Straight faces and unfunny jokes

I think they invented the face veil to protect the world from gurning women. 

Yasmin Alibhai Brown says she doesn’t support the face-veil, perhaps because it would inhibit her most effective means of self-expression, which is gurning.

I saw her on Sky this morning performing facial and full-body histrionics at the possibility of Boris becoming PM. “He’s a cad,”  she said “and a liar” but she adamantly denied ever having promised to leave the country if Boris got to be PM. When it was pointed out that she had indeed made such a promise she airily brushed off her own little lie, saying “Well, I’m not!“ [leaving]  

YAB not leaving the country after all? Phew!! sighs of relief all round.

Watching Faiza Shaheen gurning her way through Politics Live and Ash Sarkar making faces and waving her hideous talons around on consecutive episodes of that programme, one might wonder why so many men of that particular faith suffer from verbal incontinence and women from involuntary facial gymnastics.

A video of the Danish version of Geert Wilders - (Rasmus Paludan) being interrogated by a young elfin-like BBC reporter who says her country of origin is Iran, demonstrates the personification of ‘bias by gurning’. (H/T Biased-BBC) 

She started reasonably well, but dissolved into a display of petulant facial antics, including feigned amusement and an exaggerated “I’m listening to a moron” face, which ultimately came across as feigned bravado in the face of humiliation. When excessive gurning comes back to bite you on the bum.

Mr Paludan’s repertoire includes provocatively burning a copy of the Koran in a “Muslim area” to illustrate his right to freedom of speech and to challenge the basic concept of ‘Muslim areas’ within western democratic countries like Denmark and Britain; areas in which freedom of speech is tacitly curtailed through a collective, ultra-politically correct respect for all things Islamic, such as manifestations of Muslimness. I understand Paludan sometimes adds insult to injury by wrapping the Koran in bacon, (which, as you know, is carcinogenic) before setting fire to it. 

I hadn’t heard of Mr Paludan before I saw that video, but I now know that he happens to be a lawyer and (in this video at least) he makes a serious point, which is that the Muslims have managed to create a new norm, predicated on the premise that the sensitivities and taboos of Islam must be respected by everybody, no matter who they are or where they happen to be. I assume it’s because of these views that Mr Paludan has been pronounced “far right’ and no better than Hitler. 

Some say he’s an actual Nazi and a Jew hater, but that might just be wishful thinking on the part of his critics.

He says ”The BBC is renowned throughout the world as being a complete shit-hole media”

I’m keeping a straight face about this.

********

I saw our old friend David Vance coming head-to-head with the comedian whose alias is ‘Jonathan Pie’ on Sky just now. The issue under discussion was Jo Brand’s tasteless battery acid quip.

Vancey was keen to point out the hypocrisy of the BBC. He brought up the incident of Carol Thatcher and the golliwog and compared the intolerance heaped upon Carl Benjamin by people who couldn’t get their heads round the difference between the ‘joke’ in a historic threat (not) to rape an MP  and a ‘joke’ to throw battery acid over Nigel Farage. Double standards.

‘Jonathan Pie’ used the ‘context is all’ argument; he’s smart enough, but I think he was on shaky ground. In the end, they didn’t fundamentally disagree about ‘when is a joke not a joke’. The Sky anchor was obviously on the other guy’s side, but David Vance is no doubt used to being in a minority, and he copes with it well.

Of course there is a kind of a joke in Jo Brand’s quip, but unfortunately, it’s based on a misreading of the entire business of milkshake throwing. It’s a very poor joke because it’s so banal and unoriginal.

This is my take on it. Milkshakes are not an accidental choice of weapon. The substance itself is comparatively harmless, (apart from the cost of the dry-cleaning) it makes the victim look foolish, and it’s a kind of visual play on pouring liquid over someone’s head - usually pints of beer - which of course alcohol-free Muslims aren’t predisposed to do. It expresses disgust in the most visual and slapstick way and saves the perpetrator the trouble of trying to articulate their grievances verbally, which they’re very likely incapable of doing nearly as effectively as covering their opponent with goo.

As well as the above, another reason for choosing milkshakes as a weapon is as an indirect reminder that  “it could be something more harmful, but this time it isn’t”. If you like, it’s an unspoken threat. We’re all well aware that actual acid-throwing is gruesome and depraved and only too real. 

So Jo Brand’s quip is a statement of the bleeding obvious, which instantaneously sucks the humour out of the whole thing  - the opposite of injecting humour into it.

