Here we go again

Some things never seem to change. Rod Liddle’s article in the Sunday Times has a segment about a Jewish student at Leeds university who ‘failed’ her sociology degree.

“Danielle Greyman had written about the use of human shields by Hamas and clearly failed to qualify her arguments by adding the rider “which is the legitimate voice of the oppressed Palestinian people in their righteous fight against the Zionist entity”. An outside examiner said the 23-year-old’s essay should have passed.

You get good grades these days only by agreeing with the adolescent views of the lecturers."

Never mind “These Days!” Because ..........

in 2005 “right-wing journalist Melanie Phillips” published an email on her website which she had received from a student at Aberystwyth. The student complained that:

[T]he only way to really succeed within the university industry is to pander to the prejudices of the academic staff; anything that differs with the anti-Semitic orthodoxy results in rather harsh marking. When I first went to university, I came with the naive belief that study at such an institution was about the pursuit of knowledge and truth; it is about lies, propaganda and the worst sort of prejudice. [2]

The student claimed that ‘most of the academic staff [believe] that all the world's current ills can be attributed to the activities of the US and Israel, and those that can't are the result of our colonial legacy.’ 

2005 is what, 17 years ago? Yes, that was Aberystwyth rather than Leeds, and the academics whose political agenda tainted the course were  convener Dr Marie Breen Smyth and Dr Richard Jackson rather than the academic who assessed the Leeds essay, namely 

 “Claudia Radiven, studied under Shaikh and Sayyid, specializing in Islamic law, Islamic theology, and Islamic finance, with a special interest in rehabilitation of convicted terrorists.”

I looked at other reports about the latest incident.

Under the header: “Jewish student sues Leeds University 'after being given fail in sociology assignment for not criticising Israel’” the Daily Mail, for example, has published a substantial number of readers’ responses, the majority of which defend the university and criticise the student for ‘one-sidedness’.

Yes, her essay was one-sided. Perhaps the commentariat in their wisdom couldn’t grasp the idea that her study had a specific brief: “crimes committed by Hamas against Palestinians” and not (thanks for small mercies) “a study of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.”

In any case, would the demands for ‘putting the other side’ be equally abundant had the essay been titled “the Israeli state carries out acts of violence” or any similar ‘adolescent’ left-wing idiocy? 

Rod Liddle and Robin Aitken

Don't necessarily agree with every word in this conversation, and we've heard much of it before, but here it is anyway.

From Orwell to the Irwell

  

Rod Liddle's turn of phrase remains a thing of beauty. In his Sunday Times column today he writes about the Treasury's decision to move 750 jobs to Darlington in County Durham and wonder whether it will change the culture of the Treasury...

Or [he asks] will it be more like the BBC’s move to Salford, in which the corporation’s bien-pensant producers simply transported their asinine belief systems 200 miles up the M6 and the only locals who got jobs were electricians?

Camus, the Plague, and the BBC

 

In his latest Spectator piece Rod Liddle, as is his way, sums up what many of us feel about the BBC so well that he pretty much renders further comment from us superfluous. 

And his way with words remains a thing of wonder, e.g. "The distance the BBC travels each day from the values of its core audience will soon be measurable only in astronomical units." 

(At the moment I can only dream of being at least 3.9 parsecs away from Newsnight's Lewis Goodall - a man whose unbearable smugness would embarrass Douglas Adams's Zaphod Beeblebrox).

Even Rod sounded somewhat staggered though by Radio 4's latest, 'woke' dramatisation of Albert Camus's masterpiece The  Plague. 

As he describes it, for no comprehensible reason other than 'wokeness', the main character in the novel - a man - was turned into a woman, and placed in a lesbian relationship with her "wife". The setting, however, remained late 1940s Algeria with "its Arab population" (mentioned in the broadcast) - not a time or a place exactly known for its acceptance of openly lesbian couples or same-self marriages (or - by the by - for its 160,000-strong Jewish population which, having survived Vichy France's collusion with the Nazis over the Holocaust, was then getting driven out following the formation of the state of Israel. As you probably know, there are now no Jews in Algeria).

It's not that a story about lesbian relationships in 1940s plague-stricken Algeria mightn't have made for an interesting original drama, Rod argued, but that this trivialising piggy-backing on Camus has nothing to do with Camus and is simply silly.

Rod quotes the head of BBC audio drama, Alison Hindell, sticking up for the changes on Feedback and saying that they provided "contemporary resonance". 

Rod strongly doubted that, suspecting its pointless "contemporary resonance" barely extended beyond London dinners parties hosted by and attended by BBC production teams. 

Apparently, according to Rod, Ms Hindell rejects such charges of London/metropolitan-elite-centric groupthink by saying...drum roll...that the BBC will be running A Season of Nigerian Literature soon. Therefore, a season of Nigerian literature proves that the BBC isn't part of BBC, London-based groupthink. 

QED. 

Now, I'm just reading Rod here and enjoying him and nodding my head and raising my eyebrows and pursing my lips at the appropriate moments, but I didn't hear that Alison Hindell Feedback interview myself. Did she really show herself up like that? I think I ought to do her the courtesy of at least checking first...

Well, she certainly did play the "contemporary resonance" defence: "It helped the play feel feel like it was in The Now"...

...but she also raised a "practical" advantage to changing the sex of Dr. Bernard Rieux from a man to a woman: that otherwise the cast would have been all-male and that "voice differentiation and distinguishability" helps "the ear of the audience to follow the story". 

