Cultural “keep out” signs at Broadcasting House

 

Trevor Phillips hit the nail firmly on the head this week, writing in The Times: 

Outrage at the BBC‘s Emma Barnett for the crime of asking a self-styled Muslim leader how many female imams there are in Britain — a query similar to that addressed to Catholic leaders for decades — displays the same exaggerated regard for cultural “keep out” signs. The apparent capitulation by her bosses to social media clamour betrays a lack of self-confidence in an elite that genuflects (these days, often literally) to diversity. They will do almost anything to avoid calling attention to their own uniformity of social class, ethnicity and political outlook. I don’t think it is true of the BBC’s new boss, Tim Davie, but often the mask of compassion hides simple cowardice.

Is he being too charitable to Tim Davie there though?  

A fatal act of self-harm

Tom Mangold, back in the day

Tom Mangold's Mail on Sunday piece headlined "I fear that my beloved BBC’s bizarre obsession with a toxic culture of wokeness will end as a fatal act of self-harm" ought to matter to the BBC because Mr Mangold isn't just any old BBC veteran. He was Panorama's lead investigative reporter for many years and has always been held in high esteem. So for him to speak out in such an outspoken way about "the greasy slope down which [the BBC] is sliding faster every day" is really something, and a major sign of just how bad things have got recently. 

While expanding on his excoriation of Yogita Limaye's "biased, partial, unbalanced, filled with spite and venom" anti-Churchill report (see previous post), he adds the words "Never mind the truth". I doubt he would never the phrase, of course, but essentially what he's saying is that it was 'fake news'. 

'What on earth has happened?', he wonders. After all, the BBC's charter remains "unequivocal" on its statutory commitment to impartiality. Well, he says, the "holy contract" is now "well and truly broken". 

He seems to believe that Ms Limaye's late evening report, given the full backing of the News at Ten and Huw Edwards's "authority and credibility", was a bone deliberately thrown to the BLM movement. 

And the BBC's doing it, he says, because of its "bizarre obsession with youth, diversity and the ever-growing pressure of woke argument" and because BLM - and "the Twitter trolls, the social media addicts, the young, the immature and the often daft" - have become "the BBC’s recruitment and audience target." 

Why this "'threatens to become [the BBC's] final act of self-harm" is because such people are a "minority audience". 

He also quotes another wise old head, Trevor Phillips, saying that "the increasingly woke behaviour by the Corporation is endangering the central justification for special treatment, which is its universal reach." 

All of which is very true. The BBC is alienating its core audience in pursuit of a small demographic that probably won't be watching it regardless. It's a sign of the state the BBC's in at the moment that it doesn't even seem to see the folly of its position. 

The present situation with over-75s having to pay the licence fee from next Saturday is relevant here because 66 Conservative MPs  signed a letter to Tony Hall last week objecting to the BBC's decision over the licence fee, and added: "We question the need for the BBC to allocate the enormous sum of £100 million on diversity, which with strong management could be achieved for minimal cost". 

Tom Mangold in this article makes a related point: "Tony Hall has found £100 million in an ever-ready slush fund to increase diversity in the BBC. Meanwhile it gets rid of talent such as John Ware and Jane Corbin as permanent reporters from Panorama, presumably to save a bob or two". 

Why is the BBC splashing out such huge sums on diversity? After all, as the Observer observes today, it's devoting £12m of its commissioning budget "to making diverse and inclusive content" for the next three years, and devoting £100m of the current television commissioning budget to "on-air inclusivity", and bringing in a mandatory off-screen target for "20% diversity across the networks for new commissions" from April 2021? Because it's signalling to its new target audience. 

Tom Mangold goes on to quote Trevor Phillips saying, "The BBC has to recognise social change, sure, but it is not the institution’s role to lead it." Well, yes, but that's not how the young Turks who have been silently taking over at the BBC see it. To take just one example, on being appointed the BBC's first LBGT correspondent Ben Hunte said "There are a lot of marginalised voices that need to be given a mouthpiece" when he was appointed. He clearly meant that he intended to be that "mouthpiece". There's a lot of that about at the BBC now. 

