The BBC's worldview

UnHerd's Peter Frankin has a piece today about how Radio 4's Correspondents Look Ahead reflects the BBC's worldview to perfection. 

The BBC may say it hasn't got a worldview but it certainly has, on subject after subject. 

He gives some examples, including:

There was also a preachy little section on “global vaccine inequality”. Noting the low levels of vaccination in many developing countries, the question asked for 2022 was “will the West do better?” No consideration was given to the performance of developing world governments or to local levels of vaccine hesitancy. That’s not to absolve the West of its responsibilities in this matter, just to point out that yet again the discussion was one-sided.

When I listened to it on New Year's Eve I made the following note for this section: 

St. Gordon of Brown - vaccine inequality - “a moral issue” [Lyse Doucet] - GB's “stain on our global soul” mentioned twice - “No one is safe until everyone is safe”.

Over on the BBC World Service's equivalent programme the BBC's Africa correspondent Andrew Harding went even further. This is how he rather hotly characterised it: 

Andrew Harding, BBC - The last two years, it's clear, have been about apartheid, if you like. It's been a systemic failure of the international community. Those with their stockpiles, those democracies looking after their own people first. And you mentioned earlier that idea of no one's being safe until everyone's safe, completely ignoring that basic fact and, despite plenty of promises, denying Africa its fair share of vaccines. 

Going back to the Radio 4 one, Peter also notes how they didn't ask why “the biggest economic story of 2021 — the global supply chain crisis” happened:

Perhaps that’s because one of main causes of the crisis — the surge in demand created by the American government’s excessive stimulus program — doesn’t fit the “Trump bad, Biden good” narrative. Similarly when contemplating America’s continuing political polarisation, the Republican delusion about a stolen election was highlighted, but not the doctrinaire woke politics of the other side. For instance, the campaign to “defund the police” at a time of surging crime rates might have been worth a mention.

One thing they did discuss, of course, was the Capitol riot on 6 January. Indeed, from Sunday to Pick of the Year, that's been the US event every BBC journalist seems to want to talk about above all else. 

Peter gives another example:

The partiality of BBC’s analysis doesn’t just apply to American politics. Inevitably it also applies to Brexit. Attempting to explain continuing UK-EU tensions, the BBC’s Europe editor Katya Adler repeated the EU line that the British government is playing to a domestic audience. The idea that the gratuitous Brit-bashing of the French government might be similarly motivated went entirely unspoken.

It did indeed. My note on the night for that bit ran as follows: 

Katya on EU/UK. Brussels perspective given. UK side presented cynically. Usual language about Tory Brexiteers - ''hard wing'', ''hard''. Brussels perspective. Brussels perspective.

Indeed, no one countered Katya's Brussels perspective with an attempt at presenting the UK perspective in similar terms. 

Katya also talked of the rise of “illiberal democracies” like Poland and Hungary, characterising that rise as “extremely dangerous”. 

Peter Frankin concludes by noting that, whatever the BBC says, BBC correspondents “do have opinions”, as shown by this programme, and though “in itself that’s not a problem,...the issue is viewpoint diversity and the lack of it.” He ends: 

Instead of maintaining a semblance of neutrality, I’d much rather the BBC allowed and encouraged its journalists to examine the great issues of our time from a variety of different ideological perspectives. We might just get a clearer view of the future if they did.

He can hope. 

“Vaccination/nation”

  

I didn't watch the New Year on TV. I listened to a piece of Vaughan Williams I'd never heard before and read the chapter on Carlisle railway station in Simon Jenkins's Britain's 100 Best Railway Stations. [I certainly know how to party]. 

Catching up on the BBC One/Sadiq Khan midnight offering just now made me smile. The first bit of doggerel reminded me of McGonagall - long lines in pursuit of a rhyme [new/2022, come/2021, vaccination/nation, seen/18, camaraderie/cardie, heals/free school meals]. 

The verse asked us to “relish the magnificent things we achieved in 2021” - very BBC/Sadiq Khan things by and large:

We rallied round our NHS heroes as they rolled out the vaccination./ And stood beside our Three Lions, heads raised and proud - united, together, as a nation./ We won 124 Paralympic medals, one of the greatest hauls we've ever seen./ And our star Emma Raducanu won the US Open, and she's only 18!/ We saw the return of live events and reclaimed companionship and camaraderie./ Tom Daley took home gold and still found time to knit a cardie!/ COP26 convened in Glasgow, aspiring to build a world that heals./ And Marcus Rashford and his fans gave out 21 million free school meals!

