...the same spinal integrity as a sea anemone

Jeremy Clarkson, once of the BBC, has a superb piece in The Sunday Times in defence of “us oldies” headlined Don’t cancel us oldies just yet. We’re trying harder than anyone to do the right thing.

His starting point is Len Goodman appearing on the BBC's Platinum Jubilee coverage and saying how much he loves coronation chicken but didn't eat it when he was younger because his gran considered curry powder to be “foreign muck” - as, indeed, did mine. An inevitable eruption of foolish activists immediately ensued...:

Everyone with spots and hormonal issues ran around waving their pierced arms in the air and gnashing their tattooed teeth, saying that this colonial and racist attitude is exactly what’s wrong with privileged white men today.

.,,despite the moral of Len's story surely being that Len had learned and changed: 

So Len doesn’t need to be criticised for saying how things used to be. He needs to be praised for having the wit and the strength of character to change his way.

And what of the BBC's role in this foolishness?

...Because it has the same spinal integrity as a sea anemone, the BBC instructed Clare Balding to issue an on-air apology for the “offence”.

That's a particularly fine turn of phrase. 

One rule for them...

Time to quote Jeremy Clarkson again. Here he is in today's Sunday Times writing about plan to make doctors move to the North:

Many years ago we saw the BBC making a risible effort to bridge the north-south divide by setting up shop next to a ship canal in Salford. Lovely, except the man charged with getting staff to relocate wouldn’t actually leave the leafy suburbs of London himself.

Her Majesty

Here's Jeremy Clarkson, in today's The Sunday Times:

Greta Thunberg is now kayaking back to the Swedish port where she left her bicycle, having spent the week outside a conference centre in Glasgow, swearing a lot and being interviewed by BBC journalists who fawned like they were soap stars being introduced to the Queen. They didn’t call the annoying little bucket of ego, “Your majesty”, but you could see they were thinking it.

Meanwhile, here's what you've been missing this week if you don't watch BBC drama. This comes from the BBC's Holby City. [I spotted it via TVEyes]:. 

Mum: Hey, Sammy boy!

Doctor: Aw, there he is! Birthday boy! I like your hat.

Boy in hospital bed with COP26 hat: Thanks.

Doctor: Looks like we need your help on the ward. We have to make a poster about climate change.

Boy: We need action, not posters.

Doctor: Oh, OK, Holby's very own Greta Thunberg, eh?

Mum: Sammy's going to be a climate campaigner like Chris Packham when he grows up.

I'm so glad I don't watch BBC dramas. 

"Doom, with added gloom"

 

Jeremy Clarkson caught Covid for Christmas and found it scary. 

What made it even more scary was not knowing and not being able to find out many of the most important things he needed to know about the disease as he lay in bed. 

It's information he wanted:

This is the problem we have. We keep being told that we know a great deal about Covid, but what I’ve learnt over the past 10 days is: we don’t. We don’t know how long we are infectious for. We don’t know how to tackle it. We don’t know what it does to us.

We don’t know how long the antibodies last. We don’t know how easy it is to catch it twice. And we certainly don’t know if any of the vaccines will work long-term. I don’t even know if I’m better now. Seriously, I have absolutely no idea.

He turned to the BBC:

In desperation I’d tune into the BBC, where things were even worse because all it did was try to belittle Boris Johnson by going onto the streets and asking passers-by what they’d do. If there’s ever an award for truly lamentable journalism, the BBC’s News at Six team should win it for its efforts last year. Its message has been constant. You’re going to die. And the Tories are to blame.

It’s strange, but when people catch cancer, they are always told about people who had the exact same thing and got better. No one says: “Ooh, you’ve got it in the liver? I had a mate who got it there. Dead in a week.” But it seems that’s what you get from the BBC. Doom, with added gloom.

He thinks the BBC should concentrate on finding out information about the disease that would help us all:

Maybe the BBC should consider this and in future stop asking clever-clever questions designed to make Boris look foolish, and instead ask clever questions that will help us understand something that scares us. 

Pressure still grows

 

The BBC's main story this morning remains its main story tonight. Here's the main headline on tonight's BBC One Late News bulletin:

A major revolt by teaching unions over Government plans to reopen primary schools in England on Monday. They say fears over the spread of the new variant of coronavirus means online learning is "the only sensible and credible option" ---- "We don't think it's safe. We think there should be a period of closure to get those cases down, to make sure that they've fallen well below where they were before Christmas."

The teaching unions' demands have led BBC news all day. Pressure growing for English schools to stay shut remains the main headline on the BBC News website even now. 

The BBC are still wanting to have their cake and eat it though, so as to damn the Government either way perhaps. 

Yes, the other BBC theme - the "U-turn" theme - continued too with BBC education correspondent Dan Johnson - yep, the Cliff Richard guy is now their education correspondent!! - citing it in connection with London's schools, and the newsreader later asking Chris Mason, "We've had reversals of policy in the pandemic on education before. Are we likely to see another U-turn in this regard?"

On which subject (h/t Guest Who) their former cash cow Jeremy Clarkson tweeted the following earlier - to which his ex-BBC colleagues will, I'm sure, pay not the slightest bit of attention:

BBC news. Reacting to events does not constitute a “U-turn”. Grow up.