Wonder what the bulk of the BBC will think about this? I'm guessing a huge chunk of them are too far gone to care what one of the old hands thinks, especially if it's in the Mail on Sunday. But some might take it as a proper, serious wake-up call. If they love the BBC as much as Tom Mangold does, what are they going to do about it?

For the sake of diversity

Sayeeda Warsi, Twitter:

"Monday morning class for racists - it’s 2020 people
- If you take a negative characteristic of an individual and impose on a whole community that’s racism
- personal anecdotes are not justifications for racism - it’s still racism"

There is quite enough already online about the Trevor Phillips fiasco - not so much the above quote from Sayeeda Warsi’s Twitter thread  - I was thinking more about the negative observations about the Labour Party's suspension of Trevor Phillips below articles about the topic in The Times.

Islamophobia? Looks bad for the Labour Party? With my reputation (!) 

"It would be a bit odd if I suddenly decided that because I had been kicked out of the club I couldn't express my beliefs."

Trevor Phillips, ex-chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, denies that his comments about Muslims are racist. #r4Todayhttps://t.co/kQwpWG6kBk pic.twitter.com/HOkC4E7A2g

— BBC Radio 4 Today (@BBCr4today) March 9, 2020

Instead of going over all that again, I want to pick up Nick Robinson mentioning “A letter from Tommy Robinson that was found in Darren Osborne’s van, referring to Muslims as ‘a nation within a nation.”

Oddly, the above clip from the BBC Politics Twitter timeline excludes that particular reference. That set me thinking. Was there really such a letter? Or was it another of those disingenuous memes? You know, like letterboxes and watermelon smiles.

I found two or three reports in the Independent referring to: “letters beginning with the phrase “dear Darren” ... “signed off” by Tommy Robinson." This, and this written by Lizzie Dearden, a reporter who has ‘history’ with T. Robinson.

This report, illustrated with a suitably aggressive-looking shot of her ‘subject’, refers to ‘emails’ that Osborne had downloaded, and later to an “email from Mr Robinson to Mr Osborne”. So, had Tommy Robinson been personally corresponding with Osborne and specifically inciting him to ‘act’? 

We all know that ‘clicking’ on something can trigger a flurry of unsolicited ‘personal’ messages, or let’s call them personalised messages, and we should also understand that receiving an automatically generated round-robin is not quite the same thing as being actual pen-pals with an individual at the head of the organisation that generated it.

So why did Lizzie Dearden and co make it seem otherwise? ‘Signed off’ is slightly different from just ‘signed by.” The Independent's journalists must have been aware that they were giving the impression that Tommy Robinson was specifically inciting Osborne to kill Muslims.

Nick Robinson said (to Trevor Phillips) that inflammatory messages from Tommy Robinson were ‘in a letter found in his (Darren Osborne’s) van’, and I put it to you that there was indeed a letter, but it was written by Osborne himself. There is even a photo of him sitting in a pub, pen and paper in hand - allegedly setting out his ‘manifesto’. It’s in the actual BBC report. Finsbury Park: what led Darren Osborne to kill? (Dominic Casciani)

Personal correspondence, generic emails, incitements to kill, self-penned manifestos - easily conflated, if you've a mind to, and you know it will pass unchallenged.

There is a considerable dollop of irony in the fact that in all the reports, even the ones that have massaged the facts to suit their agendas, a large portion of the blame for triggering the unhinged Mr Osborne to carry out his nasty deed has been laid at the door of the BBC’s own dramatisation “Three Girls.” 

But Nick forgot to mention that. It might have been awkward because it would have drawn attention to an uncomfortable truth about the "negative characteristics" of certain individuals. Or, to echo a certain Naz Shah (did she really say that?) you need to shut your mouth for the sake of diversity.

