I vacillate

It’s quite late in the day, but I wanted to let the dust settle before sticking my neck out about Party-gate. There’s still no sign of a let-up, so I dillied and dallied until wallpaper-gate complicated everything by gate-crashing party-gate. Oh, and quiz-gate.

Obviously, Party-gate is divisive. It has certainly divided me. Afraid to watch BBC because of one’s mental ‘elf, one peeks through one’s fingers at Sky, where Beth Rigby is spoutin’ off about Boris’s shortcomings. I think it’s fair to float the idea that the BBC is on a similar mission, which is to Bring Down Boris.

The media class obviously hate Boris’s regime so they are all busily squeezing the last drop of juice out of last year’s was-it-or-wasn’t-it party at Number 10.

 

An illicit party for the toffs while the ordinary people obediently abided by the rules? (If they did)

Whether the media is sincere or purely politicking, we can’t be sure, but are Beth Rigby and her cohorts really and truly incandescent with fury, or is there a soupçon of malicious satisfaction in there?  

“A Party!” they exclaim! “During lockdown! A lockdown that was both instigated and violated by the Tories themselves!  One rule for them and another for us!” 

Fair point!  But the media weakens their case by making a fuss about the wine, the cheese, the unspecified nibbles, and….  tinsel!  Gilding the lily that way makes all the ire look petty and spiteful.

Yup. It’s probably a disgrace!! But Isn’t the outrage beginning to look a little laboured and quite a lot insincere?

 

I ask myself, is it valid to tie the privileges enjoyed by Boris and the spads so tightly and so inextricably to the restrictions and sacrifices that we lesser beings complied with last year? (If they did) Are the two situations truly worthy of being pitted against one another, or are they entirely separate?  I’m not too sure about that.

Many of us are uncomfortable about the hypocrisy, and hypocrisy it surely is. Or is it? And if it is, to what degree? Yet I can still see how government-haters got themselves worked up about it, but hypocrisy isn’t confined to last year’s bend-the-rules party. Hypocrisy and double standards are everywhere. Not saying that that’s a good thing, but don’t we reluctantly accept a bit of hypocrisy as a grim fact of life?   Maybe on this occasion, let’s choose a better noose with which to hang ourselves?

The pain of bereavement is heightened when others, oblivious to your suffering, seem to be enjoying themselves, but when that happens  - in my own experience at least - you neither begrudge nor resent other people’s happiness. Loss and grief needn’t be shackled to resentment. because the two emotions aren’t co-dependent -  in my opinion. (Those are my principles and if you don’t like them I have others.)  Nana Akua gave a thoughtful monologue about this particular issue the other day on GBNews. My views still ricochet from one position to another. 

Allegra Stratton and the spads giggling over how to pitch the not-a-party to a hungry press pack was bad, but I found it even more disturbing to listen to Rigby (and I’m guessing her ilk at the BBC) continually announcing that  “the public is incensed” when in reality, it’s the media itself that’s incensed. The media is at once implanting and projecting outrage onto ‘the public” because it smells blood and thinks it’s a good time to cancel Boris and topple the Tories. 

From a street in a northern constituency Sky airs ‘random’ vox-pops. The reporter asks two passers-by how incensed they are about Party-gate. The answer is: “Please let’s just move on now”.  Then they close in on a blue-haired battleaxe chewing on a wasp. She obligingly regurgitates Beth Rigby’s words as verbatim as she can manage. She is outraged!

 

They put her on a loop. On Sky; on the hour. 

Thus, the media presents their own opinion as “what people are sayin’ “ with the kind of circularity that eats its own tail, and it occurs to me yet again that the media is actually running the country. 

Rigby and her ilk at the BBC teach the viewers what to think, who to vote for, what to be angry about, and coerce you into believing you thought of it all by yourself.  

What did you make of it?

Or: Mahmoud Zahar opens up!

For the moment the Martin Bashir affair has eclipsed other aspects BBC-watching. Perhaps this too will pass. What did you make of Tim Davie on the Today programme? Justin Webb made him squirm a little, using the Mishal Husain-like air of disapproval rather than robust questioning. I suppose none of us would wish to see another John Humphrys / George Entwistle debacle in which an unintended premature toppling was followed by a bashful “Oopsy! What have I done?”) 

I don’t want to be mean, so I won’t be, but let’s just say Panorama is no stranger to underhand tactics.  John Sweeney, where are you now?

