later exonerated and reinstated. So, as a result, in 2014 the Church of England in the Channel Islands was temporarily moved to become part of the Diocese of Canterbury, Now, after and Archbishop's Commission, the Channel Islands have been granted a full move to the Diocese of Salisbury.

The Diocese of Salisbury (not yet including the Channel Islands)

The Diocese of Salisbury already includes parishes "as far north as Marlborough and as far south as Poole and Weymouth", but the present Bishop of Salisbury told the BBC reporter Matthew Price (no, not that one! This one had a cheerful voice) that ferry and air services to Southampton and easy rail links to Salisbury mean that travel links are good. And Bishop Halton had some history for us too, noting a historical connection. The Pope 'made a link' with the Bishop of Salisbury back in 1496 and the Bishop of Salisbury in 1818 became the first bishop to go an confirm in the Channel Islands for years and confirmed thousands of people at one go. (Hmm. Not the most interesting facts in the piece perhaps!).

The move remains only a proposal though. It needs the approval of General Synod, the UK Parliament and the Channel Island governments. If approved, the move may occur by the Autumn of next year. Until then a former Bishop of Dover will continue to look after the Islands, despite having retired five months ago. 

So now you know. I'll be testing you later.

German translation

Loyal readers may recall a post we published last month about BBC Berlin correspondent Damien McGuinness. 

His strikingly biased Twitter feed ("one of the most blatantly biased of all the BBC Twitter feeds I'd ever read") had already revealed his strongly pro-EU and just-as-strongly anti-Brexit views...

...and then came a particularly biased BBC website article from the aforementioned Damien. which spread an unrelievedly downbeat message about the risks to the UK economy of Brexit. 

"Reading Damien McGuinness's BBC-branded anti-Brexit Twitter feed it's impossible not to put this down to bias", I concluded, (unusually) firmly. 

So, I've just spotted that Damien McGuinness had a piece on today's From Our Own Correspondent and am wondering if, after listening to it, I'll have to eat my words and offer Damien an apology. 

I really am trying this one blind, so here goes....

Well, I've only got to the programme's website so far and it already says:

British citizens living and working in Germany are worried about what might happen to them once the UK leaves the EU; Damien McGuinness hears how many of them are rushing to town halls to become German. 

Ah, so it's about Brexit and, yes, it's obviously not going to be positive about it. Should I even bother listening to it? It's obvious what it's going to be like. I'm guessing: 'Woe, woe and thrice woe!' 

OK. I should listen, just to see how bad it actually is. So here goes again...

Yep, it's pretty bad. 

There's talk of "worried" young British expats, and British pensioners living in Germany "scraping by...tied to a shrinking pound", plus several digs at the British tabloids. 

There's also the emotional story of a liberal British woman who loves the welcoming of immigrants (like her) in Germany. 

It's all about the liberating effect of "layered identities" rather than ethnic heritage, and the "successful" transformation of Germany into "a country of immigration" - and Mrs Merkel is getting a good press too.

And it ends on a personal note:

As for me, my own citizenship status is a bureaucratic muddle - no doubt my own fault for moving around too much. Growing up in a globalised world I had thought passports, borders and notions of citizenship were losing their importance. Today though, as I scrabble together previously unheard of documents to avoid suddenly becoming an illegal alien, I can see I was wrong.

Ah well, maybe the BBC will help keep you safe and happy in Germany, Damien, for a while yet.

"Hang up your opinions with your coat"

Just going back to Twitter again...

One of the most blatantly biased of all the BBC Twitter feeds I'd ever read, a couple of years or so back, belonged to Damien McGuinness ("BBC correspondent. Berliner. Migrant. Presenter of DW Focus on Europe"). I wrote a post about it at the time. 

And looking at his Twitter feed again now, it hasn't got any more impartial - especially over Brexit.

If you are on Twitter, just keep scrolling down and then search for 'Brexit' and you'll read a deluge of tweets including the word. (I get 224 mentions). They are relentlessly - and I do mean 'relentlessly' - anti-Brexit. It's just one negative news story and anti-Brexit opinion tweeted about, linked to, re-retweeted after another. 

This is a BBC correspondent who clearly doesn't like the idea of us leaving the EU one little bit.

And, lo and behold, what has just appeared on the BBC News website tonight?

It's a sorry tale of how the UK's "Brexiteers" have come a cropper in Germany today. They got laughed at by German businessmen. The BBC man ends by suggesting that they might come away having learned something.

Here's a flavour:

The whole article reeks of anti-Brexit bias, and pro-Brexit tweeters are already crying foul. 

Reading Damien McGuinness's BBC-branded anti-Brexit Twitter feed it's impossible not to put this down to bias.

A BBC reporter on PEGIDA...and on Twitter

Alan at Biased BBC is highly critical of German-based BBC correspondent Damien McGuinness for his report on Christmas Eve's Today programme about the large anti-Islamisation protests in parts of Germany. 

Damien McGuinness told John Humphrys that, even though the movement (PEGIDA) contains "a lot of right-wing extremists", its protests aren't really about what the protestors say they are about - namely the Islamisation of the West. Instead, he argued, "foreigners" are being made "scapegoats" for other reasons - a bundle of grievances about immigration more generally, low pay and pensioner poverty, and disenchantment with the politicians and the media. 

There may be some truth in this, but given that everyone agrees that confrontations between Kurds and Salafists on the streets Germany gave the movement its initial impetus [something which Damien didn't mention], simply dismissing the idea that creeping Islamisation (and the violence which flows from it) is provoking genuine concern in Germany just doesn't ring true.

*****

Like many a BBC reporter, Damien McGuinness is highly active on Twitter and uses Twitter as part of his BBC reporting. ("BBC correspondent covering Germany" is his tagline). His tweets and re-tweets follow an unsurprising pattern.

If you have a read of them (as he intends you to), you'll get a good sense of his concerns. 

Just from the last month, his dislikes appear to be PEGIDA, Putin, UKIP, the French Right, the American Right (the latter pair contained in a single re-tweet describing them - in French -  as "disturbed and crazy"), the German Right, the Ukrainian far-Right, the Azerbaijani government, and David Cameron's EU and immigration policies, while his likes appear to be Angela Merkel (though not her allies), anti-PEGIDA protestors (he re-tweets an Occupy, hacktivist supporter called "Global Revolution"), the BBC, Britain's membership of the EU, immigration, Jeffrey Sachs (the Keynesian economist) and women's progress in the boardroom.

If Biased BBC were still updating their In Their Own Tweets collection, there'd be quite a few potential candidates for inclusion here from our Damien.