Update:
In this post (about the Robinson bros.) I was more concerned with the way Nick Robinson managed to shoehorn Tommy Robinson into his attack on Trevor Phillips than on the substance of the Labour Party’s ridiculous attempt to save its reputation. (As if!!) and I wanted to highlight the annoying phenomena of memes that have gone viral despite being disingenuous and context-lite.

The topic of Trevor Phillips and Islamophobia has been examined from every angle, inside, outside and upside down by The Times, the Spectator, Spiked and I daresay the Guardian and the Independent too. All the arguments have been made so eloquently and articulately by others that it seemed presumptuous for me to try to go over it all again, again.

I would have posted this update below the line (in a comment,) but it's easier to embed the links to some of these excellent pieces here. There are some good responses. (Unfortunately, the Spectator pieces are behind a paywall.)

 In defence of Trevor Phillips

Trevor Phillips’s fate should terrify us all

Why Labour wants to smear Trevor Phillips

Labour will regret its shameful treatment of Trevor Phillips


Here is a rudimentary list of some of the arguments one hears and reads, which one must put to oneself to test their strength and /or validity. 

1.) A phobia is an irrational fear.
2.) The ‘good Muslim’  is an ex-Muslim.
3) A ‘good’ Jew is an anti-Zionist Marxist
4.) Your ‘race’ is your race is your race. (Said Goebbels)
5.) Islam is a political ideology masquerading as a religion.
6.) Lumping disparate things together is racist.
7.) Arabs are 'Semitic' too.  (Gnomes are humans too) (Don’t be silly)

One can get lost in contradictory arguments about Islamophobia and antisemitism plus the concomitant false equivalences. The themes go round and round and trip over themselves on the way back. These days, in the end, it all boils down to ‘feelings’. Points mean prizes; facts mean feelings.

Breathing Toryscepticism

The Daily Mail is accusing the BBC of "bullying" in pursuit of "its licence-fee billions". 

We already knew (though it's still a startling figure) that the BBC's legal actions over non-payment of the licence fee account for one in ten of all magistrate hearings, but the Mail says it also accounts for a third of criminal cases brought against women. (One for Woman's Hour?)

Meanwhile, in The Times, an admirer of the BBC, Trevor Phillips, is now calling for licence fee reform.

He thinks the BBC is "digging its own grave" as "it breathes Toryscepticism".

He's also deeply concerned about the corporation's "increasingly “woke” behaviour". He thinks that's "endangering the central justification for special treatment, which is its universal reach".

I suspect the BBC won't have enjoyed being criticised by Trevor Phillips. 

What Muslims Don’t Really think

Well, after all the hype, how did Trevor Phillips do? If polled, I’d be inclined to say that after all that hype, the programme itself was an anticlimax. 

Did you think Trevor Phillips’s programme was truly representative of what Muslims think? 

• Strongly agree, 
• Agree, 
• Neither agree nor disagree, 
• Disagree, 
• Strongly disagree. 

I’d tick ‘neither agree nor disagree’  

I’m a terribly bad liar. I hardly ever lie in real life, but when I’m polled I lie all the time. Not that I’ve ever been polled about anything interesting. Just market research, which I deeply regretted as soon as I realised I was being bombarded with junk mail purely because of my gullibility.

The programme itself was always going to be an anticlimax, these things always are when all the juicy bits have already been cherry-picked and disseminated all over the place.

I thought it was a good plan to begin with a reassuring preamble about the methodology of the ICM poll. Insurance against the kind of criticism Trevor Phillips correctly anticipated he would face. The last thing a programme like this needs is doubts about its veracity. However it didn’t convince me. 

I mean, the decision to select interviewees from heavily Muslim-populated areas threw up more questions than it answered. The logic of that decision was missing. Surely including areas populated more sparsely (by Muslims) would show up a different set of results with a different set of questions, eg., would these Muslims absorb western culture or resist it more fiercely if they weren’t cushioned by or influenced by the like-minded? 

I was more interested in some of the press reviews of the programme than my own reaction to it. 