These are present-day BBC journalists, Jeremy. What do you expect? 

Dan Johnson's report was a classic BBC cake mixture. 

It was launched by the words "Good evening. The government is coming under intense pressure, to scrap plans to reopen primary schools in England on Monday due to fears over the spread of the new variant of the coronavirus", and followed by Dan Johnson asking, after children and teachers were invited for tests at Charlton's football ground today, "One way to help keep the virus out of schools - but will it be enough? Some think things are out of control and they want schools to stay closed."

Then came the complaining families highly critical of the Government for not being decisive enough, etc. 

Besides the football, the only other story was a bizarrely-highlighted story about French police raiding an illegal New Year's Eve rave, as if anyone in the UK would consider this a major UK News story. As Cue Bono commented, it's curious but telling which French events, including protests, get reported and which don't.

*******

UPDATE 3 Jan 6.40am

But THIS is the headline on the BBC News website this Sunday morning. It's the other side of the argument:

But, interestingly, BBC Breakfast didn't make that its headline. They went for:

The row over schools intensifies. A growing number of councils urge the government to rethink its plan to open primary schools in England. City leaders in Liverpool go one step further and demand a national lockdown. 

From today's papers...

Though regarding BBC Radio 4's afternoon plays as "vital" for our national culture, especially in a time of lockdown, that doyenne of radio critics Gillian Reynolds, writing in The Sunday Times today, admits that "plays that don't preach, accuse or induce guilt" are "hard to find" some days. 

"Radio 4's afternoon drama often sounds as if it's coming from a pulpit", she writes. "Race, class, gender: You will find lectures on them all here."

*******

The Mail on Sunday reports that Jeremy Clarkson has turned down new DG's Tim Davie appeal for him to return to the BBC, accusing the BBC of no longer being interested in broadcasting a variety of views, and freezing out presenters who failed to be politically correct:

Jeremy Clarkson: He [Tim Davie] was saying the other day, 'Oh, come home'. But the truth is, you'd struggle on the BBC now. It's so unbelievably right on. You just couldn't say anything which I make my living from saying.

How intriguing that Tim Davie tried to bring Jeremy Clarkson back to the BBC though! At least someone at the BBC doesn't want to freeze him out.

*******

The Martin Bashir affair is getting a lot of coverage in the papers this weekend. Accusations of a cover-up by the BBC over how Mr Bashir obtained his interview with Princess Diana are deepening. Lords Hall and Birt have been now dragged into it. It's still a remarkable thing that Martin Bashir was brought back in from the cold again by the BBC in 2016 and made, of all things, the corporation's Religion editor. 

The BBC bubble is boiling

The open revolt at the BBC over the Naga Munchetty affair continues. Thursday saw open meetings with BBC staff calling for (1) a formal apology for Naga, (2) more black and ethnic minority people to be included in the Executive Complaints Unit and (3) a review of the role of David Jordan, the BBC's head of editorial standards. 

On the latter point, writing in the Sunday Times, Jeremy Clarkson says that throwing David Jordan under the bridge would be a crime, as he's the main "fair cop" at the BBC - one of the few there who never loses sight of the fact that diversity of opinion really matters. 

I don't know the man myself but I've heard the same from leading campaigners against BBC bias. Mr Jordan is, in their experience, the sore thumb that stands out from the rest of the BBC's senior management in genuinely listening to criticism from 'people like us' and, occasionally, acting on it. 

So if the BBC bubble succeeds in getting rid of him then that would be yet another retrograde step for the licence-fee-paying public.

Opinion

Ah yes, Jeremy Clarkson! I remember him well. He's got a piece in The Sun about the falling ratings for Doctor Jodie and Team Tardis amid complaints about its "ham-fisted attempts to ram Lefty dogma down our throats", plus BBC bias in general, and adds this along the way:

I heard one of its news reporters this week explaining that fat-cat businessmen who pay themselves too much should think twice. 

He may have a point. It may be something many people agree with. But his job is to report the news, not give us his opinion on it. We get this constantly these days.

He's not wrong about that. Wonder who the reporter was though? (TV Eyes is failing me here). 

Interesting timing

(h/t a kind reader)

Here's a question: Do you think this:

has anything to do with this, starting next Friday on Amazon Prime?: 

It is certainly interesting timing and, as our reader put it, "strange that the BBC would investigate a private company and show the report on all news broadcasts when there is so much going on in the world".

The BBC News reports in question are based on last night's Inside Out. By coincidence I had a delivery from Amazon Prime today and asked the delivery driver whether anyone had mentioned that programme to him. He said one other person had. He also said that he started at 7.30 am, had 50 deliveries to do and was likely to finish at 1.00 pm, so he didn't feel hard done-by. He said he thought the programme had picked extreme examples. I drew the conclusion from this that, therefore, that programme (which I haven't watched) might well be an example of BBC sensationalism.  

Whether it was also maliciously motivated BBC sensationalism is another question but a question that merits attention,

Clarkson’s worst year

I’ve just read this article by Douglas Murray about the interview with Jeremy Clarkson  in the Sunday Times Magazine. 

"wants a way to prevent Britain's most unpleasant souls from travelling abroad"

By coincidence I’d just finished catching up on Clarkson’s column in the Sunday Times Review - not to be confused with the aforementioned magazine interview in which he explains that he’s lost his home, his wife, his job and his mum.