That's reasonable. It spoils listening to radio dramas if you can't tell who's speaking because the voices are too similar, though, that said, (a) I can imagine it being far from impossible to differentiate the voices of an all-male cast and (b) I don't think it really answers the question of why it had to be the main character rather than some of the minor, more plausibly changeable characters, who got changed.  

(Feedback's Roger Bolton stuck entirely to the change of sex question, not the ahistorical-seeming same-sex in Algeria issue).

Her other defence of why it was "a perfectly legitimate choice" to change the sex of the main character was literally this: 

There are a lot of women doctors in the world today. 

Interestingly, she said that this was the first time Camus's estate has given its blessing to a radio adaptation - which certainly sounds very much like a French artistic estate doing something French artistic estates rarely do, and (if you accept Camus's estate as speaking for the long-dead Albert) somewhat undercuts the charge that the play goes entirely against the spirt of Camus.

And she argued - quite accurately - that this kind of mucking around with original texts (changing the sex of main characters, using ethnic voices - here a Jamaican voice instead of a French-Algerian voice, etc) is now commonplace on the stage and in radio adaptations, reinterpreting things to fit "the social mores and expectations of the world the we live in today". (The world she lives in, some might say). 

Still, the playwright who adapted The Plague for Radio 4, Neil Bartlett, is no novice. He's a man with a long back history, so they didn't just grab him off a far-left street protest. It was a theatrical work first, and featured a female actress as the male main character -  the same Jamaican-born actress (Sara Powell) as on Radio 4....

....ah, I'm seeing, casting-wise, light-bulb-going-on, just why Neil would probably be just the man for the BBC at the moment!

Obviously, using one radio adaptation to represent the abyss into which 'woke' BBC drama has fallen doesn't amount to a clinching argument. It's a mere swallow in the wind. But it's a telling swallow nonetheless.

On Rod's point that Ms Hindell rejected charges of London/metropolitan-elite-centric groupthink by saying...drum roll...that the BBC will be running A Season of Nigerian Literature soon...

...well, in fairness to her, that did come about because of Feedback presenter Roger Bolton - a long-time BBC left-winger - raising the 'London/metropolitan-elite-centric groupthink' by asking her, of all things, whether Radio 4 audiences are far too South East England-focused and...guess what?...yes, not what people in the North or Cornwall or in seaside resorts like Morecambe might think, but what BAME listeners might think of that. 

Listening to the Radio 4 play itself, my main disappointment was on how pedestrian it was. Camus's The Plague struck me as a profound masterpiece when I first read it thirty years ago. This just struck me as a plodding radio play with intrusive music. 'Why was it so clunking and banal?' was my main question. 

Distanced!

The media has taken on the role of Her Majesty’s official opposition, which is quite understandable, given that the Labour party is still in intensive care. A place-holding position, if you like.

I’ve just heard Victoria Derbyshire cornering Dan Hodges into defending the least credible parts of the Cummings tale, particularly, the dodgy eyesight driving test manoeuvre. What the Cummings family did was definitely not cricket, and being forced into the defensive on a dodgy wicket is where the BBC has the sensible people (who see this as a broader issue) over a barrel. A principle is involved!

The fact is that anyone who has to live and work in a multicultural metropolitan hell-hole would prefer to get away somewhere airy, especially if they were feeling apprehensive, under the weather and / or aware of the looming catastrophe that might be about to befall the human race. 

Dom obviously does think there’s one rule for “us” and another for “everybody else” because there is one rule for us and one for everybody else. There always was and always will be. And why not?

Not everyone is despised by the entire media class, for a start. Not everyone’s every move is scrutinised to within an inch of its life by a hostile press.

The media abides precisely by such double-standards, so it has no legitimate business criticising others for doing the same thing, especially as it does so with such disingenuous and politically motivated sanctimony. 

 When the media threatens “This story is not going to go away! Cummings should resign so that the government can get back to proper business” they really mean “we will continue to ferret out details, discrepancies and assorted minutiae about Dominic Cummings, therefore obstructing ‘proper business’ ourselves, and blaming Boris for ‘making Cummings the story’ until we’re distracted by the next scandal.

Here's Rod Liddle: Why couldn't someone ask Dominic cummings a decent question?

"Is it entirely beyond the wit of our gilded political correspondents to ask a different question to the one asked by the previous interlocutor? One after the other they lined up to ask Dominic Cummings the same question, over and over again. Does Peston think he’s asking it better than Kuenssberg? Does Beth Rigby think that asking it for a fourth time will be more elucidatory because she asked it with open contempt in her voice? And how magnificently puffed up they all were. When they were en route to the press conference did they all think the same thing: that they had the killer question and nobody else would have thought of it? Dimbojournalism.

Liddle hints that his article has been ‘edited’. Gosh!

Update:
This thread is full of fun.
I urge you to read Melanie Phillips too. Although I don’t feel motivated to defend Dom C’s conduct with as much conviction as others have done, the bigger picture - that the left-leaning anti-Brexit press is hell-bent on derailing the political destination chosen by the voters  - is the real scandal.

Remember; the news we get is written and dished up by journalists and media hacks, and interviews are conducted by them too. They’ve closed ranks, even many of the ‘good’ ones, as they would; and all we can do about it is sit and watch.

Here’s Maggie Foster miming a fine Sir Keir. Ah! Shame it won't play! (Oh yes it will! The problem must've been at my end)

Keir Me Out pic.twitter.com/5ncHqfYmBC

— Meggie Foster (@meggiefoster) May 25, 2020

Try this instead.

What the people want

I wish Andrew Marr would level with and just say “we’re campaigning to have Dominic Cummings sacked so that we can usher in that nice Sir Keir who can forensically nit-pick his way towards reversing Brexit.” (It’s what the people want.)