Kudos to Vancey for being asked to join the fun.

*******

Extensive Boris-bashing continues throughout the day. I have nothing extra to contribute on that topic so please continue to use the open thread to your hearts’ content.  

Points of View

I see tonight that my and Sue's estimable former Biased BBC editor, David Vance, is giving vent today (on Twitter rather than at Biased BBC) to his anger about the BBC's treatment of Jacob Rees-Mogg:

Thoughts?

Recommended listening

Here's something that's well worth a listen. If you go to 24:53 you'll hear a good discussion about BBC bias between Jon Gaunt and Biased BBC's David Vance. 

BBC bias on migrants, Trump and Brexit are discussed, with special attention being given to Lily Allen's BBC-backed stunt in Calais. 

Listen out for Gaunty's anecdote about this week's This Week. 

He'd pitched a piece on media bias in the reporting of the US presidential election. The show's producer, however, didn't want that, merely some right-winger who'd simply go 'Ra! Ra! Ra! for Trump!' and then get prodded with a stick, like "a monkey". So no Gaunty after all; instead, "parody of parodies", they decided to go with Katie Hopkins, who duly 'Ra! Ra! Ra!-ed' for the Donald.

(I do like Jon's anecdotes about his encounters with the BBC. They give all sorts of little glimpses into the BBC's ways.) 

Into the bear pit

I do!

Talking about the authors at Biased BBC, the blog's editor, David Vance, was on this morning's The Big Questions. 

The opening 'big question' was a very BBC question: "Is it always better to talk to terrorists?"

Here's how Nicky Campbell framed the question (in a decidedly one-sided fashion):

Yesterday's terrorists often turn into tomorrow's statesmen. From South Africa to the Middle East and Northern Ireland, people who were once on 'most wanted' lists agreed to sit down at peace talks and eventually came to hold high political office. But a report to be issued next week shows that these routes to negotiation and peace are threatened. Once armed groups have been blacklisted by governments even aid agencies wanting to negotiate with them to get humanitarian help to their victims can actually be breaking the law. Is it always better to talk to terrorists? 

David Vance believes it's never right to talk to terrorists. It's an absolute moral principle for him.

Alongside him in opposing talks with Islamic State were sensible Emily Dyer of the Henry Jackson Society and foppish Telegraph writer Tim Stanley.

Against them were ranged community cohesion professor and Israel-basher Harris Beider, abusive Israel-bashing Huffington Post blogger Dilly Hussain (an even-less-calm version of Mehdi Hasan), nice liberal rabbi Jonathan Romain (a Sunday favourite), education researcher Roshan Doug, and charity worker Andy Carl. 

Julie Hambleton, who lost family in the Birmingham Pub Bombings, was in the audience and provided a powerful call to reality. 

That's quite balanced (if slightly tilted to the 'pro-talks' side), but...

David Vance found himself on the receiving end of fierce opposition, with people constantly talking over him, the audience heckling him and, strikingly, Nicky Campbell repeatedly registering his disagreement - and giving him a much harder time than anyone else. (David, however, was completely undaunted. He knows how to handle himself in a BBC bear pit.) 

Moral conservatives rarely get an easy time during a BBC-hosted discussion programme.  

Typically for a BBC audience, they only applauded one side of the argument (the pro-talks-with-ISIS side) and only heckled the other side of the argument (David's side) - despite some highly contentious (and absolutist) remarks from the 'pro-talks' side. 

Nicky Campbell, who many people like (and others don't), didn't strike me as taking a straight-down-the-line position during this segment of the show. I thought his questions were overwhelmingly slanted towards the 'pro-talks' side - in number and in their emotional content.

The whole thing - as ever - was full of heat, and rather less light. The heat, of course, meant it was very good value for money for the programme's producers. 

The other 'big questions' (if you were wondering) were 'Does faith have any place in schools?' and 'Does Satan exist only within us?' 

Big Question

I saw David Vance on The Big Questions this morning. It took me by surprise as I didn’t know he was going to be there. Strangely, he doesn’t seem to have pre-warned Biased-BBC readers, and stranger still, no-one at Biased-BBC seems to have noticed.

These days Biased BBC is almost exclusively manned by Alan. New open threads are posted only when David Vance remembers to post them, and these days the number of comments sometimes reaches about 400 before he does so, which gives the blog a neglected air.