The column, written in Clarkson’s colourfully OTT language, is titled: “Sober Syrians we should let in; boozy Brits are too shaming to be let out.”

The gist of the piece is that ghastly British holidaymakers represent what’s gone wrong with the present-day UK, and we’d be better off sending them off to Homs or Macedonia in exchange for those sober, God-fearing Syrians. You know, the ones that we, the bigots, selfishly reject. 

I might have caught exaggeration; it’s contagious. The strange thing is that Clarkson himself was staying in this ghastly hotel in Morocco,  “a giant concrete maze painted brown to make it look like an ancient fort”. I suppose losing all that stuff forces you to lower your standards. It’s enough to drive you to the poolside bar, where you’re bound to encounter drunken Liverpudlians. 

Poor Clarkson. He wishes we could adopt some halfway house that prevents Britain’s most unpleasant souls from travelling abroad.  Be careful what you wish for, is all I can say.

 At the beginning of his piece he said: “If you listen to the bleeding heart liberals [...] every immigrant is a hard-working soul who wants to come to England to start a nail salon.” (I thought they were supposed to be doctors and engineers) “Whereas if you listen to the Ukip types with their red trousers and their usual spot at the bar” (look who’s talking) “then they’re all terrorists etc etc.”

He then goes on to acknowledge that the truth is somewhere in the middle. There is much truth buried in his provocatively presented rhetoric but his simplistic characterisations are insulting, and the general effect is far from astute. 

He does raise some valid questions. No doubt there are plenty of drunken, ignorant, class obsessed Brits who are an absolute disgrace; no doubt  there are a few “drunken greengrocers from Luton who drone on about how Nigel Farage should be running the country and how many languages Enoch Powell could speak “,  but most people who are concerned about a mass influx of those “God-fearing” Syrians aren’t as he caricatures us. We have genuine, multifaceted concerns. That doesn’t make us ignorant racist bigots. Not all of us, at any rate. 

Incidentally I understand that Greengrocers, and citizens of Luton in general are now more likely to be of the God-fearing type, rather than the right-wing Ukip voters Clarkson lampoons.

Here’s Douglas Murray on Clarkson:

[This is largely because] he personifies what a type of lazy leftist believes right-wingers to be like (uninterested in culture, cultivatedly thick, casually racist). But this weekend we learnt what some of us had long-suspected: that rather than being a scourge of our dishonest, molly-coddled, excuse-ridden culture, Clarkson may be one of its happiest and most comfortable creatures.

and that wasn’t even about the column I was alluding to. It was about his long interview, headed “my worst year”

If Clarkson did own just one house and lost that house then I am quite certain he would have had no trouble finding and purchasing another.  Certainly he is unlikely to have become homeless in the sense most of us would understand it (which is an implication he seems content to leave us with). It is the same with the claim that he lost his job. The loss of a presenting role on Top Gear does not mean for Clarkson what losing a job means for the rest of the population. Even after leaving the BBC he still kept his many highly-paid columns in the national papers (which helped cause the work-pressure he also cites a causal factor in his bad behaviour). It is worth realising that any of these columns on their own would have brought him an income many times the average wage in Britain. There would also have been the certainty that someone (Amazon as it turned out) would pick up Top Gear in some form. Most people unfortunate enough to lose their jobs have no such comfort.

I know Clarkson is supposed to be a bit naughty, a bit right-wing in the sense that he’s not constrained by Political Correctness. Some people regard him as 'the enemy of my enemy' because they hate the BBC.  There’s no doubt that Top Gear will never be the same without him. Sorry to say so, but the glorification of speeding cars is not my thing. It has a potentially dangerous influence on all those boy-racers that go round recklessly mowing people down and killing them.

Jeremy on Jeremy

Courtesy of the FT, former Newsnight presenter Jeremy Paxman has just taken his fellow former BBC colleague Jeremy Clarkson out to lunch.

Here's a couple of paragraphs from the resulting piece, presenting Jeremy P's general take on Jeremy C - and giving us an interesting glimpse into the thinking of "a couple of senior BBC producers":

I had happened to mention to a couple of senior BBC producers beforehand that I was lunching with Clarkson, and two individuals whom I had previously thought of as intelligent, friendly and quite sophisticated suddenly became a pair of spitting cobras. To them, Clarkson was pure pantomime enema. Is this a political thing or — they both happened to be women — a gender matter? 

Because I simply cannot understand what there is to feel so bitter about. You don’t like him? Don’t listen to him. You don’t care about cars? I’m not interested in cars, either. But I do like to laugh. And Clarkson is funny. Very funny.

The importance of being Jeremy

Someone on the Sunday Politics said Labour’s four point lead in today’s polls was down to the media’s representation of the Cameron/ Miliband/ Paxman programme, rather than the actual debate itself. Apparently some of the people polled hadn’t even seen it. They went entirely by media reports and clips of ‘the best bits’.

If that’s true, and I’m inclined to believe it is, then Ed’s success hinges on ‘that’ remark. 

I can’t remember the exact words, but it was something like “You may be important Jeremy, but you’re not that important.”

Oh the impudence! The flirtatiousness! Cheeky to the headmaster!