Andrew Billen’s review in the Times included this passage: 

“Phillips, knowing that his programme would be controversial and that the pollsters are not riding high on credibility, took admirable care to explain the methodology of his documentary’s professional question posers. I have no quarrel with how ICM found the 1,081 Muslims it talked to face-to-face. Quarrels with the programme’s interpretation of their answers I do have.

However, the Telegraph’s Emma Barnett questions the methodology.:

I don’t have a problem with such surveys being done per se, although there are some serious questions about the methodology used – one being that the only Muslims polled lived in areas where they made up more than 20 per cent of the local population. 

Allison Pearson, also in the Telegraph, takes a different approach. She takes the methodology at face value because she’s much more interested in the fact that at last someone has decided to investigate this topic, and even better, that a mainstream channel has agreed to air it. She takes recent events into account and puts them into context, something which the other journalists cited here seem afraid to do.

Emma Barnett seems angry. She thinks Trevor Phillips has only succeeded in making British Muslims feel more isolated. Jeremy Corbyn’s fans dismissed accusations of his links with terrorists and antisemites as ‘smears’. Is that what Emma Barnett is doing here?

“Having had real conversations with some real Muslims, they are appalled by his handiwork and feel attacked, not “listened to”. 

As one woman said to me: “Even the title of the programme implies Muslims have some sort of collective hidden agenda, which is horrifying.” 

Reactions online have been predictably hysterical, with people seizing upon the data to support their creeping Islamophobia.”

This response goes to show that some people are resistant to any interpretation of any kind of poll if the findings indicate something disagreeable.

Andrew Billen seems to be echoing Polly Toynbee. He compares the conservative attitudes of pre-enlightened non-Muslim Britain with current Muslim attitudes towards, say, same-sex marriage or the ethics of including the word ‘obey’ in the marriage vow. 

With a little wishful thinking one can equate and conflate some conservative attitudes in the hope they’ll eventually liberalise. That might be a plausible theory, but the attitude to terrorism was not quite so easy to dismiss. He admitted it was worrying, but he disputed the presentation, i.e., the way the question was phrased.

Well, it’s a poll. The wording’s subtle affect on the outcome is one of the built-in shortcomings of polls. Nuance there is not. 

The issue both the programme and the reviewers skirted round - or ignored - concerned the attitude to Jews. 

Many Muslims said they thought Jews had too much power. That’s a view that is embedded in their religion. That’s where Andrew Billen is wrong. The softening of hard-line views necessitates a softening of the religion itself. The views we fear are part and parcel of the religion. If Muslims are unable to relinquish some of their religiosity (which their religion does not permit) no amount of wishful thinking will help.

Circles of acquaintances

As Sarah AB points out at Harry's Place, Trevor Phillips says in his Sunday Times article: 

Many people, however, are just unaware. Not long ago, I had an exchange with a leading newspaper columnist who airily assured me that he had many Muslim friends, and that they were integrating just as his Irish Catholic forebears did a couple of generations ago. He could not accept that his own circle of acquaintances — probably doctors, lawyers, journalists — might not be typical of the British Muslim experience.

Did Sally Hitchener and Iain Dale both miss that passage? 

Their anecdotal evidence that the Muslims they meet or talk to aren't like the Muslims described in that Channel 4 survey puts them firmly into the same category at Trevor Phillips's "leading newspaper columnist"...

...a camp Mr. Phillips describes as "Britain’s liberal white elite" and "Britain’s increasingly deracinated opinion-forming classes".

What British Muslims Really Think

It again falls to Channel 4 to 'be brave' and do what the BBC has long been reluctant to do...

This Wednesday Channel 4 will broadcast What British Muslims Really Think and there's a long piece about it in The Sunday Times today by Trevor Phillips from which I'll quote just a couple of paragraphs:

Liberal opinion in Britain has, for more than two decades, maintained that most Muslims are just like everyone else, but with more modest dress sense and more luxuriant facial hair; any differences would fade with time and contact. Britain desperately wants to think of its Muslims as versions of the Great British Bake Off winner Nadiya Hussain, or the cheeky-chappie athlete Mo Farah. But thanks to the most detailed and comprehensive survey of British Muslim opinion yet conducted, we now know that just isn’t how it is....