Did the BBC really invite Grant Shapps onto the A.M. show to discuss transport? 

I wish Maggie Foster would do one of her ten-times-more-entertaining-than-anything-the-BBC-has-produced-for-the-last-ten-years lip-sync impressions of Andrew Marr’s warm-up before the interview with Grant Shapps

 “This morning the Sunday Mirror and the Observer reported two sightings of Dominic Cummings out and about in the North East!” 

as well as the press briefing I watched the other day, which was 100% devoted to forcing that sacking/resignation.. (It’s what the country wants) and I’d quite like to see her facial expressions while emoting Sam Coates’s ranty question.

Last night TVs all over the country literally vibrated from Sonia Sodha’s indignant screeching. (about Dominic Cummings) When Dan Hodges is the one voice of sanity, one has to …..... I don't know, what?

And by travelling hundreds of miles to be close to extended family in case he needed childcare Cummings showed disregard for the safety of healthcare workers (NB I really *didn’t* say Cummings wanted them to die as I was then accused of!) pic.twitter.com/Gu1BydKNVz

— Sonia Sodha (@soniasodha) May 23, 2020

 Oh! Look at Dan Hodges’s Twitter as people pile in with assorted *wrong* assumptions.

I think Andrew Marr and Tony Hall are terminally and irreversibly deluded. Tony Hall’s appearance alone is enough to make you wonder just what sort of a man is this? What does he look like? Contrary to popular belief, hair-dressing is not rocket science. 

Still after the youth market, Tony? I don’t think so mate.

Now for something completely different - (H/T Guest Who, B-BBC.) Jeremy Bowen has instigated a whole barrage of one-liner, virulently anti-Israel Tweets, merely by ‘remembering’ the incident that cemented his hatred for Israel.  Responses are always revealing. How the BBC sees fit to keep this individual in the influential position he’s in,  and still claim they represent ‘impartiality’ is beyond belief.

Rod Liddle has done a baffling about-turn. He thinks the BBC has had a good pandemic! Body hell! 

Does coronavirus affect people in more ways than we’re being told? 

Alarming news

I haven’t watched the BBC for a few days, but the radio alarm (literally) woke me up with the *alarming* news about Dominic Cummings. 

Having read the piece in the Spectator (£) written by the spouses of some of their regular columnists (I have to confess that I never knew he was Mary Wakefield’s other half) it seems that Dom isn’t the kind of unemotional automaton that the Boris-bashing press would have us believe; rather he seems (almost) a human being. 

I now suspect that he hadn’t behaved quite so outrageously and criminally as the BBC (and the press) obviously wishes he had, and that their determination to have him horse-whipped is politically motivated. Who’d've thunk it? 

I don’t remember the press ever going in such relentless pursuit of the arch manipulator and brain behind Jeremy Corbyn - that antisemitic Machiavellian rogue Seumas Milne. He seems to have got off lightly. Where is he now? I don’t know. Talking of ‘where are they now’, Rod Liddle has had an entertaining go at Shami Chakrabarti, which I mention solely so I can use the lovely photo to decorate this post.  

In it together

Firstly, something has gone wrong with the Spectator link on our sidebar.

Having unsuccessfully attempted a series of fixes, neither Craig nor Sue have managed to reinstate it. So, for the time being, I’ll just have to link to Rod Liddle’s piece here, (£) and hope you’ll bear with me while I refer to it now.

I usually enjoy Rod’s stuff even when I don’t agree with all of it, but I was sorry to see him begin with what looked like a long list of tedious complaints about plod. The same stuff that Hugo Rifkind dragged out the other day, you know, drones filming antisocial ramblers in the Peak District and the abominable black Lagoon.

Times subscribers pointed out below the line that the black lagoon affair was merely the police’s way of deterring people from immersing themselves in the existing toxic swamp. I suppose if you did, you’d be irradiated AND (assuming you weren’t one already) simultaneously turned into a Person of Colour.

That, and the curtain-twitching snitches that were salivating at the prospect of seeing their neighbours acquiring criminal records for going outside on non-essential errands.

However, I was relieved to discover, halfway through, that Rod wasn’t having another gratuitous go at plod and Boris after all. In fact, he was quite supportive of the government’s ‘human’ if slightly wobbly navigation through the storm. 

“The truth is we do not know. We don’t know and the experts don’t know. The epidemiologists are captured by their own paradigms and see only one small margin of what is a very large picture. Further, they change their tune with every day that passes. Fair enough — that is how science works. It is not pristine — it is practised by fallible humans, however admirable its methodologies. And science is never, ever, certain — something new always comes along, so we should always have our doubts.

However, Rod does dent his ‘no-one knows’ thesis a little when he vehemently dismisses Jonathan Sumption’s  proposition that the ‘cure’ for this pandemic may be worse than the disease by describing it as “the pompous meanderings of a glorified lawyer.”

But then back on track:  

“the epidemiologists see only a small sliver of the bigger picture, Sumption — and I for that matter — can see only the occasional pixel.
To my mind the government seems to be navigating reasonably well between the imperative demanded by the scientists — who have skin in the game — and the rest of us, who also have skin in the game.”

We don’t know what’s going on, and it seems almost reckless and deluded to act as though we do. I haven’t watched much BBC, as others in the household keep switching to Sky, ITV, Channel 4 and even al-Jazeera, but I sense that the BBC has reined in its continuous carping at Boris just a bit. Or has it? At least, someone somewhere said they thought Laura Kuenssberg was holding back.

Let’s remember, Jeremy Corbyn might have been PM and thank the Lord for small mercies.