I can’t imagine David Cameron being lippy like that! The bit at the end was pretty punchy, too. Paxo said with faux concern “You alright Ed?” a slight pause, then “Yes. Are you?”

I can see Boris doing something similar, but not our straight-laced PM. There’s some sort of lesson there, to do with ‘The Weakest Link’. If the whole election hinged on an episode of T. W. L. hosted by Anne Robinson, more people would probably engage. 

You are the weakest link goodbye. Walk of shame. End of.

You could apply the Ed technique to quite a few other things too. The BBC for example. You may be important Tony, George, Mark, (insert favourite DG) but you’re not that important. Death threats? It happens to the best of us. They’re thinking of setting up a dedicated hotline. Or are they?

What with death threats, and the stress of covering Israel: 

“the corporation aims to be balanced in its coverage of Israel, but that reporting on the country’s conflict with the Palestinians was “tough”.”

Tough shit.

Jeremy Clarkson is a good example of someone who wasn’t as important as he thought he was. Or is it that the BBC underestimated Clarkson’s importance to his fans? Is Jeremy Clarkson the most important person on the BBC? I feel a John Lennon joke coming on. 

“He’s not even the m.i.person on Top Gear!”  (ba boom)

I have been forced to think about this incident. It has divided the country so it’s my duty to come up with a definitive verdict.( As it happens, I watched Stacey Dooley’s investigation into domestic violence the other day. Stacey is famous for her “My hometown fanatics ” film about the Islamification of Luton.The people’s version of investigative reporting. On domestic violence she managed to wangle an audience with Theresa May no less.  May was evasive and all politiciany. Waste of time.)

I must ask myself, did the Clarkson fracas, a workplace version of domestic violence, cross the line? I needed to know more before making my final decision.

1. Had 36 year old Oisin what’sisname been in the relationship long enough to know that a man needs a hot dinner on the table when he comes in after a hard day’s graft?
2. Whose fault was it that Jeremy had to work so late?
3. Was it reasonable to expect the producer to oversee dining arrangements efficiently enough to ensure that Clarkson is kept in the manner to which he had become accustomed?  
4. We all get ratty when we’re tired and hungry.
5. Not always to the point of fisticuffs. 
6. When the star is bigger than the producer there will be trouble.
7. The BBC is notorious for making bad decisions.
8. Could it have been handled differently?
9. Is Clarkson too big to fail?
10. Does Clarkson hit people often? 

Bored now. I’ll retire to the jury room and think about it.

Oh yes. Forgot to add:

1. Someone at the BBC must have decided to let the ‘slope’ film go out.
2. someone at the BBC must have leaked the eeny meeny / n****r outtake.
3. Someone at the BBC must have approved the insulting numberplate.
4. Russell Brand is still on our screens.       
5. You alright Jeremy?

Here's to Andrew Neil, the last surviving right-winger at the BBC!

A recurring joke in the old days at the Biased BBC blog - a joke which, strangely enough, was (by and large) 'funny because it's true' - was that left-wing defenders of the BBC only ever used one argument to counter our charge that the BBC is left-biased: "Yeah, but what about Jeremy Clarkson, Nick Robinson and Andrew Neil?"

It was as if the mere ritual recital of that unholy trinity of BBC names was enough to disprove all of our evidence that the vast majority of BBC staff leaned leftwards rather than rightwards.

The evidence for that assertion (of ours) included (among other things) quotes from prominent BBC types confirming the fact; an internal BBC survey which showed an overwhelming majority of BBC staff identifying themselves as 'liberal' rather than 'conservative'; those figures showing a vastly disproportionate number of BBC purchases of the Guardian compared to other newspapers; those seemingly endless one-sided tweets and re-tweets from BBC reporters; plus, of course, the mass of evidence that we ourselves found in support of that contention.

That was then and this is now though. Jeremy Clarkson is gone (and he's never been a BBC News man anyhow, any more than Jeremy Hardy, Mark Steel or Marcus Brigstocke have ever been). And Nick Robinson is sadly indisposed. So that just leaves Brillo - the last remaining right-winger at the BBC.

Ah yes, but things have moved on and those old-time left-wing defenders of the BBC might now say, "Yeah, but what about Craig Oliver, who worked at the BBC and then became David Cameron's spokesman? What about Jeremy Paxman who outed himself as a one-nation Tory after leaving the BBC? What about Fat Peng? And what about Gobby, who ran off to UKIP?"...

...to which the obvious reply would be (if you don't consider this a straw man argument on my part): Yes, but they've all gone too. So, as I say, that just leaves Brillo as the sole remaining right-winger in the BBC village.

Of course, that 'only rightie in the BBC village' crack implies that there are more right-wingers in the BBC village. It would be highly unlikely if there weren't.

Who though? 

Rod Liddle suspects John Humphrys might be - though he thinks he's very good at hiding it if he is. (Rumour has long had it that there is one Tory on the 'Today' rota. John? Justin?) Deputy political editor James Landale has also been mooted as a Tory. [No one at the BBC - except the late Sir Patrick Moore (and, now, the differently-'late' Gobby) - ever seems to get mooted as a Ukipper though.]

Anyone else?

Out of the frying pan and into the fire

Oh dear, it goes from bad to worse for the BBC over Jeremy Clarkson...

