Kerry-Anne Up the Khyber

I'm all for broadening the range of voices on the BBC, so I've no objection whatsoever to Kerry-Anne Mendoza of the alt-left The Canary being invited onto Any Questions. 

And besides, it looks as if she might give us even better entertainment value than Diane Abbott. 

This, however, was embarrassing to listen to...which I why I felt the immediate need to re-listen to it and then transcribe it for you!

It all began with a question about whether we should boycott the World Cup in Russia in response to the poisoning of Yulia and Sergei Skripal:

Jonathan Dimbleby: Kerry-Anne Mendoza?

Kerry-Anne Mendoza: Erm.....I hate that Sergei and his daughter died. It's appalling, and it reminded me of the horror that I felt when Litvinenko...(heckle)....sorry, what? (heckle: "They're not dead"). Sorry, I just assumed they were by now. It's absolutely...But the point is...(boos from the audience). No, I mean it.

Jonathan Dimbleby: Sorry, sorry. I should have pointed that out immediately. They are very ill...

Kerry-Anne Mendoza: Yeah, I know. 

Jonathan Dimbleby: ...and they are absolutely alive.

Kerry-Anne Mendoza: Yeah, thank you. I apologise...erm...(long pause) I find it terrifying. I find it terrifying when Litvinenko was killed...erm...(long pause) and this stuff happens. We don't know....(long pause)...(etc)

Ironically, around half a minute later Kerry-Anne then implored people to get their facts straight!:

Kerry-Anne Mendoza: But often what the best thing to do is to wait until you have the facts, wait until you have those facts clear and then take careful and delicate action. 

Most playwrights would probably sell their souls to Satan to be able to make up dialogue as darkly comedic as this (including such gems as "Sorry, I just assumed they were by now", "But often what the best thing to do is to wait until you have the facts" and, my own favourite, "Yeah, I know."). If it wasn't actually real, you'd surely take it for satire.

Roll on Kerry-Anne's next BBC appearance!

Selective hearing?

Rob Burley

Rob Burley, the editor of The Andrew Marr Show, has been interviewed by The Huffington Post, mainly about his weekly engagement with Twitter critics over allegations of BBC bias - an engagement with licence-fee payers we've praised here before (and long before the Huff Post jumped on the bandwagon!).

Something that stood out for me from this interview is the following:

, 

The treatment of supporters of Jeremy Corbyn is one of the very few areas where BBC editors seem willing to admit to bias and to try to make amends. If you recall, Katy Searle, Editor of BBC Political News, went out of her way to concede their points on Feedback last year. Plus Newsnight's Ian Katz, in that Spectator article, has also been saying that the BBC (explicitly including himself) got Jeremy wrong and that they must learn lessons from that and broaden the range of voices featured. 

And the BBC does seem to be trying to show that its guest selection is being opened to more voices from the far-Left. 

And not just Ellie Mae O'Hagan and Faiza Shaheen. Kerry-Anne Mendoza of The Canary (the BBC's main 'alt-left' critic), for example, has been on Question Time, Start the Week, Today and Newsnight, all within the last month.

Whether as much attention will be paid to broadening the range of voices featured at the other end of the political spectrum will be interesting to watch.


Update: Rob Burley is fully engaged in a Twitter fight-to-the-death this sunny afternoon with Dan Hodges. It's going on and on and on, like one of those gruelling marathon matches at Wimbledon.

Dan is accusing Rob of "caving in" to complaints from former Corbyn spokesman Matt Zarb-Cousin and changing his editorial policy as a result. ("Yep. Total coincidence you had two Corbynites on in the two weeks following Matt's criticism..."). Rob says that the accusation of "caving in" is "silly" and that all he and his show are doing is "listening to people" and allowing what they hear to "feed into what we do".

After about four hours I think they're calling it a day. It ended:

Dan Hodges: "No. But yes...". I think we can probably leave it there...
Rob Burley‏: Ok, Dan, you can have the last word.

Canary in the room

Talking of The Canary, I listened to David Aaronovitch’s “The Briefing Room” having seen that the editor of the Canary was on the programme talking crap about the evils of Zionism.

They’re discussing it on H/P as well. Go there now if you’d like to see a wide variety of opinions on the programme. 

I just thought the 28 minutes was too short. No time to be of much consequence. Although David Hirsh refuted the forced sterilisation story, it hung in the air  - and lingered there. 

I had to look it up to remind myself what had happened. It’s precisely the kind of story that Israel-bashers pick up and run with; they get away with it simply because they can. No-one can be arsed to check it out.

Transcription thanks to "Happy Goldfish"

(Kerry-Anne Mendoza 0:18:26) "The Comparison of Israel to Nazism or the atrocities of the Third Reich. What evidence is there for that? Well, what other state in the world do I know of in the present day has been behind the forced sterilisation of Jewish women? That would be Israel, It was applying Depo Pravera**, long-term contraceptive injections, to Ethiopian Jewish women. I think that's an anti-semitic act. I think it has horrific echoes of some of the atrocities, not all of them, some of the atrocities perpetrated by the Third Reich, and I think it's right to call that out. I would call that out in any state anywhere in the world where Jewish women or any other group of women were subject to forcible sterilisation to prevent some sort of racial dilution, which wasthe theory behind that process. Do I think it's helpful for people to go around willy-nilly attempting to bait Jewish people by calling them Nazis? Absolutely not. But do I think there issome evidential case for saying there are echoes here of some the worst behaviour that we have committed in Europe? Yes I do."

** Depo Pravera is a 3-month contraceptive

I see Sarah AB has crashed Gene’s post (I do that here sometimes, it’s very jolly) and she has contributed a fuller summary of the programme.

It was good to hear Owen Jones talking more sense than usual, especially when he demolished Kerry-Anne Mendoza’s Nazi comparison, and I was impressed by his seemingly heartfelt admission that it was up to people on the left (like him) to speak out. 

He has come in for a lot of flak from some of his followers for what they see as a betrayal. 

It’s a common problem - one isn’t entirely responsible for the excesses of one’s fans. In fact the excesses of one’s fans can act as an eye-opener, and can prompt one to reevaluate some of one’s lazier assumptions. 

As for Owen, I can’t help remembering his passionate condemnation of Israel over the death of the baby Omar  Mashhrawi  which crossed the line between rational and irrational by way of his stubborn refusal to recant, even after the institutionally anti-Israel UN found that Israel was ‘not’ responsible.

The new Owen almost smacks of a bandwagon hastily jumped upon; the boy Owen with a youth’s keen sense of smell, having scented a whiff of an imperceptible shift in the direction of that elusive moral high ground. 

Owen, when did you stop being antisemitic?

The elephant was still there of course. The lazy repetition of that phrase “What Israel is doing”, which is never challenged  - and the blind spot that looms so large that it reduces everything else to candy floss, an inability to acknowledge let alone confront  the Jew-hate that emanates from the Arab world and the Palestinians that the silly lefties have adopted as pets.