Showing posts with label Ed Balls. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ed Balls. Show all posts

Monday, 30 September 2019

This evenings viewing

You’ll have heard that Tony Hall has reversed the BBC’s unfortunate decision about Naga Munchetti and she has been uncensured. Will heads roll? Come back John Humphrys, that’s your speciality isn’t it?

I intended to watch Jane Corbin’s take on the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, mainly because I’ve just mastered the fluent pronunciation of 'Khashoggi', with both adjacent gs (hard and soft) bound seamlessly together, which is more than most BBC announcers can manage. 

The problem was that the TV was tuned to Channel Four and I was transfixed by the post-conference interview with a portly-looking Krishnan Guru-Murphy, Rachel Sylvester, Craig Oliver and Gillian Keegan MP. 


Unsurprisingly, being Channel 4, the topic they were most excited about was Boris and thigh-gate. Who lied? If it wasn’t Charlotte Edwardes with her extra e, it must be Boris, the lying letch.

I had been reflecting on the increasing ubiquity of Rachel Sylvester as seen on TV. She’s been on loadsa political programmes recently. She’s a columnist for The Times, yet she appears to be a very priggish lefty. 

In the event, I sacrificed the first half of Khashoggi to my own morbid need to see how far Channel 4 could go with their petty, childish and spiteful Boris-bashing gossip. Gillian Keegan was the only sane person present and Guru-Murthy was almost beside himself with glee.

Looking at Rachel Sylvester’s spite-flecked eyes and listening to her squeaky voice one couldn’t help thinking that no-one’s going to be touching any of her body parts under or over any dinner-tables any time soon without written permission.

Watching Ed Balls on BBC 2 marvelling at our massive non-European fruit and veg related import and export industry was a nice change. It came across as rather pro-Brexit. Probably accidentally.

Monday, 6 August 2018

They never will


The BBC is still dutifully addressing the Labour Party’s antisemitism problem. Not exactly addressing. It seems more accurate to say they’re paying lip service to addressing it. They’d like to get to the bottom of it, or they’d like you to think they’d like to get to the bottom of it. They never will though. Not while they’re still broadcasting such biased reporting about Israel from the likes of Jon Donnison and Paul Adams.

I think Jon Donnison’s addiction to ‘the people of Gaza’ is unhealthy. Kind of obsessive-compulsive. At first, I thought he had been banished by the BBC because his bias was getting too obvious; on the verge of bringing the BBC into disrepute. (joke). One could easily assume he’d been sent down under for a spot of rehab and was now deemed well enough to return to the Middle East.

But no. He hasn’t been sent back to Gaza. He’s bringing those heavily slanted reports about his favourite topic from here and he’s somehow wangled Nazi Ghazi Hamas Hamad past the Beeb’s quality control to vouchsafe that there wasn’t a single drop of violence during the peaceful protests along Gaza’s border with Israel (apart from a few packs of lone wolves.)


Paul Adams had already resurrected the story about Gaza’s mental health problems, which has been spun, with a cunning combination of innuendo and omission, to place the blame on Israel.  


On Sunday’s Newshour this story appeared yet again. Fathi Harb’s self-immolation was pitched as the desperate response of a man driven mad by Israel’s blockade.

Adams didn’t recount the words Fathi allegedly cried as he burned, but mumbled something about the “struggle to make a living”. Bizarrely, the pronunciation of the deceased’s name, “fatty”, made the whole thing sound all the more surreal.

Ynet News:
A 20-year-old Palestinian father of two from Gaza set himself on fire Saturday night in the city's Sheikh Radwan neighborhood, all while cursing the strip's Hamas rulers who he apparently blamed for his family's poverty and the dismal economic situation in Gaza. 
Eye witnesses saw the man dousing himself in flammable liquid shouting "damn the government" before lighting himself up. Video footage of the incident shows the young man burning alive and screaming in agony with passersby rushing to put out the flames. 
Fathi's family and associates emphasized that he does not suffer from mental illness, but noting he was distraught over his brother's injury in one of the "March of Return" demonstrations at the border with Israel, which are organized and promoted by Hamas.

If the BBC are genuinely puzzled about surging antisemitism they are playing a ridiculous game of “innocent Face” 
We heard Yvette Cooper speaking to Martha Kearney this morning. She thinks the whole thing would go away if they merely “adopted the full definition,” with all its examples.
“Because it does still, rightly, allow people to criticise Israel for the deeply damaging things it is doing.”
What are these deeply damaging things, I wonder? Are they fag-ends and tidbits overheard from the kind of reporting we’ve just been discussing mixed together with ‘facts’ and statistics regurgitated straight from “the Palestinian Ministry of  Health”. (Hamas)

There was an amusing rant from a former member of Trump’s team this lunchtime. She had a good old go at Mark Mardell.
“Dr. Betsy McCoy was an economic advisor to President Trump when he was President Elect and she joins me now from New York. Hello there!”
Hello I must say I’ve been listening to this previous interview and the bias is so evident, so appalling, that your narrator used the word  ‘treason’, which even the ‘witch-hunter himself, Robert Mueller has not used. It’s quite shocking, I hope your listeners know what an incredibly biased presentation that was.”

Talking of Yvette Cooper, did you see Ed Balls strutting his stuff last night? At least his enjoyable film gave these deplorable the space to show that they were not quite so deplorable after all. 

Ed, on the other hand, was positively Gallawayesque in his lycra costumes. (Wow, he’s got hefty since Strictly) He said he was there to listen and learn, but my impression was that he failed to do both. He’s turning into a positive Anne Widdecombe; the Yin to Widders’s Yang. 


I suppose people do change when they leave politics but I can’t help thinking of Yvette’s face, all fired up with indignant righteousness, condemning hatred of the Jews while insisting on retaining the freedom to condemn Israel for “what it is doing” to the Palestinians. 

Saturday, 28 October 2017

Going south

...breaking news...breaking news...breaking news...


Former Labour-high-flyer-turned-high-kicker Ed Balls has been commissioned by the BBC to present a three-part series from the American Deep South. His specific purpose is to talk to Trump voters there.

As Ed isn't someone you'd naturally expect to find it easy to feel empathy towards US conservatives he's probably going to have to work hard to avoid turning out a very predictable BBC narrative here. 

Will he succeed? Will he even try?

Sunday, 4 September 2016

Open thread......

By now Craig will be well on his way to a very reasonably priced continental holiday he found on Airbnb.  He tells me it’s in Calais, France, in a complex called ‘the Jungle’. 

Two weeks on safari, maybe? Sun and sangria for him, then, and back, refreshed and raring to go in a fortnight. 

Bon voyage Craig!

Meanwhile, in case of posting hiatus,  let's call this an all-purpose Open Thread.

*****


I’m dedicating this cartoon  to Ed Balls.