After some anonymous 'senior BBC figure' compared Jeremy Clarkson to Jimmy Savile, one of Sky New's  top stories tonight is:

Self-advertising on the BBC

I have to say that I didn't really warm to the initial moans on this week's Newswatch. 

A smattering of Newswatch viewers complained about the suspension of Jeremy Clarkson from the BBC being made the lead story on BBC News. They didn't think it merited the attention - or that the mass petition calling for his 'saving' should even have been reported. 

Given that petition (now nearing 900,000 signatures) and given the fact that vast swathes of the British public appear to have been talking about it (something I can vouch for), surely one day of Jezza leading the BBC News isn't disproportionate, is it? - a point presenter Samira Ahmed put to viewer Paul Hills.

However, I was somewhat taken up short by a point Paul then went on to make:

So often it seems to me that we get some self-advertising on the news. You know, Strictly comes up as a new item on the news broadcast. Well, I like that too but, again, it's not about news. And, actually, the first nine minutes of that particular broadcast [BBC One's News at One] it went on to talk about how the media was having lots of trouble with the election debates, and the whole thing struck me as incredibly self-regarding and the media was being the news when, in fact, the media is supposed to present the news to us, to keep us informed, to help us understand what's going on out there, rather than just bring in the stuff that just tickles their fancy, if you like, or seems important to them.

There's a lot of truth in that, isn't there? What "seems important to them" does, indeed, need questioning. 

And the BBC is certainly prone to navel-gazing, rival-bashing and shameless self-promotion (think of the regular plugs on Today for some investigation to be broadcast later that day elsewhere on the BBC). 

Swift self-selected non-select-committee summary

So much to blog /  so little time. 

The Islamophobia awards. The notion of giving the prize to Charlie Hebdo. 

For Islamophobia. 

A clumsier blunder you’d be hard pressed to find. 

Muslims already awarded Charie Hebdo the ultimate sanction - murder - as a prize for its alleged Islamophobia, so giving it a supposedly ironic ‘award’ should have been a gross embarrassment to all, especially the IHRC.

All those foolish supporters like Rowan Williams seem to have overlooked the fact that Charlie Hebdo wasn’t any more “Islamophobic" than other types of 'phobic' in the first place.  

At least Peter Oborne has come out and cemented his position as honorary Islamist, which I suppose is a good thing in the spirit of transparency. 

*********

This new report has the military and legal expertise that Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and  Navi Pillay ( former  United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights) lack. 

However, many people are expected to fall back on the Mandy Rice Davis manoeuvre to dismiss the 2014 Gaza War Assessment. That’s because the organisation that commissioned the report is called JINSA. The “J” stands for Jewish. Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs. They may be Jewish, but “The authors know the Laws of Armed Conflict far better than the NGOs do.” H/T EoZ)

*************

I don’t know if the dumbed down BBC is interested in that kind of thing and I can’t be arsed to try and search their new-fangled website these days. 

On our sidebar, the small handful of websites we thought relevant when we set up this blog constantly jostle with each other for top billing as soon as new articles appear. Recently I’ve noticed that while Sky, Google and the Guardian usually feature serious news, the BBC increasingly seems to focus on trivia and sport. 

++++++++++++++  

Talking of which, I’m quite amused and entertained by the Clarkson debacle, particularly the way certain people pronounce the word ‘fracas’. Michael Grade said “Frackarse” for instance. (I thought the ‘s‘ was  silent but what do I know?)

The fracas business is more entertaining than Top Gear so let’s hope it drags on as long as possible.

******************

Last and arguably not least I have to just mention the abuse of the house-room we give (i.e. purchase) to the garbage beamed into our houses in the shape of yesterday’s wall-to-wall coverage of yet another of those laughable select committees chaired by very important pompous master of ceremonies Keith Vaz. I understand other channels gave that panto similarly extensive coverage, but somehow it was all the more offensive from the BBC. I can’t really explain that.

There they were, three self righteous victims and one smug legal advisor sitting in a row, being encouraged  by their inquisitors to  think up ever more far-fetched grievances against the police and justify blaming everyone but themselves. 

Who was the elderly gent on the committee that sounded like Joe Pasquale who assured the family that clearly I.S. is nothing to do with Islam? 

What exactly is a select committee, who selects it and what good does it do? 

'The Now Show' defends Clarkson

Tonight's The Now Show contained a big surprise - an unexpected defence of Jeremy Clarkson, complete with a sharp attack on both Labour's Harriet Harman and the Daily Mirror (yes, Daily Mirror, not the Daily Mail!) from Radio 4 comedian Jon Holmes. 

Yes, of course, he also included a dig at Michael Gove and, yes, this could be taken as a BBC comedian giving the BBC a helping hand by backing one of its most profitable cash cows and, yes, there are a fair few holes in his 'logic' here, but I think it's worth transcribing in full for your entertainment and edification.

Enjoy.

So the man who says this..."in the world"...is the most evil man in the world? 

"Eeny, meeny, miny, mo, catch a Clarkson by his toe. He says the n-word, he must go"...because the Daily Mirror and Harriet Harman and Piers Morgan and the lefty Guardian and various bleating people on Twitter deemed it so.