Two views

A happy fugue

Is that the ghost of Sir Michael Winner I hear saying "Calm down dear!" to Jonathan Freedland of The Guardian/BBC Radio 4? 

Without the BBC we could be facing a post-truth dystopia is the headline to his latest Guardian piece. 

I have to say that I prefer Rod Liddle's latest piece for The Spectator. It is spot on, and contains such beautifully-written sentences as:

Radio 4 meanwhile transformed itself into an endless fugue of misery and victimhood. 

Another day, another antisemite

We can make real change happen with fair pay for young workers.

Your vote in Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire can make a world of difference. On December 12th, make your vote count, #MakeitMarc #VoteLabour19 pic.twitter.com/haArTJCVYl

— Marc Tierney Labour Carms W & S Pembs (@MarcTierneyLab) November 6, 2019

Until reading Rod Liddle's latest Sunday Times piece (very good, as ever) I wasn't aware that the Labour Party had been compelled to remove an election leaflet ('Real Change for Young Workers') from circulation this week. 

And why did they withdraw the flyer? Because the young activist featured prominently on it, one Kierin Offlands, has been found to have made antisemitic slurs and suspended. 

It's a grim thing that this eye-popping story feels like a sign of the times. 

Rod wonders:

Did the Labour Party choose an anti-semite as its poster boy because it couldn’t give a toss about anti-semitism? Or was it because it couldn’t find anyone in the approved section of the party — that is, the far left — who hadn’t expressed anti-semitic views? Maybe a bit of both.

I see that that the story was reported widely in the papers, but not by the BBC.

Another one

Rod Liddle has caused a whirlwind by taking facetiousness a step too far. We generally enjoy his outrageousness, but I have to say that when he occasionally opines on stuff he is evidently quite ill-informed about, it spoils the effect. Examples? Anorexia was one. I forget the others, but I promise you there are some. 

On the other hand, has the entire world had a sense of humour - ectomy? Or do I mean ‘otomy’? As in when something offensive is surgically is removed. It’s so obvious (or it should be) that the controversial article in question was Rod Liddle's way of taking everything to the extreme end of its very extremism to demonstrate its absurdity. He does that. Unfortunately, people bypassed the sarcasm and deliberately misconstrued his rant as hate speech. Now he’s in hot water. 

One of the things that people found most objectionable was the phrase “the sobbing and oppressed Rosie ‘#MeToo’ Duffield.” 

"Is nothing sacred?” they wondered.

I thought the HoC was not a suitable arena for a personal and emotional speech of the kind she gave and the applause and hugging was incongruous too.  I do sympathise with her predicament but I have already stuck my neck out by suggesting that her abusive partner obviously had problems of his own and might have needed understanding along with all the condemnation.

The stuff about Muslims was a reference to the fraudulent voting practices that everyone is busy turning a blind eye to. Bring it on, Rod. Someone has to. 

If you watched Question Time from Birmingham, you’ll have seen a woman in a hijab - a "teacher of politics" no less - shrieking about Boris’s racist letterbox remark. I have yet to hear anyone ask people who express outrage at that particular remark if they really consider women dragging themselves around wearing the full-face veil to be in any way normal? Is a long black cloak with its mean little slit to look through really a suitable mode of ambulatory attire? What else does it look like, other than a bleeding letterbox?

Sarah AB, have you gone completely bonkers?

suitably 'flattering' portrait of the offensive one

Take care. Curb your language and trim your thoughts.

Update:
Brendan O'Neill agrees with me. "Rod Liddle was Joking, you idiots"

Creative Diversity and the back-of-beyond

"The liberal echo chamber in which these people exist, which has been revealed by countless reports as well as in the baleful comments from departing staffers such as John Humphrys, Michael Buerk, John Sergeant, Robin Aitken and so on, is at last being challenged! "

Says Rod Liddle humorously (in the sarcastic rather than comical sense) because he was talking about the need for more diversity in the BBC and in particular the appointment of June Sarpong to the bespoke role “Director of Creative Diversity”. 

Well, I know what diversity means, and I know what creative means, but I’m not at all sure what they mean stuck together. (Perhaps ‘creative’ in that they’ve created a whole extraneous, tailor-made directorship solely for a person of colour) (Starting to sound a bit racist to me) but the upside is at least that disqualifies Rachel Johnson. 

The joke is that there’s already a disproportionate number of front-of-house BAMEs at the Beeb, considering current societal demographics. But, as Douglas Murray says, a certain amount of correction, or over-correction, has to be implemented to counteract the sins of the past, in this case the  actual racism of previous decades, and we have to suck it up for now in the knowledge that it will eventually  settle, adjust, recalibrate, and find its natural level. 

But what if it’s too late? I think the tipping point is due next Tuesday. They’ve stolen my adulthood! How dare they! Hand me the superglue Alice, I need to glue myself to something.

****

Oh, God! The BBC was in Penzance yesterday being patronising and misrepresenting the place in the way that only the BBC can. Having continually trailed Penzance as a coastal town with a ‘lower than average wage’….  if that is indeed the case, one might expect Simon McCoy and his team to make some effort to find out why. Then tell us. I admit I didn’t watch it all afternoon, but if they did, I missed it.

I know plenty of professional people in the area who charge average or above rates for their services. Do national companies like M & S pay less than the going rate down here? I don’t know, but if they do, I’d actually like to know why.  I do know one thing though. The seasonal influx of fruit, flower and veg pickers attracted by wages that look like a bonanza back home in Bulgaria or Portugal has changed the industry beyond recognition. I don’t think the Portuguese bother any more, but an array of Soviet-sounding languages resound in Lidl’s as they shout’n’ shop around harvest time.

