Weekend Ramble (I)

As it's becoming nigh on impossible to find the time to watch the BBC let alone blog about it, here are some very random thoughts on things that have managed to cross my increasingly wonky radar over the past few days....

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The Daily Fail (or Daily Heil, to taste) has quite a story today about the goings-on at the BBC Asian Network. 

I don't know whether to laugh or cry about it, so I'll do neither. 

Due to an "accident" a private group conversation on supposedly privacy-guaranteeing WattsApp between a small number of BBC producers, DJs and presenters (somehow) ended up being seen by the very same female BBC Asian Network producer who they (or at least some of them) were lusting after. Their lust for her then (somehow) became public knowledge. As did their lust for a female presenter - and (oh dear!) their private banter about "Pakis" (who they mocked), and their "homophobic" language. 

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear!

Naturally, the Daily Mail saw fit to publish a photo of the lust-inducing female presenter in a particularly lust-inducing photo - something that we at ITBB would never consider appropriate. #everydaysexism.

Of course, at one level, it's screamingly funny that there's a 'scandal' about the hyper-PC BBC's Asian Network featuring a bunch of BBC 'lads' being about as un-PC as it's possible to be and landing the BBC in it. But it's also grimly depressing that a purely private bit of un-PC banter that should never have been made public was made public. (Who at the BBC helped make it public?) 

And one producer has been given a written warning, the other sacked, the DJ has been told he can't do any extra shifts, and our old friend Tommy Sandhu (of Sunday Morning Live and The One Show 'fame') is said by the Mail to be fighting for his career at the BBC.

Purely private banter, leaked (somehow), and BBC Asian Network staff are sacked, reprimanded, sanctioned or under investigation, and yet more famous BBC staff, including senior reporters, can publicly say what the heck they like on Twitter regarding matters of political controversy, in breach of both the letter and the spirit of BBC impartiality, and get away with it with impunity. 

There's something wrong here somewhere. 

Should we start a Free the Asian Network Four campaign?

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So the BBC has finally given Alan Partridge a new series. (Hopefully those lapdance fantasies will finally stop now).

In an interview with The New European, his agent Steve Coogan tells us that he'll be returning to the corporation and our TV screens next spring and, yes, he'll be talking Brexit:

Alan would have voted Brexit for sure. Hard Brexit, given the choice. He’s a Brexiteer because the Daily Mail told him to be.

And why does Steve Coogan think that Alan's back on the Beeb?:

It’s conceivable, because in this age of Brexit, they (the BBC) might think they need to get in touch with the ‘Little Englanders’ they ignore.

Now, yes, the BBC may well be making the anti-farmer, climate-change-believing Norwich celebrity who holds impeccable BBC-friendly views on other things too ("Never, never criticise Muslims. Only Christians. And Jews a little bit") into a Brexiteer rather than a Remoaner, and it's more than likely that the programme will mock Brexit supporters without any counterbalancing mockery of opponents of Brexit, but that's BBC comedy for you! It's nothing if not impartial, except for not being impartial.

Anyhow, what struck me about the second quote above is that even Steve Coogan appears to believe that the BBC are out of touch with Brexit supporters. Back of the net!

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Oh, and talking about BBC comedy, there's a funny and spot-on TCW piece, a kind of moral fable, by Nick Booth about the kind of comedians who litter the BBC's schedules, doing the same old routines about Trump and the Daily Mail. (You might call them 'BBC comedians'). It's well worth a read.

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James O'Brien was a big surprise to his parents. They found him on the doorstep. They were expecting a bottle of milk.

Evan Davis went to buy some camouflage trousers the other day but he couldn't find any.

Ian Katz sleeps like a baby. He wakes up screaming every morning around 3am.

Emily Maitlis was a dancer once in Swan Lake. She fell in.

Kirsty Walk goes into a pet shop. She says: ‘I’d like to buy a wasp please.’ The shopkeeper says: ‘Sorry Ms, but we don’t sell wasps.’ Kirsty (interrupting) says: ‘But you’ve got one in the window!!’

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Alan at Biased-BBC is perfectly correct about this being a misleading headline: 

It makes it sound as if she's making a positive statement. When you listen to the interview though it's clear that she's not making a positive statement. Far from it. (The opening word "Unfortunately" is a big clue). No one watching it could doubt that she'd much prefer to be performing under the Russian flag. 