Now let's be clear about the word. We're all adults here. We're all grown up of course. It is an offensive word. Many find it appalling, nauseating and downright abhorrent, but get used to us because I'm afraid the word 'Clarkson' has now passed into...[laughter]

'Clarkson'. It's the other c-word. It's only a word, but it has power, doesn't it? It has a history of offence. It's become symbolic of the white man's treatment of minorities on a motoring magazine programme. 

The word 'Clarkson', it revolts a great many people, of that there is no question, but where does it originate? Well, let's turn first to etymology. The world 'Clarkson' is derived from the Latin for 'overpaid TV presenter', and no one knows how or when it obtained a pejorative meaning, but we do know that almost midway through the second decade of the 21st Century saying the c-word out loud offends Guardian readers like no other word. 

These days many people find the word 'Clarkson' difficult to say. You do often hear it said by those wanting to reclaim it and you hear it on the street, don't you, used as a term of endearment by the Chipping Norton set: "Yo Clarkson. My Clarkson be looking fine in those threads, those too-tight jeans and shirt stretched over your belly, with some fine styling, do you get me?"

What a lot of guff about not much. 

I mean last week's n-word furore erupted when a bit of television that was being made for television but wasn't ever on television instead found its ways into the Clarkson-shaped gunsights of his old adversaries at the Daily Mirror, who immediately splashed with it on the front page. 

They like a front page, don't they, the Daily Mirror? But at least this time it wasn't fake pictures of British soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners. No, this time they'd been fed some mumbled footage of a man pointing at cars.

It wasn't broadcast, but that doesn't matter of course cos they don't really care whether Clarkson is racist or not, because it's all to shift copy, right? It's to whip up a twitterstorm simply to sell some advertising on the number of views, right? 

"Oooh! Click to watch a man mumbling a rhyme and you've got adverts advertising Mercedes-Benz if you click through, right."

Well done! Attempting to orchestrate the downfall of Top Gear's denim-clad overlord yet cynically cashing in on his fame by plastering a car advert across your pilfered outtake! Moral stance my a-word!!

It even got some 'audio forensic expert' in to examine the footage. Quite honestly, if you need some 'audio forensic expert' to examine some footage to find out if someone's said a thing or not then you're kind of sending a message that to ordinary ears it was kind of indecipherable. It was inaudible mumbling.

But what a coincidence that Top Gear has the same sound engineers that worked on Jamaica Inn.

Ok, here it comes....here it comes...

I like Clarkson. [Ooohs from the audience].

OK, I've said it, and I've lost the room. [Laughter]

He's not a racist. He's am amiable buffoon who says things that are provocative cos he gets a reaction and it makes him popular. 

He's no more objectionable or racist than Katie Hopkins.

All right, bad example, all right, but she does it as well because the more she more she goes on the more loud-mouthed and objectionable to the Left she is the more she gets paid to appear on This Morning.

I'm far more concerned actually about Harriet Harman's mind-numbingly partisan reaction to it all.

She went on Twitter, the modern Twitter....She got all high and mighty. "Anybody who uses the n-word in public or private in whatever context has no place in the British Broadcasting Corporation", she twitted. 

Now, leaving aside Harriet Harman's seemingly wanting to thought-police anything anyone ever says, even if in private, what's she talking about?

Is she seriously rejecting the notion of context, right? 

What about when the radio plays Elvis Costello's Oliver's Army? Sack Elvis Costello from music and sack the radio.

Racism has to have context, like the context of discriminating against someone because of the colour of their skin, denying them houses, jobs, food, respect, cos they're not like you to look at. 

When Ron Atkinson called a footballer "a lazy, thick n-word" down his commentator's pipe, that was racism. Contextually, he is a racist. 

But Clarkson mumbling a child's rhyme? I'm not sure that's the same. 

Plus it was on a bit of television that wasn't on television. He wasn't directing it at anyone and the context of him being what James May called him, which is "a monumental bell-head". 

Let's face it, some people want Jeremy Clarkson burned in a giant wicker Farage, right, and others handed in a petition to Downing Street demanding that he be made prime minister...

And that could happen. Michael Gove defended Clarkson on Good Morning Britain. (You know, so I'll understand why you haven't seen it!) He said, "It seems to me that this was a word he never intended to broadcast, so I think we should leave the matter there."

Now, it's worth remembering here that in the broadcast version Clarkson changed the n-word to 'teacher', which probably explains Gove's defence. "I actually like the idea of a teacher being caught by the toe and then if the teacher squeals 'let him go' I can fill his place with a cheaper unqualified teaching assistant" [largest laugh, big round of applause].

I like Jeremy Clarkson!  

And there I've said it again. I feel like I'm in a meeting. Hello. My name is Jon. I like Top Gear. 

Asterisks R us

J*****  C*******

The Jeremy Clarkson debacle is like something out of Brass Eye. No, it’s like a parody of something out of Brass Eye.

Eenie meenie mynie mo catch a n***** by his toe; if he hollers let him go, eenie meenie mynie mo. 

It’s an old fashioned ‘choosing’ rhyme, that’s all. Any racist meaning it might have had in the past was long ago rendered meaningless by over-use, and any such alleged meaning is obsolete in the way that ring-a-ring-a-roses no longer means whatever it arguably used to mean. Even if it did once have connections with lynching (think Strange Fruit) and apparently there’s no evidence that it did, it ceased to evoke any such thing to the world long before little Jeremy C was a glint in his mother’s Paddington Bear.