There used to be a local army of skilled, daffy pickers (A specialised job, picking, uniformly bunching at speed with any exposed areas of your inside arm being burned by sap) but these days locals find welfare the best option. It’s not worth ‘signing off’ and ‘signing onagain’; far too much trouble and strife. Anyway, farmers and growers would go bust if they had to pay the living wage. I suppose that’s what comes of ease of movement plus inequality of economies. Once those conditions ‘correct’ who knows what will happen?

I digress. You could find a hard-up family on any council estate anywhere in the UK, and I don’t think the hard-up family the BBC chose to feature was representative of anything particularly ‘Penzancey’. There is probably an average number of normals down in Benzano (as someone once graffitied the signpost.)

Here is something nice for a change, and vaguely related to the above. I listened to radio four this morning - firstly I liked hearing Caroline Wyatt (instead of Kate Adie) introducing a benign (non-toxic) FOOC, and next, even better, I enjoyed Tales from the Stave.  Violinist Clemency Burton-Hill 

“explores one of the library's most valuable manuscripts, the Violin Concerto No. 1 in G minor, Op. 26 by Max Bruch. With her is the internationally acclaimed Violinist Joshua Bell and the music scholar Michael Beckerman of New York University, along with the Morgan's head of Music Manuscripts Fran Barulich.”

And something Penzancey. Several years ago, visiting the back-of-beyond for one of the International Musicians Seminar courses (based at Prussia Cove) world-class violinist Joshua Bell dragged himself out of his sick-bed, and with a temperature and a sore throat, performed an early evening recital in a threadbare church in a grotty part of a downtrodden town (Camborne) so as not to disappoint people. The venue happened to be just around the corner from where I worked at the time so I just strolled along to listen to one of the most renowned violinists in the world.   I’m not even sure if I paid an entrance fee. Maybe I got in free as a Friend of IMS. 

Pity Simon McCoy didn’t spend a bit longer in the place.) Am I never happy?) I suppose he was glad to get out of the wind, but I can’t see much point in these flying visits. What’s the point?

Enjoy

Douglas Murray has been doing the rounds -  publicising his book The Madness of Crowds - Race, Gender and Identity. 

Of all the book-publicity material I’ve seen, (with Candace Owens, Julia Hartley-Brewer , etc etc,) this conversation with Peter Whittle in the “So What you’re Saying Is…” series, (New Culture Forum) allows the subject free rein to express and develop his ideas.

 Of the Roger Scruton fiasco: 

“…….a public square so stupid and deracinated that people who are actually thoughtful and have thought about things can be ‘disappeared’ at the whim of the ignoramus.”

As one commenter says, we get to hear Douglas Murray without too much input from the host. 

I’m not too sure about the dirty-protest themed backdrop, (I might discuss backgrounds at a later date) but it’s good.

This Brexit themed video (H/T M.B.) is fun, probably more so for the 52% than the 48%…

Radio 4’s Start the Week this morning alluded to the BBC in a discussion about confirmation bias, echo chambers and ‘non-diversity of thinking. 

From within my own bubble, I’m beginning to suspect that the BBC’s popularity is in a downward spiral.

In a nutshell

Rod Liddle certainly has a way with words. In his Sunday Times column today, for example, he describes Radio 4's 'Thought for the Day' as "three minutes of anodyne, flopsy-bunny drivel filtered through the sphincter of a spineless liberal BBC apparatchik". And do you know what? He's right too.

The BBC rules against Emily Maitlis

Abusenight

Well, well, well...

Newsnight, BBC Two, 15 July 2019: Finding by the Executive Complaints Unit

Complaint
The programme included a discussion about Brexit between Rod Liddle, columnist and author of a book about Brexit called “The Great Betrayal” and Tom Baldwin of the People’s Vote campaign. A viewer complained that the presenter Emily Maitlis was sneering and bullying towards Mr Liddle and in doing so exemplified the way the BBC views Leave voters.

Finding
The ECU did not agree that it was possible to deduce Emily Maitlis’ view on Brexit from the discussion. It also believed that it was valid to press Mr Liddle on his personal views and noted that he had the opportunity to vigorously defend himself. However it was insufficiently clear that this was not Ms Maitlis’s view of Mr Liddle but that of his critics, and the persistent and personal nature of the criticism risked leaving her open to the charge that she had failed to be even-handed between the two guests.
Upheld

Action Point
The programme has been reminded of the need to ensure rigorous questioning of controversial views does not lead to a perceived lack of impartiality.    

Titbits

Here are some titbits that you may have missed from the dead tree press this weekend:

I

Charles Moore on Nick Robinson:

Someone like Nick Robinson, for example – another of the Today presenters – is just as good as Humphrys in the role of crazed dentist looking for holes in a politician’s teeth, but one feels that his motive is different. The essential Robinson message is “I know more about politics than you, so let me handle this”.

II

Camilla Tominey on Question Time:

If we view Southampton as a microcosm of Britain, last night’s episode taught us two things: firstly that Boris Johnson is not quite as unpopular as his detractors - including the BBC - care to make out and secondly, that the Liberal Democrat’s new “cancel Brexit” policy is anathema to huge swathes of the general public. 

III

Not so Fab-u-lous for another Craig:

Strictly Come Dancing judge Craig Revel-Horwood, 54, has been banned by the BBC from using his ‘Fab-u-lous’ catchphrase outside the show. He was reportedly hoping to use it as the name for a range of wines. Judges cannot exploit their on-air roles for commercial gain.