The blurb below the headline is just as misleading, and even manages to slightly-but-tellingly misquote Miss Klishina. She doesn't say, "It doesn't matter about the flag". She says, "Everyone who's coming to compete here in London from Russia, we know where we're from. And everyone knows that we're Team....erm...It doesn't matter which flag they will see in the stadium, so....inside, and I'm sure that all spectators they know where we're from."

The lads from the Asian Network would probably have had something to say about Darya on WattsApp, poor things.

P.S. My friends have a dog that looks exactly like Vladimir Putin (except that the dog has bigger ears than the Russian leader). True story. 

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Brian Cox (the pop star professor turned BBC presenter rather than the actor) believes that the idea that we - you, me, Sue, Brian Cox, everyone alive on Earth, the whole solar system, the Milky Way, every other galaxy, our entire universe indeed - are, logically, more likely than not to be part of one giant simulation created by and run by a superior civilisation. He really does. 

We learned that from this week's edition of The Infinite Monkey Cage, where the theme was: 'Are We Living in a Simulation?'. It was absolutely fascinating, but it was proof positive to my mind - and, though he didn't say it explicitly, to one of the programme's guests - that such thinking is no more and no less logical than St. Anselm's or St. Thomas Aquinas's proofs for the existence of God. 

It also suggested to me the truth of the famous saying of G.K. Chesterton's that when people stop believing in God they'll believe in anything. 

I'd amend that, however, to "when some people stop believing in God they'll believe in anything" - case in point, Prof. Brian Cox (if he really exists). 

Naturally, being the BBC, Robin Ince & Co. repeatedly joked about the superior civilisation having a laugh by running the 'Trump wins' simulation of reality - a simulation, Robin & Co. didn't add, where comedians like him might well have been programmed by our superior virtual reality creators to crack nothing but jokes about Trump (or the Daily Heil) and, thus, be condemned to a virtual eternity of being a Radio 4 comedian. 

The Silly Season

It’s the silly season. There’s no Marr, no Neil and only an extremely silly version of Sunday Morning Live. 

I don’t usually warm to Naga Munchetti, but she and Jane Hill are more sympathetic hosts than Sian Williams; however, as far as jarring S.M.L. anchorpersons go Anita Anand takes the biscuit.

This morning’s edition looked like a hastily cobbled together cover version of standard issue. Anita Anand was understudying Naga Munchetti and the panel were subs.

It’s the silly season though. As everyone else in the country is stuck in a stationary queue just outside Dover, it didn’t matter who they dragged in to discuss “how faith leaders in the UK should respond to the killing of elderly Father Jacques Hamel on his church altar.” 

Tommy Sandhu has an unusual head; his features occupy the whole face, leaving little space for forehead or chin. I’m not sure what he is on the programme for, but one of his jobs is to go ‘on the road’ to capture suitable vox pops. This time he went to the Living Islam Festival in Lincoln to accost young Muslims and film them commenting on why Islam is so peaceful, and opining upon what’s wrong with the ‘Prevent’ strategy.

His other job is to read out messages from a giant screen in the studio. But the thing is, having begged the public to join in, the messages, identified in true Jeremy Corbyn fashion by first names or Twitter handles, are so inane that they’re ignored like an embarrassing smell. Also, as they are displayed in such a large format, viewers can easily read them for themselves, so they don’t need to be read out loud. Especially by someone who doesn’t necessarily do so accurately.

Anita Anand had plenty to say. Then, all of a sudden, a near earth-shattering incident shook the studio.

A panellist, The Most Rev Kevin McDonald, made an extraordinary remark, which sounded both controversial and disarmingly honest. Nodding towards Tommy’s Islam-festival vox-pops, the Most Rev said:

”Most of those young people would not call ISIS extreme”. 

The panel staggered back in horror! Anita Anand did a double-take! The clock struck thirteen.

Disappointingly, there was a qualification. Panic over. The Most Rev Kevin McDonald patiently explained why he thought most of those young people would not call ISIS extreme - not because they’d come to terms with the fact that the ideology of ISIS wasn’t a million miles away from the ideology of mainstream Islam. No. The opposite. They wouldn’t call ISIS extreme simply because they wouldn’t even call ISIS  anything at all to do with Islam, let alone an extreme version of it”

Anita heaved a sigh of relief.

The final segment was about internet trolls. The young lady who had lost a leg in that horrible Alton Towers accident has been trolled by people who accused her of exploiting her accident, which is a bit rich, since nearly  everyone on TV is exploiting some accident or other, be it an accident of birth, like talent, good looks or plain luck, good or bad. She looks defiantly glamorous; good luck to her and long may she exploit her situation and .......Get off Twitter. 