I’m sure it never crossed the minds of the children and the child-like persons who use the rhyme that it was anything other than a handy, not very efficient choosing aid.

I always used to think “Catch an N-word by his toe” was to do with swimming, because how else, I reasoned, could you catch anyone by the toe? But I also knew that if the toe’s owner didn’t like it, all he/she had to do was ‘holler’ in order to be let go. Surely he (or she) would do that immediately, if only with surprise, so that’s alright. It’s just a nonsense rhyme.

But how the hell did a purely descriptive word that originated so objectively and innocently, which was also the description of a shade of black or dark brown, become more offensive than the most taboo profanities and rude words? Especially when swearwords and profanities have wormed their way into universal usage and comparative acceptability ever since Kenneth Tynan broke through the barrier in the 1960s by being the first person to utter the word FUCK on “national television” - although according to Wiki some people dispute this -  and, what was I saying? oh yes, and became the new norm through celebs and edgy comedians like Gordon Ramsay and the one who mocked Rebecca Adlington? (I know his name but I’m pretending I don’t)

Personally I have never understood why isolated words caused offence in themselves; the actual offence was really and truly because they were, more often than not, intentionally used in defiance of ‘society’s rules’. To provoke a response, preferably outrage.

Surely the fuss over Clarkson using (or not using) what they call the ‘N’ word is so pompous, so ill-conceived, so twisted that I actually feel pangs of sympathy for a man I normally associate with the off switch. 

Libby Purves (£) of all people seems to agree that this fuss is ridiculous. But like the newspapers that criticised the riots over the Mohammed cartoons but were too scared to reproduce them in their newspapers, Libby Purves or the Times, (eenie meenie mynie) has published the ‘N-word’ with the ‘igger’ represented by asterisks; as have I.

The Truth (but not necessarily the whole truth)

Brilliant

Isn’t hindsight brilliant?  - as that character on the fast show might have said. I mean, just look at the Arab Spring. The way the the BBC kindergarten eulogised the antics in Tahrir Square, even after, or was that during, the sexual assault of Lara Logan.

 Oh how we crowed when the BBC turned out to be mistaken. Of course there’s no ‘turned out’ about it. Like all history, it’s an evolving, never-ending situation, and who are we to jump to premature conclusions. On the other hand, if you can see an imminent car crash when others are still lost in euphoria while hurtling at speed in the wrong direction, it makes sense to whisper ‘watch out!’ even though you fear no-one’s listening.

***

So now we’ve started to hear the trickle of uncertainty over another of the BBC’s monumental heroes. Obama is losing his halo. Melanie Phillips has written a disturbing article, which I urge you to read. “Delivering the West on a platter. When, and how will we ever know how that has turned out?

***

Will Nick Robinson be doing another mea culpa about anything else? Perhaps “The Truth About” series. The BBC’s other biases: vols 1, 2 & 3” 

Even one of those burka’d mea culpas where the mea is a travesty of the culpa, like the faux immigration fiasco would be better than nothing. Or would it? 

The truth about immigration, in which, (as many commenters  have already mentioned) Nick Robinson failed to convince anyone whatsoever that his piece about the ‘new improved’ re-calibrated unbiased BBC was nothing more than a pro-immigration puff piece. 

Even the Guardian’s notorious TV critic John Crace had his doubts. Let me cherry-pick a quote from his review of the programme, in the spirit of quoting people-you-fundamentally-disagree-with-about- most-things to underline your case: "How do we know you're telling us the truth about immigration now, Nick?"

And the people who sensed the rug was being pulled out from under their feet, you know, the people who were alarmed at the rapidly changing face of Britain, were presented as right-wing Little Englanders, and ridiculed with a bit of patronising telly-trickery in a somewhat malicious fashion.  

Such as: Asking random attendees at a county show type event  to ‘estimate’ the percentage of immigrants, with the aid of varying sized slices of some disgusting-looking pies. Predictably, they wildly over-estimated, therefore he was able to surprise them with the ‘real’ percentage to show that there was nothing to worry about. (I’d just have liked to hear how these figures were reached. I mean did the statisticians include second-generation immigrants? I don’t trust it. Did it take into account the disproportionate amount of hot-air generated by Anjem  Choudary and his less vociferous co-religionists, for example?) I digress.

He also rattled a collecting tin in front of the same people, to illustrate the alleged economic benefits of immigration, and bring some  ‘TV type reality’ to the material sacrifices the objectors might have to make, should immigration be stemmed. (They still said they would willingly pay more taxes in that unlikely event) That Chomsky quote couldn’t be more apposite, so excuse me for using it again, following Alan @ B-BBC and Craig, here on “Is”.

“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum – even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.”

***

Still talking of exploiting or cherry picking quotes from people who you fundamentally disagree with, I’d just like to mention the Jeremy Clarkson Arctic Convoys programme that went down so well with climate-change skeptics cynics, crowing with delight at a recent embarrassing antarctic expedition - it turns out (taking ‘turns out’ in its loosest possible sense) that the whole kaboosh was plagiarized  word for word from the work of a well-know holocaust-denying revisionist historian who is suing.   