IV

Inaccessible Ben:

Yes, I am undeniably privileged, something I am enormously thankful and grateful for. Socially, my opinions on class, the economy and politics are often dismissed because I’m “privileged” and therefore also “disconnected” — or, as the BBC referred to me when I was dropped from presenting Countryfile, “inaccessible”.

V

Justin Webb on John Humphrys:

‘Oh, wearing jeans, are we?” It’s four in the morning last Thursday and John Humphrys has arrived for his final appearance on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. Actually, my trousers are pressed cotton, clean on and neater than anything he normally wears. But this is no normal day: it’s a special day and John has dressed special. In a suit. As he would have done growing up at home when something happened — a funeral or a wedding, perhaps. A working-class respect for time and place. For occasion.

VI

Rod Liddle on John Humphrys: 

One or two directors-general resented both his interviewing style and his prominence. I remember being told by a middle manager, in about 1998, that our interviewers should “go easy” on Blair’s government because it was terribly popular with the people. It was an instruction I totally ignored and certainly never passed on to Humphrys, who would have merely ratcheted up the ferocity a bit more. Later managers worried about the fact that he wasn’t quite woke, like all the rest of the BBC’s employees — forgetting that 75% of the country (that is, the licence fee-payers) aren’t woke either, and won’t be woke no matter how many alarms you set or how much our dozing bodies are prodded by the hyperbolic liberals in an attempt to make us so. 

Spectacles

Talking of Andrew Neil, The Spectator has a couple of fine pieces about BBC bias, albeit by the usual suspects - Mr Liddle and Mr Delingpole. 

Rod's piece concentrates on the BBC's deep-seated bias towards social liberalism as reflected in its many outlets (from Today to the Victoria Derbyshire show) firing on all cylinders after Mrs May's resignation honours list included Geoffrey Boycott, who was once convicted of assaulting his girlfriend. Why did the BBC go heavily on that when they could have majored on the stinking "cronyism" of many of Mrs May's other choices - most of her former senior aides and advisers, plus Conservative donors - and the reek of hypocrisy and corruption they might be said to reveal so clearly? Now, I must say that I think the BBC could have concentrated on both stories, but Rod - from my researches - is right that it was the abusive cricketer who dominated the corporation's field of vision. 

James's piece looks at a couple of BBC documentaries and finds them guilty of bias - The Rise of the Nazis and Conspiracy Files: The Billionaire Global Mastermind? 

Except for watching the Ask Sarkar bits (which I ferreted out like truffles and which I agree with James turned out to be "harmless to the point of irrelevance"), The Rise of the Nazis isn't a series I've watched (yet). Of it he writes: 

Back in the day, the BBC might have been content to strive for an objective take on the subject, perhaps with a voiceover by Samuel West and lots of period footage. But the danger of that approach, the BBC has since realised, is that it runs the risk of viewers making up their own minds what to think. Some of them might not be aware, for example, of the obvious parallels between Hitler, Nigel Farage, Donald Trump, Brexit and, to a lesser extent, Michael Gove. 

But I did watch the George Soros programme (you'll doubtless be pleased to hear). It was a straightforward debunking exercise aimed at right-wing conspiracy theorists which focused mainly on the loudest, nastiest figures of the fringe and the wilder, nastier conspiracy theories. But the relentlessness of its defence of Mr Soros struck many online commenters as constituting a whitewash. It also left me deeply uneasy on that count. Is every accusation false? Has he done nothing wrong? Is he such a good guy? Is everyone accusing him bad?

Here, for example, is the programme's (very) brief take on his campaign to prevent Brexit:

George Soros has made no secret of his views on Brexit, publicly contributing £1.7 million to the Remain campaign. Now, talk of a secret Soros plot is spreading to the UK.

This was followed by a clip of Nigel Farage sounding like a conspiracy theorist. 

And that was that. 

A lot more detail on what he has done - e.g. his £400,000 to find Gina Miller & Co. since the referendum - wouldn't have gone amiss. And what is the role (if any) of his Open Society foundation in, say, funding OpenDemocracy in the UK, with the latter's admitted links to the likes of Carole Cadwalladr? 

Anyhow, here's James's less charitable take on the programme:

But the documentary it did on George Soros — Conspiracy Files: The Billionaire Global Mastermind? (BBC2, Sunday) — was worse, much worse. Soros is an intriguing and influential character, well worth a detailed investigation. Apart from the time he famously broke the Bank of England in 1992 when he caused sterling to crash out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism, there’s the vexed issue of what the BBC calls his ‘philanthropy’, but which some of us might consider more akin to bankrolling the destruction of Western civilisation. 

Soros has given away $32 billion to ‘liberal’ causes, ranging from his promotion of the global-warming scare to his campaigning for open borders which involves hefty donations to a number of unsavoury and sometimes violent hard-left activist groups. The documentary’s considered take on all this: Soros gives generously to ‘education, health, human rights and democracy projects’. People who think it’s any more sinister than that are mainly tattooed, racist, far-right conspiracy theorists — and Trump fans, if there’s any difference — whose hatred stems mainly from the fact that Soros is Jewish. I think it’s time the BBC gave up trying to pretend it’s a voice of impartial authority, don’t you?

Don't you? 

More questions than answers

Context is everything/nothing. 

Watching this “Room for thought” video, (which I see is three weeks old at the time of writing) reminded me of Rod Liddle’s article in the Spectator, written in 2006, in which he defends Boris Johnson by simply providing context to Boris’s infamous piccaninnies comment: ‘And so on to the next bunch of grinning piccaninnies.’