I thought this latest exercise would be intriguing. In fact, it has turned out to be astonishing. The data collected by the respected research firm ICM shows what the polling experts call “a chasm” opening between Muslims and non-Muslims on such fundamentals as marriage, relations between men and women, schooling, freedom of expression and even the validity of violence in defence of religion. And the chasm isn’t going to disappear any time soon; indeed, the gaps between Muslim and non-Muslim youngsters are nearly as large as those between their elders.

ICM's methodology was:

ICM Unlimited interviewed a random sample of 1,081 adults aged 18+ who self-identified as belonging to the Muslim faith. Interviews were carried out face to face, in the home, in geographical areas in which the minimum proportion of Muslims was confirmed by census to be 20%. Interviews took place between April 25 and May 31, 2015, and the data has been weighted to be representative of all Muslims by age, gender, work status and region. A nationally representative control sample of 1,008 adults aged 18+ was also conducted, by telephone, on June 5-7, 2015. Interviews were conducted across the country and the results have been weighted to the profile of all adults.

Why isn't the BBC doing this kind of thing?

Turning tide

Woolly liberal

Woolly liberals must face truth about migrants  (Times £)

Hugo Rifkind has written an interesting piece.

“ It’s no good embracing refugees without accepting that some of their values are beyond the pale and must change.I find myself discombobulated over migration and Europe. Do you, also?”

“Do you, also?” sounds as though he's speaking with a German accent. 

“Perhaps not. Perhaps, back in September, when the tiny body of Aylan Kurdi washed up on a Turkish beach, and Angela Merkel declared that Germany would take 800,000 Syrians, and the Swedes said they’d take even more, per capita, and the world’s liberals — such as me — genuflected before them, then perhaps you saw, quite clearly, where it was all going. So perhaps you aren’t discombobulated at all. The opposite, even.Combobulated as anything. 

Not me though. Firmly dis. This weekend, Mrs Merkel performed her sharpest volte-face yet (and she’s performed a few of late) saying that isf Syria and Iraq should ever again know peace (a big if, admittedly)then all the refugees that Germany has taken in should leave, and say “thanks” on their way out. 

In Sweden, meanwhile, on Friday, we were told that gangs of rightwing hooligans were roaming around Stockholm looking for brown people to punch.[...]For the woolly, well-meaning liberal - again, such as me - there’s a strong temptation to not quite think about any of this. Or, if you do have to think about it, then there’s an even stronger temptation to do so a little dishonestly”

Hugo proceeds to describe Jess Phillips’s misguided comparison between Cologne and Broad Street, Brum; then:

 “No. In fact a situation far more similar to Cologne occurred in Cairo on the night when president Morsi stepped down. Scores of women in Tahrir Square were harassed, beaten and raped by a jeering mob. And it is certainly true, then as now, that a whole host of surprising western voices piped up to condemn it. 

Some of them, than as now, seemed a lot more upset by sexual assaults conducted by Muslims than they ever seemed to be by anybody else, but that’s not really the point. Although, I cannot lie, I’d be a lot more comfortable if it were. 

[...]Yet in the end, even a woolly liberal needs to stop twisting and stare an obvious truth in the face. Leaflets are now being handed out in German swimming pools.politely explaining that women in bikinis were not to be unilaterally grabbed on the bottom. If you believe in immigration (which I do) let alone the moral necessity of accepting refugees (which I certainly do) this is the bit on which you have to dwell.Can we take in new people and make them just like us?”

(Not according to Trevor Phillips, who’s come in for stick for mentioning that Muslims aint like us, and it’s insulting of us to even expect them to become so.)  (The left does not approve.) 

“sometimes, in order to figure out your own thoughts, you need somebody to say the exact opposite. In that vein I’m grateful to Trevor Phillips[..] who said last month that continuously pretending that a group is somehow eventually going to become like the rest of us is perhaps the deepest form of disrespect”  

To do so, he added, was to suggest they just “haven’t yet seen the light”’ which is patronising and unhelpful, not least because maybe they never will. But they have to.  The lesson of Europe’s current migrant trauma is that integration - and, in the end, assimilation -  is not an option but essential. 