Why am I here?

The funny thing is, she looked completely surprised to find herself sitting there between, let’s face it, some decidedly unglamorous wimmin who had either been trolled  or had opinions about being trolled. She must have been wondering  what on earth she was doing there. Some of us were wondering what any of them were doing there.

"Trolls do not watch S.M.L"

P.S. You know how people with an agenda will seize upon dissenting voices to discredit their target, e.g., when the BBC cites snippets from Haaretz to back up their own creepy anti-Israel campaign?

We all understand that natives who criticize their own country -  or for that matter family members who criticize other family members  - usually have their country’s or their family’s best interests at heart and will ultimately close ranks if challenged from outside.  Freedom of speech is paramount, but at the same time it’s probably foolhardy to cavalierly hand ammunition to one’s enemies.

If anyone thinks our criticism of the BBC is aimed at its destruction, they’re mistaken. We do not have such a charter. Our criticisms are supposed to be constructive, even if they don’t always look that way. I duly acknowledge the negativity in the above post about S.M.L. 

Mind your Bees and Queues

The morning's Sunday Morning Live, inevitably, discussed the migrant crisis, asking the question "Should Britain be a safe haven for migrants?" 

Sian Williams, just as inevitably, began by focusing on the issue everyone (at the BBC) seems to think is the most important aspect of all: whether David Cameron was wrong to use the word "swarm".

Three out of her four guests agreed it was wrong to use such language; one said it wasn't such a big deal (and got loudly talked over for his pains). 

The panel consisted of the Independent's Yasmin Alibhai-Brown (the one doing most of the loud talking-over), left-wing former Anglican bishop Stephen Lowe, left-leaning former Independent columnist Christina Patterson and Pastor Clement Okusi, lead pastor of Potters House Church, Croydon.

Despite initial appearances to the contrary and a bit of heat (with Pastor Clement trying to pursue a less predictable path and Yasmin yabbering over everyone else as usual), the panel converged on the value of EU-wide controlled mass migration and on the shamefulness of Britain's commitment to refugees. 

As a commenter at Biased BBC anticipated before watching it, "So that's no real debate at all then, just all shades of the same argument" (a very accurate prediction, I think).

Tommy Sandhu then read out some viewer messages, some of which sounded pretty extreme, before featuring a viewer on video who then strongly denounced those kind of people (with those kind of views) as "sociopaths". Sian then invited Christina Patterson to agree with the video guy about such people becoming "sociopaths", which Christina duly did. 

And so on and so forth.

That was not a balanced panel or a balanced discussion. 

The BBC is really not helping itself with this kind of thing - as the public vote would have shown if the programme still dared to put its questions to the audience (which it doesn't).

More trouble with polls

One more thing about this morning's Sunday Morning Live....

The one  regularly enjoyable thing about previous series of the programme was the weekly poll - which almost always 'went the wrong way' for the BBC, very amusingly. 

Just one example from last year. Sunday Morning Live asked the question, "Is immigration good for Britain?" The result , announced at the end of the show, was 11% saying 'yes' and 89% saying 'no'. One of the guests nearly fainted.

And it kept on happening: 

• "Does the English Defence League represent a view that needs to be heard?", asked SML. 95% replied 'Yes', 5% replied 'No'.
•  "Do Muslim veils deepen divisions?", asked SML. 95% replied 'Yes', 5% replied 'No'.
• "Should Britain take in Syrian refugees?", asked SML. 13%  said 'Yes', 87% said 'No'.

No wonder they've dropped this feature now!

They've replaced it instead with a man showing us a selection of email, Twitter and Facebook comments after every main section.

On the "Should we be ashamed of British history?" question, Tommy Sandhu (the man in question) read out four of them:

• Certainly proud of English history. Magna Carta for instance.
• We should be proud of what this little island has done. We didn't get everything right, but no country ever does.
• It's hard to be proud of our British history when the media focuses on our war victories rather than science and technology breakthroughs. 
• Let's try being proud of our country for a change. Mistakes have been made but we cannot apologise for the sins of our fathers.

This was how those comments were framed; 

Sian Williams: Let's get an update from Tommy about being British and British history. Tommy?

Tommy Sandhu: Thanks Sian, yes, there is a real sense that people want to feel proud but maybe they're struggling to feel that way.