Anyway, That’s not new, and neither is the BBC’s consistent ‘tone of voice’ disapproval of Israel’s desire to prosper and flourish.  We’ve been writing about it for years and years. Decades.

What did you make of Sky? Sky (UK) and Sky (Australia) are completely different kettles of fish. Our Sky features Mark Austin and Mark Stone. (Journalism has many Marks.) 

Now, Mark Stone has been particularly biased in the pro-Palestinian department, hence the post-conflict wallowing in context-free misery. I do know that the world has an insatiable appetite for misery and pathos and some of the tragic tales from Gaza are truly heartbreaking. Hamas and Islamic Jihad have a hell of a lot to answer for, yet the constant drone of that Israel-bashing ‘tone of voice’  hovers above all his reporting. Israel. Israel. Israel.

#Hamas co-founder has told @SkyNews the current ceasefire should hold for now but said there’s no chance of peace with #Israel yet.
We tackle Mahmoud Zahar on firing missiles from civilian areas into civilian areas, on accepting a Jewish State and more.
Extended 🎥 on Sky later pic.twitter.com/GSOyaG4Usl

— Mark Stone (@Stone_SkyNews) May 23, 2021

Then, guess what? Well, you know what. He gets the coveted interview with that wart-nosed rogue  Mahmoud Zahar. “No, Israel has no right to exist” Zahar declares; no ifs no buts. No way of sweetening that one, Mr Stone! You’d have to have a heart-of-Stone not to…. you know.

The thing is, there are an increasing number of people both here and even more disturbingly, in the United States who couldn’t care less that Hamas's unequivocal intransigence is 'out in the open' because they agree with Zahar. I blame the media; apologists for Hamas and Islamic Jihad, the lot of them.

The BBC is forced to be less overt about it than Sky, but there’s still that ever-present disapproving tone-of-voice, and there’s still Jeremy Bowen, a man with a well-documented grudge against Israel, given free rein to wallow in the context-free emoting they believe the audience demands. The mainstream media keeps quiet about the Islamic elephant in the room. However massive and bloated it gets, it’s there in front of us as plain as the king’s new clothes and just as invisible.

Update:

A brilliant article by AYAAN HIRSI ALI How influencers have legitimised anti-Semitism. She doesn’t cite the BBC by name but alludes to the BBC’s now-notorious Tala Hawala embarrassment. As for ‘influencers’, well, according to Justin Webb’s very own introduction this morning,  the BBC is the top influencer in the stratosphere.

Woke up this morning

I half think it’s inappropriate to make flippant comments about this topic, but you know me. (You actually don’t, but ..)

I woke up this morning old. An old person. Well, that’s been happening a lot lately. I’m that judge who didn’t know what the Beatles were. Also, I didn’t know exactly what Grime is. (I do now because I’ve looked it up.)  

Grime is a genre of electronic music that emerged in London in the early 2000s. It developed out of earlier UK dance style UK garage, and draws influences from jungle, dancehall, and hip hop. Typically characterized by a minimal, prominent rhythm, a very low-pitched bassline, and vocals by an MC.

 

To be pernickety, I don’t know what garage, jungle etc are either, in terms of ‘dance’ but I do know what the words mean in their non-dance usage, of course. 

The word Grime = dirt ingrained on the surface of something."the windows were thick with grime” see also: dross, pollution, muck, gunge, yuck, crud, goo, grot.

….and it’s also a verb. 

Example: blacken or make dirty with grime."the windows were grimed like a coal miner's goggles” 

(What’s a coal miner’s goggles, mummy?)

Anyway, I assume whoever decides these brand-names had something ‘rude’ and edgy in mind when they chose ‘grime’, but (being so old) it reminds me of 'rebels', like Rik in the Young Ones or, say, Kevin the teenager. ”I’m bad, me” 

Of course, you’d be too young to know what I’m talking about. All those cultural references from the days before woke stole all the laughs. 

Everyone (especially me) was horrified and outraged at the antisemitic outburst by Wiley the grime artist, exacerbated further by the insult-to-injury salt that was truly rubbed into the wound by Twitter’s tardy indifference to the whole business.

However, there’s a ridiculous side to it which is almost funny. I mean, have you seen the ‘exclusive interview’ that took place on Sky? (Is that Lizo Mzimba in the background?)

Apart from a nasty whiff of ‘Sky exploiting something rotten’, the interview did reveal the absurdity of this 41 year-old-mutton-dressed-as-teenager trying to pronounce ‘antisemitic’ and saying he wasn’t racist and apologising for ‘generalising’. Get it? Generalising is sort of what ‘racist’ IS! 