[...]It’s not enough for minorities to just keep their heads down. They have to change enough to not even want to. A society can have any number of foods, headdresses and religious ceremonies, but it cannot have any number of values. 

[...] For Germany, and for Sweden, though, the interesting bit is what happens next. The question is not just whether their migrants can become liberals. It is also, and perhaps more importantly, whether their liberals can stay liberal while they do.

Knit me a hairy jumper. I’m wondering if some of those woolly liberals aren’t beginning  to see the light. 

Here’s something else that caught my eye.

The Guardian is getting flak and it’s not happy. All those woolly articles are attracting avalanches of criticism.

Cologne seems to be the catalyst for some kind of turning point, although the Guardian itself is sticking to its guns. For now. Silencing the opposition can’t work for very long. Who’s going to keep on reading articles they disagree with, especially if they can’t have their say?

There *is* Race!

While we’re on the subject of The Big Questions, last Sunday’s episode was about race. Or was it about racism. The general consensus seemed to be that racism is, and could only be, the powerful discriminating against the disempowered. 

From this principle it was extrapolated that black people couldn’t be racist. It was an impossibility. If I remember correctly that’s the Diane Abbott theory.  Someone could maybe have mentioned Zimbabwe, the Middle East, present day South Africa and so on, but perhaps that’s just semantics, because of course those examples are still power or ‘class’ holding sway over the weak and/or the underclass, albeit in these cases it’s ‘black’ upon ‘white’.

Something that should have been said, but wasn’t, was that there is also the passive-aggressive, guilt inducing racism that comes from incessant victim-mongering, such as was in evidence in that programme. Blacks - or whatever the latest acronym for ‘black’n’asian’ is -  can be racist. And they often are - with notable exceptions of course.

There is another flaw in this kind of discussion. It’s the fact that most of the time everyone is talking at cross-purposes. There *is* race. It exists. DNA and all that. We should be able to acknowledge that, at least without people recoiling in horror at the very mention. People should be able to generalise about certain things where they’re obvious, on the understanding that there are exceptions to the rule. 

If, say, statistics show that one racial group broadly demonstrates unique physical or mental attributes, why should we be afraid to mention it - on the understanding that there are exceptions.  Racial stereotyping isn’t necessarily negative or positive; it can simply be neutral. 

There’s an issue about profiling. I understand that Israel has an effective way of minimizing terrorism in the air through profiling. If security services or airport authorities were prohibited from working along those lines it would put us in more danger than we already are. In fact some politically correct non-discrimination must already be in place, if stories about white grannies being searched while burka’d ladies sail through check-in are anything to go by.

Of course the black citizens who are offended by too many racially targeted stop and search events might see things differently. Some would say it’s up to black communities themselves to overturn the statistics that make them a target, by reining in their own criminal element and generally conforming to conventional norms, which is dangerously close to blaming the victim; and they could justifiably argue that it’s difficult to do all that because of society’s discrimination. It’s a circular argument with little hope of a quick fix. Patience is the only hope.

There is an extraordinary amount of racial discrimination and harassment at our universities in the form of anti-Zionism-come-antisemitism. It’s rising. 

Which brings me to Trevor Phillips.

 “Former Master of the King’s Wardrobe suddenly reveals that ‘The King is in the Altogether’ shock horror.” 

This weird mea culpa, which some people are lauding as wonderful, refreshing and liberating and others are condemning as total disingenuous rubbish - seems to me to be part statement of the bleeding obvious / part racist victimhood whinge. He seems to be making a case for more active  ‘positive discrimination’, and  he lost me near the beginning. The first thing Phillips cites as a ‘truth we’re not allowed to say” is that rusty old antisemitic slur, that Jews are predominantly powerful and rich. Statistics somewhere attest to it, he said. He stopped just short of saying Jews control the world. (In The Big Questions, Lee Jasper of all people brought Phillips to task on that because, he said, “I know plenty of poor Jews”)  There are exceptions you see. 