David Vance is a very determined character with strong views. He’s a supporter of Israel, which I applaud, but his views are pretty old fashioned and reactionary, which I don’t. 

While I was not a fan of the direction in which he steered the Biased-BBC blog I have to admire his ability to think on his feet on live TV and radio. I could never do that. Very few people can.

There was one part of TBQ where Dilly Hussain said something outrageous about Israel and during the ruckus Nicki Campbell indicated that he intended to give Vancey the chance to ‘come back’. Unfortunately, in the fog of the chaos into which TBQ is apt to descend, this didn’t happen. Dilly Hussain got away with something he really shouldn’t have. 

David Vance has the ability to stand firm, not to appear rattled, and to stick to his guns when all around are losing their heads. It would be nice to see more of him in political discussions on the BBC, but then he might have to relinquish his proprietorship of the Biased-BBC blog.

I hope Craig has more to say on this.

Another Miscellany for Advent Sunday (afternoon)

What did we learn, bias-wise, from the previous post then?

That Evan Davis may have been pushing his pro-EU bias at us on Newsnight, that Andrew Marr's show was pretty much OK, that Radio 4's Sunday was its usual liberal-biased self, and that Hugh Sykes still doesn't like UKIP (and ain't afraid to show it on Twitter)...

...in other words, biases (where found) from the usual, expected direction. 

***

It's not always like that though (and I refuse to be the sort of blogger who refuses to admit that). 

Take today's The World This Weekend with Mark Mardell, which rather surprisingly (well, it surprised me) focused on the severity of the UK's budget deficit. 

It asked election candidates from the two main parties - and their think tank counterparts (from the centre-left IPPR and centre-right CPS, both properly labelled) - to spell out their thinking on how the next government should reduce the deficit.

On a day when the big political news is that George Osborne is trying to outbid his political rivals over extra NHS spending, focusing on our national indebtedness and how drastic the steps required to tackle it are going to have to be, this isn't the sort of thing I expect from the BBC. 

The programme, incidentally, made use of the FT's deficit calculator and its editor, Nick Sutton, has asked us to give it a go too. So I have done, and all Radio 4 listeners and Is the BBC biased? readers should too.

It's eye-opening. No wonder the politicians interviewed didn't get anywhere near the target. They wouldn't dare spell out just what needs to be done. I, not needing any votes, cut everything, except defence (how right-wing of me!), and still didn't get there. (Must try harder next time).

***

George's extra (vote-buying) NHS spending pledges, incidentally, formed the main subject of last night's extended paper review on Radio 5 Live's Stephen Nolan show, hosted by (Peter Allen) Stephen Nolan and, unusually for a BBC programme, one of the guests spoke from a non-pro-NHS position. 

This programme isn't something I normally listen to but I'd read (at Biased BBC) that Biased BBC/A Tangled Web editor [and non-NHS fan] David Vance provided good value on it so thought it might be fun to listen to. [It comes in the last hour, if you've clicked on the link above].

It was fun. And he did. 

It wasn't the kind of debate you get on Radio 4. After a brief appearance from a David at the Sun on Sunday, David Vance and another David from the Daily Mirror locked horns, and Biased BBC's David came out on top - even reducing the Mirror's David to stunned silence at one stage (following by a Damascene acceptance by the Mirror man of his unquestionably fair but somehow-rarely-heard-on-the-BBC point). 

And (David No...) Stephen Nolan got his horn stuck in too from time to time, occasionally trying to gore David Vance. 

Now, I know DV and SN go back a while (Radio Ulster, and all that), but from what I've heard of their encounters before, Stephen always seems to go for him more than his left-wing opponents. SN tried a particularly sharp move here, trying to entrap his guest with suggestions of snobbishness or racism (I'm not sure which as DV deftly batted it away before he could spell it out). Far be it from me to step into their relationship, but that suggests possible left-wing bias to me on the part of the BBC host. 

I do like paper reviews, especially when the reviewers come from different perspectives. 

***

Returning to The World This Weekend...

After a depressing report (and interview) on the present situation in Afghanistan, where (pace the BBC) Islam and violence in no way go together, the Islamist Taliban has embarked on yet another intense killing spree, the programme lightened up and took us to the UK's very first Jewish Comedy Festival...