In this video he goes a little further, describing the Unicef reps that chauffeured  them around Uganda as a “couple of Swedish lesbians,” which leads me into another of Rod’s observations that came towards the end of the conversation, on the (infamous) Muslim protests against “gay education” that have been taking place outside a Birmingham primary school. 

“On this one,” confesses Rod, “I’m with the Muslims” much to the bemusement of Carswell. 

So what do we make of it?

I know what I make of it, but this is a blog post, not a doctoral thesis, so I’ll leave it there.

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

Another interesting point I have to add (well, I’m not compelled to by law, but I feel obliged to do so) Is that Rod clearly states that although the BBC is clearly biased to the left, it cannot be accused of supporting Jeremy Corbyn. This is true. 

Much as I might prefer it if the Corbyn/Milne/ McDonnell axis were not given any air time at all, I do realise that to insist on such a thing would be even madder than demanding the BBC no-platforms anyone to the right of the aforementioned trio. However, there are people who think that is a perfectly reasonable demand. For example, the ones who get all irate at the very appearance on TV of anyone not openly hostile to Israel.

When David Keighley launched his crowd-funded legal challenge to the Beeb, which I understand is based on the BBC’s weak methodology (particularly with regard to anti-Brexit bias) several donors commented that the bias they found most troubling was the BBC’s bias against Jeremy Corbyn. 

It is interesting (to me) that BBCWatch, which focuses on the factual omissions and inaccuracies within the BBC’s coverage of Israel and the Palestinians, continually offers specific examples to illustrate the BBC breaching its own editorial guidelines. In other words, BBCWatch bases its critiques on objective analyses, albeit from a subjective (pro-Israel) angle.  

Here is an example of the opposite camp attempting to use the BBC’s editorial guidelines to underpin its (pro-Corbyn) angle. An outfit called Media Reform Coalition attempts to debunk the BBC’s Panorama Programme on antisemitism in the Labour Party by pitting specific quotes from the editorial guidelines on impartiality and accuracy against examples they have selected from the programme. I'm not so sure it stands up to scrutiny, but what do you make of it?

Note to self. This is a blog post, not a novel, so I’ll leave it there.

********

Did anyone else watch the first two of Kathy Burke’s C4 films, ‘All Women’?

It wasn’t on the BBC of course, but I’ve been scouring the reviews to see what the rest of the world made of them.

On the theme of luvvies morphing from actor to opinionista, this was quite high on a scale of validity (in terms of the actual justification of going ahead with the project) as opposed to certain other actor or actresses political advocacy for want of any better examples. 

Kathy Burke had a genuinely enquiring approach to the topics she chose to feature. The ‘appearance’ episode was entertaining, although the relative superficiality of the film’s treatment of that particular topic was equal to the obvious superficiality of the topic itself. Especially as it was made-for-TV, a medium that virtually depends on physical appearance for its continuing existence - particularly where wimmin are concerned.

Do I make myself clear? It’s blindingly obvious to state that beauty is only skin deep, but it’s also quite trite, and coming from someone who describes her own appearance in the appropriately derogatory terms, well, she would say that, would she not?  

I think Ms Burke is - was -  a terrific comic actress. her “Perry” to Enfield’s Kevin was brilliant especially in the ‘our kid’ from Manchester episode, and her Waynetta was a delight. 

But the defiant stuff about her chin had a hollow ring and when you saw her waddling along you couldn’t help thinking that she could have done with losing a few tons in the name of longevity if nothing else. 

I wonder how many ‘fucks’ they needed to convey “edgy”? Or defiance and rebelliousness? Billy Connolly put me off the gratuitous ‘fuck’ when he got lazy with the jokes and liberal with the expletives. Not that I mind hearing the odd ‘fuck’ blurted out especially at times when it seems so much more expressive than any other swearword could possibly be. Sorry, but the swearing here was actually tedious and didn’t enhance Kathy’s image for me.

The motherhood thing was interesting. I imagine there was something deeply psychological in Kathy’s decision to not have children - because she seemed quite fond of children and even actual babies. 

As a mother (which Andrea Leadsom once said, famously scuppering her hopes of ever becoming Prime Minister) I think not having children allows you to remain ‘as selfish as an average infant’ your whole life through. It’s hard to be quite as selfish ‘as a mother’ as you were before yer kids came along. I think the current trend favours selfishness (in women.) Is that a good or a bad thing?

Utter selfishness is quite unattractive, but so is in-yer-face-selflessness. 

What do we make of that?

The case against the BBC

A head of steam is building up and critics of the BBC are on the warpath. The Conservative Woman’s David Keighley, an ex-BBC man, has raised enough money to fund a legal challenge. The idea is to sue the BBC for breach of the crucial impartiality obligations within its charter. Lawyers have been hired to build the case. 

  

Robin Aitken, another ex BBC man, has been pursuing a similar agenda for decades. 

Aitken believes the left-wing consensus is so ingrained in the confirmation-bias-prone media bubble that the inhabitants of such an insular environment just don’t see it.

 O wad some Power the giftie gie us /To see oursels as ithers see us!

This video was made in January 2019.  In conversation with Peter Whittle, Robin Aitken articulates the collective mindset within the Beeb. He alludes to a deliberate strategy of social engineering which entails sanitising and normalising ‘Muslimness’, (a condition with a bespoke word of its own).

 “Our view of the world is this. Muslims are always victims, they are victimised and Islamophobia is rife in the country and that’s the story we want to tell. Do we want to tell a story about Muslims behaving badly? Attacking Jews, or attacking women? No, we don’t want to really. We don’t want to tell those stories. That’s why, for instance, it took so long, and it took some brave journalism by The Times newspaper to bring that whole thing about the Pakistani rape-gangs into the open.”