However I found it bothersome that in his Channel 4 documentary Trevor Phillips didn’t bother to qualify that so-called ‘truth’, even to say that he too knows (or knows of) the occasional poor, un-powerful Jew. He was happy enough to just leave that  particular ‘truth you can’t say’ well and truly ‘said.’

"I know some poor Jews"

As far as I could tell, Trevor Phillips’s  revelations added nothing to the mix. Perhaps he’s reluctantly coming round to the view that pure, unadulterated, non discriminatory equality and universal sameness is a delusion rather than a reality. He’s kind of the last man standing, the only man alive who didn’t know that all along.

Political debate

Sunday am. The Andrew Marr show.

Andrew Marr. (Sunday Newspapers)

“Whether Muckingham Palace did the right thing by  putting out another statement -  they certainly fed the beast......”

“Muckingham Palace?”  ooh!

+++

Alan Dershowitz. 

I’m surprised no-one at the BBC has so far bothered to besmirch Dersh by innuendo wrt his pro-Israel advocacy   To date the BBC is still describing him as ‘a former Harvard Law professor.’

+++

Oh the grand old Duke o’ York. Yesterday someone wrote he was ruled by his pants. (as in when they were up they were up etc etc) 

+++ 

Paper Review. Jane Moore and Trevor Phillips. 

Polls, the election and “the Elephant in the Room”  ( immigration.) (!!)

Trevor Phillips says both parties are trying to steer the conversation towards their favourite electioneering topics  - the economy and health - but neither party wants to talk about immigration.

“Germany” says he. ”Everybody knows I’m pro-immigration and so on, but the question is why aren’t we having a conversation about it?” “ Angela Merkel!” “the German party that is the equivalent of UKip!”  “ hatred in their hearts!!”

Jane Moore oozes confidence and uncertainty at the same time.

“People who are looking at immigration through the prism of racism are very very much in the minority. I think the main problem that concerns people about immigration .......is numbers! It’s got nothing to do with ethnicity... !!!“

 “Schools and hospitals...” Andy Marr interjects helpfully:

“Yes! and the knock-on effect, and I think the politician that addresses that in the correct way ... it’s about uncontrolled immigration isn’t it, not immigration per se.” 

(There!  Jane Moore has spake.)

“They can’t unless they leave the EU. That’s the big problem that David Cameron has got” adds Marr.

Trevor Phillips: “You can say it’s about numbers - we could have an argument about that - but I think most people are concerned about the effect it’s having on the high street... nobody discusses how we help these people to integrate.... to help the economy!”

(Boom boom)

Marr has an illustrative story about a Serbian Guy. “I can tell you speaking as a Serbian Guy, you people will not come and work in  my cafe...the problem is you not us!”

(Serbian Guy has observed that indigenes will not wash dishes for next to nowt per hr.)

Moore: “Yeah and he’s right. I think. In many respects. Absolutely right!”

++++

[...] Trevor Phillips: “Plan to snoop on toddlers! Come on!  Haven’t we got better things to do? Welcome back the Stasi...”

+++

“Phil Neville has made his first cup of instant coffee.” 

+++

Jamie Cullen, as Dudley Moore, sings “Mama’s Got a Brand New Bag”. I think that was it.

+++

Monday.

The Daily Politics’s vox pop. The BBC lugged two transparent boxes (one marked ‘yes’ and t’other ‘no’) and a pile of balls to a typical English hight street.

“Are you looking forward to the election?” was the question.

“Yes”  answered one white and one black passer by. “Why are you looking forward to it?” asked the BBC. “We don’t know!” they replied hilariously. 

 A Dutch lady said she was looking forward to it. Several people simply made a face. 

“Politicians talk crap”  they opined.

When all the balls were exhausted or when the BBC got bored we were shown the result: a handful more yesses. 

So it’s official. The British Public is looking forward to the election.

++++