I have no idea whether Clarkson agrees or disagrees with Irving. (I hope it’s the latter, but nothing would surprise me.)

***

Would you believe it? The Today programme featured the quenelle again.

“The French President Francois Hollande has written to local authorities in France urging them to ban the controversial comedian Dieudonne on public order grounds. French philosopher Bernard Henri-Levy analyses.” 

The interview went quite well, but  just as things were hotting up - lo and behold, “I’m afraid we’ll have to leave it there.” Why? Because of the footie news. Oh well, I suppose if it weren’t for that footie quenelle, Dieudonne’s antisemitism wouldn’t have been of interest.

As Joan Bakewell says  “It’s an unwise man who picks a quarrel with comics”

***

If you did believe that, you won’t believe this.

In her report about the young Afghan girl who claims her brother made her wear a suicide belt, Caroline Wyatt included a (blink and you’ll miss it) sentence, the likes of which has rarely been heard on the BBC.

01:40 “The use of children as suicide bombers is less frequent, and perhaps, still, more taboo. In the past they have been used by Palestinian militant groups....”  Is that a first for the BBC?

I rather admire Caroline Wyatt. She (?) is always well prepared and well-informed.

*** 

Update.

I forgot to mention Paxo’s interview with Dieudonne’s holocaust denying, far-right political ally Alain Soral on Newsnight. I missed the intro, but I hear  he was introduced as ‘French writer and film-maker”.  This is a good example of the BBC breaching its guidelines on impartiality. I hereby illustrate this accusation with complaints about similar breaches from both sides of the chasm. Here and here.  Don’t be fobbed off with the BBC’s excuses about  about receiving complaints from both sides (therefore we must be getting it about right.) 

The BBC should tell the audience exactly whose opinion they’re hearing, and not mask, where relevant, the extreme political/ideological affiliations of a guest by using vague misleading terms in the introduction.   

Yeah, but what about Andrew Neil, Nick Robinson and Jeremy Clarkson?

It's Sunday, so there must be an article attacking the BBC in the Sunday Telegraph. And so there is - though the paper's website isn't making too much of it.  

It's by former BBC reporter and ex-MP Sir Martin Bell. 

Sir Martin believes it's the BBC's wastefulness with public money that's at the root of the problem -most damagingly demonstrated by those excessive payouts to top executives, but also revealed (he says) by such things as the corporation's heavy spending on expensive buildings. 

His answer? A dose of mild austerity at the BBC. 

That's it really. No wonder the Telegraph isn't splashing with it.

Still, the piece discusses the alleged problem of bias.

Ignoring all the past/current admissions of a pronounced left-wing/liberal bias by senior BBC figures, Sir Martin essays what we might call "the oldest trick in the book", as it's a gambit which almost inevitably seems to get deployed by (left-leaning) BBC defenders whenever there's a BBC-critical article somewhere relating to Left/Right-style politics.

The gambit may be summed up as: "You complain about left-wing bias at the BBC. Yeah, but what about Andrew Neil, Nick Robinson and Jeremy Clarkson? Therefore, you're wrong. QED"

So, say, if at any time over the past few years who may have noticed that many reporters at Newsnight (excepting Mark Urban and the non-voting Jeremy Paxman, maybe) appear to lean leftwards - whether that be Michael Crick, Peter Marshall, Paul Mason or the current crop of ex-Guardian people, Allegra Stratton and Ian Katz - someone would then amble along and say, "Yeah, but what about Andrew Neil, Nick Robinson and Jeremy Clarkson?" 

The almost-guaranteed mention of Jeremy Clarkson [which, wisely, Martin Bell doesn't indulge in] always makes me smile, given that he's not part of the BBC's news wing. He's an entertainer-with-views - and his right-wing leanings can immediately be countered by the mention of about twenty to thirty openly left-wing Radio 4 comedians. 

Anyhow, here's how Sir Martin deploys the "Yeah, but what about Andrew Neil, Nick Robinson and Jeremy Clarkson?" gambit:

Not all the present commotions are well-grounded. I don’t accept the widely made charge that the BBC is institutionally Left wing. Its two leading daily political analysts are manifestly not of that colour. I know Andrew Neil both personally and professionally: he does not have a socialist bone in his body, not so much as a little finger. Nick Robinson was once National Chairman of the Young Conservatives. His supposed ad-libs are politically balanced to the point of banality: and so fine-tuned in advance that he always thinks of two things to say, just in case he forgets one of them.

His other evidence that the BBC isn't left-biased is (a) that Jeremy Paxman admitted he didn't vote in one election [which, to my mind, proves nothing much] and (b) that Justin Webb seemed sympathetic to George W. Bush when he was the BBC's Washington correspondent [which could be countered by bringing up Justin's predecessor in Washington, Matt Frei, who seemed sneeringly unsympathetic to George W. Bush, and Justin's successor in Washington, Mark Mardell, who seems almost sycophantic in his reporting of Barack Obama.]

And that's it really. Sir Martin Bell's answer to "the widely made charge that the BBC is institutionally Left wing", is "Yeah, but what about Andrew Neil, Nick Robinson, Jeremy Paxman and Justin Webb?"

Pretty feeble, I think.

Well, that's my take on it anyhow.