Okay, the poor chap’s ire is aimed at the Jews in ‘the music industry’. Not every Jew. But, being a little bit thick, (I think that was the problem) he doesn’t appreciate the glaringly obvious - that if it weren’t for that Jews-in-the-music industry no-one would have heard of him. 

Just think. Without them, he could have continued to make his way in the business without any interference from the management he detests. He could have put an imaginary MBE in any frame he likes and stick it wherever he wants and he could have made racist rants to his heart's content and no-one would care; they’d be like a drop in the ocean. Check out the comments below the Sky interview on YouTube.

(Note to Jews-in-the-music-industry. Not the sharpest knives in the drawer, are you?)

Sky dive

I watched Sky’s version of the Labour leadership hustings. 

The set looked familiar and the host(ess) was Soppy Ridge.  (See, I told you I’d leave her name auto-incorrected)

The most annoying bit of the programme was during the part where they did their bit to address the party’s antisemitism problem, which they all (rightly) condemned as ‘racism’; all three insisted that the worst offenders had to be rooted out of the party.  They all spoke as if antisemitism had nothing to do with Islam. Lisa Nandy even managed to assure us that she was so anti-racist that she had no time for the “racist Tommy Robinson”(!) The chairperson confused the matter still further by bringing in an extra questioner, whose somewhat equivocal question on the same subject virtually negated the original unequivocal one. 

Rather awkwardly (though it amused me) one extremely earnest and passionate member of the audience got his knickers in a terribly uncomfortable twist, trying to defend Jeremy Corbyn by insisting that he wasn’t racist at all and refusing to concede that there was any such a thing as antisemitism in the Labour Party.  His enthusiasm for the party as a whole and his misguided attempt to support all three contenders effectively negated everything they’d just said.  In fact, it exposed their duplicitousness.

Lightweight

Jeremy Corbyn says he was "upset at the feelings of our former staff" in the Panorama documentary on antisemitism in the Labour Party, but says he was also "upset at the way the programme was characterised and presented".

Read more here: https://t.co/AOujv10Hlk pic.twitter.com/Pnisx4Dc5A

— Ridge on Sunday (@RidgeOnSunday) July 28, 2019

Sophie Ridge interviewed Jeremy Corbyn this morning. Well-intentioned but a bit feeble is Sophie Ridge. She hasn’t got the heft. With limited verbal agility, her USP amounts to facial gymnastics, (narrowed eyes) and she’s too inherently benign-looking to emote the scorn this topic demands.

The "Leave" show

I haven’t watched much TV lately, but something I did watch last night was the ‘Leave’ show, starring Michael Gove and Faisal Islam on Sky. Also present, Kay Burley and “the public”. 

Faisal Islam seems to have turned into Mehdi Hasan. That irritating, non-stop hectoring style is just up Mehdi’s street. I’m really surprised that no-one has mentioned it.

Ah! I’m wrong. Janet Daley has:

In spite of – or maybe because of – being relentlessly barracked and harassed by Faisal Islam, Mr Gove won the room. He repeatedly got spontaneous applause from the audience. In fact, he seemed to gain in confidence as he went on, looking amused rather than defensive even when Islam absurdly likened him to Mr Trump.

I didn’t see the ‘Remain’ show, starring David Cameron (and I haven’t caught-up with it yet) so I don’t know if Faisal Islam was just as exasperating and intrusive with Dave as he was with Mike, but relentless pursuit of a yes/no answer to an ill-conceived ‘killer’ question is pure Mehdi, and a bit Mishal too. 

Have you (or have you not) stopped beating your wife?  Have you? Have you? Have you?

How many economists have come out on your side? How many? Name one. 

Can you guarantee that no-one will lose their job as a result of leaving the EU?  Can you? Can you guarantee that the weather will improve on June 24th? Can you?

No, Faisal made matters much less clear with his obtrusive interventions. A skilled, less terrier-like interviewer would have calmly let the questions and answers flow, one after the other. We would have learned more.

From the reaction of the MSM, I really did wonder whether I’d watched the right programme. Maybe they’d been watching the real one and I’d somehow stumbled upon the dress rehearsal. 

The chap in the audience who compared  Gove’s ‘Leave’ advocacy to a World War 1 general waving the flag and saying "over the top, men!” did have a point, but prediction is not a science, and that particular argument is predicated upon the certainty and stability of a turbulent and unstable EU, which of course there  ain’t. 

Get over yourself

Kay Burley!