Reunion and Reflections with Sue and Pete

Many apologies for lack of posts during the silly season. Craig has taken leave of absence, which he assures me is only temporary, and I have to say that as I hardly ever watch or hear the BBC these days, anything I might decide to say is not necessarily on topic or of interest. 

Talking of lack of new posts, it’s quite interesting that the critique of ‘The State’ on Harry’s Place, “Five Go Off on Jihad” has been top-of-the-page for four whole days and is still generating below-the line responses. Enid Blyton would be proud.

One thing I did listen to the other day was a couple of mid-morning programmes on Radio 4. The reunion - the Wapping Dispute episode, with Sue McGregor of the near-perfect radio voice, and a mixture of Fleet Street union activists and bosses who were ‘there’. The other programme was  Reflections with Peter Hennessy and Harriet Harman. 

The Wapping lot were entertainingly combative and the politics was fascinating. The unions’ militant reaction to ‘progress’ (they didn’t think much of it) and the reasoning behind their resistance - redundancy meant they would probably lose their homes as well as their livelihoods - pitted against the inevitable march of technology seemed all but irrelevant now that print media seems quaint and old fashioned and in imminent danger of dinosauring itself out of existence altogether. Those were the days my friend, when militants were proper militant. It was good radio though.

Listening to Harriet  Harman (aka Harperson) was a bit of an eye-opener. I’ve seen quite a lot of her recently as she’s been doing the rounds, presumably trying to promote her autobiography “A Woman’s Work.”  I guess the BBC was happy to cooperate with that enterprise. 

The main thing that struck me was her claim that the ‘men’ in politics were dismissive of womankind, regarding them collectively as ‘not leadership material.’ Since Margaret Thatcher was the Prime Minister, one couldn’t help wondering if it could have been Harriet Harman in particular rather than the sisterhood in general who wasn’t thought of as leadership material.  

She certainly sounded self pitying and shallow.

There is a lot of amused chatter about Laura Pidcock and her silly statement about never  ever wanting to ‘be friends’ with a Tory. Well, what about Harriet’s bizarre tale about “not wanting Margaret Thatcher to set eyes on her baby”. (She hid her baby and darted into a side room when she saw the PM bearing down on her in the corridor) narrowly avoiding an evil glance or a wicked spell.

These ladies’ childish and asinine declarations do them little favours. Are they expecting people to think of them as leadership material?

Harriet Harman crashes her car (again)

While I'm giving credit where credit's due...

It's Andrew Neil again, on BBC One's The Sunday Politics - and, hopefully, this link takes you to the right place to enable you to watch Andrew Neil & Co. debate the issue of the EU and women's rights with Harriet Harman. 

We're firmly in 'car crash interview' territory here....especially from 9:07 in, when AN lists a long list of leading female Leave campaigners and invites Harriet to give an equivalent list. She duly 'does a Harriet' and stonewalls. But it's no good. It's 1-0 to Andrew Neil and Harriet's car is out of control, scraping along dozens of others Remain campaign cars as it hurtles towards disaster. 

It then got even worse for her.

Answering her claims that the EU is good for women's rights, AN then showed her the top 7 people in the EU and asked her if she noticed something common to them all:

After trying to 'do a Harriet' again, she said - more than once - that she didn't know who any of these men are...

...which, given that they include EU Commission President Juncker and EU Council President Tusk (former Polish PM) and European Parliament head (and long-term leading light in the EU's Socialist group - which includes Harriet's Labour!) Mr Schultz, is very hard to believe - except that this is Harriet Harman!

And then, still flailing around, she accused Andrew Neil of picking seven "random" men! AN, of course, immediately disabused her of that suggestion.

She was now not only looking at the smouldering remains of her own car but a twenty-mile pile up behind her (entirely caused by herself)...

...though, also being Harriet, it has to be said that she still didn't bat an eyelid.

Her pro-EU arguments were severely dented by The Sunday Politics though - eyelids or no eyelids.

Finger in pie.

There was plenty of mileage for Biased-BBC in the BBC’s reluctance to get to grips with this story, but when they belatedly did so, I think they messed up. 

I happened to turn on Newsnight last night just in time to see Laura Kuenssberg interrogating Harriet Harman in aggressive, more-Paxo-than-Paxo style. Repetitively trying to force Harriet Harman to say “It Was A Mistake.” 

This tactic has become so annoying that this viewer was alienated straight away. I actually began to feel sorry for Harriet Harman; it was that bad.

Has the new editor of Newsnight instigated interrogation lighting? Dramatic, and not in a kind way.

By next day (today) the BBC had elevated this issue to non-stop superstory. The incestuous headline was “Harman refused to say It Was A Mistake several times.” 

I’m no apologist for PIE but I did once have an acquaintance whom I now suspect was a borderline paedophile. And, and, and.. I know a paediatrician.

Birds of a Feather

Ah, so BBC Head of Strategy James Purnell's warning against the government's plan to allow the National Audit Office unfettered access to the BBC's accounts (in the wake of the latest scandal over excessive pay-offs) has now received the strong support of his former cabinet colleague, Harriet Harman, deputy leader of the Labour Party:

"[Culture Secretary Maria Miller] is suggesting a lessening of the BBC's ability to set the terms of reference for what the NAO does … and let the NAO set the agenda.

"It is important to think through the principles of this. I'm on the sceptical side but it depends how it was done and whether there are proper safeguards. I don't think we should do a Dangerous Dogs Act on the BBC, rush to do something everyone agrees is good but doesn't really work.

"This is a difficult time for the BBC, and change does need to happen. When it comes to governance we mustn't reach for a quick-fix answer on this issue, accountability at the BBC is a thorny and complex issue."

Again, as with Mr Purnell, Harriet Harman doesn't exactly seem to have a clear argument as to why Mrs Miller is wrong. It all seems to amount to: The BBC's independence is important, things are just too "thorny and complex", we mustn't rush into things, the Dangerous Dogs Act, blah, blah. 

Why is letting the National Audit Office access the BBC's accounts at a time of its rather than the BBC's choosing a risk to the corporation's editorial independence? 

And what is it with BBC types and politicians being so resistant to having outside watchdogs interfering in their already-proven-to-be-dodgy financial affairs?