...where were found such jokes as:

I went home the other night, found my best friend in bed with my wife. I said, 'Lenny, I have to. But you?' (Saul Bernstein)

I'm a reform Jew, which means I go to synagogue twice a year: Yom Kippur and Christmas. (Josh Howie)

Another comedian, Raymond Simonson, made a couple of important points:

One of the biggest differences between the Jewish community here and in the United States is in our size. We're under half a percent of the population in the UK, 275,000 Jews. There are five and a half million of us in America. So Jewish comedy there, the Jewish community there, out, loud and confident, and  the Jewish community here have been quite quiet, kept their heads down.

I think whenever there's a time where anti-Semitism has been on the rise - and this summer there was the highest ever levels of recorded anti-Semitic incidents in the UK, so the Jewish community shrink further down - so what we're saying is, no, we're going to stick out heads further above the parapet and we're going to have people - Jewish, non-Jewish - laughing with us. That's so important.

And the best of luck to them.

And well done to The World This Weekend for broadcasting that.

And if you click on the link to the programme you'll also find two bonus jokes.

Who to believe?

Dropping in on the blog Biased BBC, as is my way, I was struck by David Vance's characteristically pithy post entitled ALL MEN ARE RAPIST?, which highlights a BBC report about violence against women across Europe.

The BBC report begins:

About a third of all women in the EU have experienced either physical or sexual violence since the age of 15, according to a survey by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights.

That corresponds to 62 million women, the survey says.

The figures in the EU's survey are absolutely staggering (if true), finding that one in 10 women has experienced some form of sexual violence since the age of 15, and that one in 20 has been raped, that 22% of women have suffered from physical or sexual violence by a partner, and around 18% of women say they have been the victims of stalking since the age of 15, and that 55% say they have been sexually harassed, often in the workplace.

I have to say that my immediate thought was that an e-mail should be sent to Radio 4's More or Less to check these results out. 

They sound utterly unbelievable, don't they? 

Have 44% of British women really suffered from some form of physical or sexual violence? It really seems hard to believe that it's so high a figure for something so serious, doesn't it?

So, is there something wrong with the way the survey was carried out? How did it define its terms? Or is there something wrong instead with the way the media has reported the survey? 

Or, God forbid, could it actually be true?

I myself know quite a few women who have been seriously physically abused, and even a member of my own family has been stalked, so the incidence of such crimes should never be underplayed or taken lightly...

...but these figures are truly extraordinary, and I'm finding them hard to accept at face value.

The BBC report, by Bethany Bell, simply parrots what the survey says, without question. 

I'd be very interested to read what statisticians make of the survey. Does it stand up? And, if so, how does it stand up? 

David Vance regards the survey on which the report is based as "manipulated nonsense from the EU" [pro-EU bias] before wondering "if the BBC comrades might explore which ..ahem..communities within this apocalyptic zone of rape and abuse contribute most towards such violence?"

...by which he means Muslims (as his regular readers quickly spotted).

As there are 19 million (or so) Muslims in the EU, they can't (logically) contribute "most" towards that 62 million figure (especially as around half of those Muslims will be women), so I'm afraid to say that I'm as sceptical about David's take on this as I am about that of the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (in fact, more so - if truth be told!) but...

...what on earth should we make of this story? 

Israel’s Spoilsports

Christiane Amanpour likes to call Israeli politician Naftali Bennett “Mr. No” because he’s against making a bad deal with Iran.  He makes the case for Israel on CNN to (somewhat unnecessary) theatrical effect with the aid of an ancient artefact, which he took out of the country illegally.

"This coin, which says "Freedom of Zion" in Hebrew, was used by Jews 2,000 years ago in the state of Israel, in what you call occupied. One cannot occupy his own home." 

says he.

Mr Bennet is by no means the only Israeli who the BBC sees as a spoilsport for not wanting to hug an Ayatollah. 

On Biased BBC, David Vance  cites an early-morning report on Today R4 (38 mins in) by Kim Ghattas (odd that someone from Northern Ireland thinks Kim Ghattas’s accent could be Irish) which presents the Israelis as though they’re guilty of spoiling everyone else’s party. (how annoying is it that the Today programme no longer has items individually listenable to on the website) 

“Netanyahu was presented as intransigent and US jewish people seeking to influence opinion were presented as unhelpful lobbyists!”

John Anderson in a comment links to this, and I’m about to link to this:

I do miss Mel’s articles when she wrote on the Spectator, with comments facility. Never mind. This article was worth waiting for - and here she links to the Jerusalem Post.

Why is the BBC and, for that matter, much of the western press so determined to ignore these openly stated declarations of intent? They’re news, aren’t they?