If the aim is to aid social cohesion, it’s a big fail. You can’t hide things from the public forever, and once people realise they’re being manipulated they’ll resist. Only the BBC itself supports its own ham-fisted attempts at social engineering.

If you listened to today’s Sunday Programme you will have heard that the findings of a ‘com res poll’  show that nearly half of the UK believe that Islam is incompatible with British values

(if the specific time-link doesn’t work for you, scroll to 10:20)

The MCB’s Miqdaad Versi thinks that (presumably because Jews argue that they should be allowed to define antisemitism) Muslims should equally be allowed to define Islamophobia. The existing definition, which has been accepted by several organisations but not the Conservative Party, includes the invented terminology ‘expressions of Muslimness’ which, in practice amounts to the introduction of blasphemy law by stealth. So no wonder the Conservative Party is reluctant to accept it. 

Sadly, portentous attempts to equate everything ‘Muslim’ with everything ‘Jewish’ have succeeded in toxifying specific Jewish religious practices that had been rubbing along quite peacefully in British society for years, and with one fell swoop has driven an expedient Israel-bound mini-exodus of British Jews.(£)

 “With the rapid rise in size and political importance of the Muslim community in the UK, there is also a feeling that Israel is being singled out for opprobrium and that the balance has swung decisively against the Zionist cause. For those whose biggest fear is Corbyn, many are waiting to see if Labour wins a general election before deciding whether or not to make aliyah.”

“I think the air has already changed, regardless of Corbyn. Some 730 years since King Edward I expelled the small mercantile Jewish community from England, the Jews are leaving again. This time not through the decree of an absolute tyrant, but as the consequence of a subtler, stealthier tyranny. There seems to be nobody left, over here or in continental Europe, who will fight the Jews’ corner, so electorally insignificant have their numbers become. That it is primarily the left that is driving them out is something they surely could not have foreseen or imagined. But here it is.”

David Keighley’s current criticisms of the BBC principally concern the BBC’s demonstrable anti-Brexit bias, the long-term effect of which, he believes, will prove disastrous for the country. 

However, I think the long-term consequences of the BBC’s pernicious, interminable hostility to Israel and Jews will have equally serious and perhaps even longer-lasting ramifications.

A decades-long history of ‘half-a-story' reporting, a Middle East editor with a built-in grudge, and contrary to the allegations of Miqdaad Versi and others, the BBC’s institutionally pro-Muslim outlook including the ever-presence of anti-Zionist and pro-Palestinian talking heads on panels and political broadcasts has produced an ill-informed consensus. Public opinion appears to be perfectly content to exchange 250,000  loyal British Jewish citizens for over 4million incompatible or not necessarily loyal British / Pakistani / Middle Eastern/ African Muslims.

The antisemitism in the Labour Party is just the beginning. The leadership’s inability to deal with it is a great shame, but the BBC’s biased reporting makes rectifying the situation impossible.

BBC Watch constantly researches, writes and posts several articles per day in an effort to keep abreast of endless unreported examples of Muslims behaving badly. Shamefully, the BBC still refuses to report almost all of it; at least, not until Israel retaliates. Day after day aggression against Israel is ignored. “The BBC is only interested when Israel fights back” is a saying that is becoming more tired and worn every time it’s uttered. Repetition might make that saying ineffectual, but that doesn’t make it wrong. 

Nor has the antisemitism from the right gone away. For once Yasmin Alibhai Brown had a point when she mentioned that on Sky recently.

That too is tacitly reinforced by the BBC’s failure to fill in crucial gaps in what ought to be general historical knowledge. Right-wing antisemites often cite the infamous bombing of the King David Hotel to reinforce their theory that Israel was founded on terrorism, a stance that conveniently ignores the fact that at the time the King David Hotel was more of an army HQ than a tourist destination and more importantly, it disregards the fact that Britain’s post-war government’s hostile, antisemitic, pro-Arab political policies denied sanctuary to many desperate Holocaust survivors, an important factor in understanding why certain (arguably renegade) Jews fought against the British at that time. You have to seek that information out, and who nowadays can be bothered.

So I think the BBC’s bias against Israel and Zionism will inevitably lead to a major Jewish exodus and a predominantly Muslim Britain.  A great loss to this country. 

If it’s indeed true that this important aspect of the BBC’s bias has taken a back seat in this particular crowd-funded and well-intentioned litigation project, then I’m sorry and disappointed.

On being accused of 'racism' by "a fishwife on acid"

I don't think the Spectator online has yet got round to posting Rod Liddle's latest magazine piece headlined Don't believe the headlines.

It's a very interesting piece in its own right, but its main purpose is something I'll leave alone until the Speccie gets round to publishing it on the worldwide web (unless I've missed it).

All I'll do instead is to type out - for your delectation - its splendidly splenetic opening paragraph:

I suppose it was a bit naive to wander on to Newsnight having been booked to talk about Brexit and my new book and expect to talk about Brexit and my new book. I should have expected instead to be shrieked at about 'racism' by a fishwife on acid, which is what happened. In the usual calm, measured and unpartisan manner, Emily Maitlis suggested that I spewed bile each week for the Murdoch press. I might have pointed out that at least people voluntarily fork out their couple of quid to immerse themselves in that bile, rather than as in her case being involuntarily taxed to pay for her inflated salary, a reward for lousing up prime ministerial debates and reading an autocue in a bien pensant manner to a pygmy audience. Everything, for Emily, is racist, as it is for the vast majority of the BBC.

Ah, as Sue's already pointed out, if only Rod had said that live on Newsnight. Revenge served cold is never as good as revenge served hot.