The commentary continued by looking forward to the England women's football team going one better than the men's this year and in place of last year's controversial BLM black first in the sky contented itself by the voice-over earnestly saying, “The players take the knee united in their stance against racism.”

UnHerd's Mary Harrington captured it all rather brilliantly in a tweet: 

2012-style Danny Boyle nationalism is alive and well inside the M25 time capsule.

And for the BBC that's just perfect to welcome the nation to 2022.

Of Twa hunters and Emily Maitlis

Further to a post here from last Saturday - the one featuring Michael Crick saying “Tonight the world’s eyes are on Washington,” says Emily Maitlis in her Newsnight intro. What total rubbish - here are the opening two paragraphs of a long-read essay at UnHerd by Aris Roussinos, which expand slightly on Michael's 'What total rubbish' critique:

“Tonight the world’s eyes are on Washington,” declared Newsnight’s Emily Maitlis recently, referring to the abortion debate currently going through America’s Supreme Court. No doubt, in the dark forests of the Ituri, Twa hunters paused their age-old stalking of game to deliberate on Mississippi’s new legislation; in the glittering skyscrapers of Shanghai and Guangzhou, the Chinese economy ground to a halt as industrialists awaited Amy Coney Barrett’s contentious deliberation; high in the mountains of Bolivia, peasant farmers abandoned their timeless struggle with the frigid Andean soil, huddling in their villages to confer on what this could all mean for America’s women.

Obviously this is a fantasy, like most British political commentary. It is Britain’s political comment class alone who are so destructively enamoured of the political theatre of a distant foreign country that American news crowds out our own in the battle for attention. Yet this colonised mindset is only true of a specific shade of American politics: an identitarian left-liberal strand tailor-made for our mid-Atlantic Twitter class.

Not talking about Sir David Amess

I was watching a fascinating YouTube video the other day - an UnHerd interview with Ayaan Hirsi Ali about how 'wokeness is a gift to Islamism. It began with presenter Freddie Sayers recalling the murder of Sir David Amess MP on 15 October before saying:

Have you noticed how it's barely talked about already? It seems strange that after such a momentous event it would be passed over so quickly. Now part of it is to do with the suspect, Ali Harbi Ali, having been charged so the media outlets are understandably wary about interfering with an ongoing court process. But, if we're honest, there's also a wariness to say what this really appears to be, which is an incident of Islamist terrorism on our shores.

Checking TVEyes, The last time any of BBC One's main news bulletins mentioned David Amess's name was on Thursday 28 October's-News at Ten - a very brief mention near the end of the bulletin - and the previous occasion was almost a week earlier on Friday 22 October's News at Ten.

 

BBC London's local news programmes have mentioned the late MP's dog being named Westminster dog of the year, but the main time they focused on his murder recently was on Sunday 31 October's Politics London where they discussed how 'the Somali community is suffering the fallout from the murder of Sir David Davis', how his murder has been 'a trigger event' that's 'instilled fear in the Somali community' - the familiar 'backlash' angle, a very BBC angle.

The contrast with the media's behaviour after the murder of Jo Cox is striking.

How do you solve a problem like Shamima?

Even the most admirable writers and influencers can, occasionally, disappoint. It’s difficult to admit to oneself that there’s a flaw in the argument of someone for whom you have the utmost respect and admiration. 

I hate to say this, but I have reservations about Douglas Murray’s article in UnHerd about Shamima Begum. 

Shamima Begum will never leave Britain By Douglas Murray.

The former ISIS bride has been allowed to appeal the decision to strip her of citizenship. But whatever happens, we lose. 

Yes indeed. If she comes back, surely she can't ever be expelled. Everything he says up to a certain point is 100% a-okay with me. Then, towards the end,  I find this:

She and her cohorts waged war against this country and our allies; they lost, and by the most fundamental laws of justice and war they should have lost everything.

While that uncompromising argument seems perfectly fine when applied to the spurious Palestinian claim (so-called Right of Return) - that they lost a war of intended annihilation that they themselves started - so tough!

 

But that principle seems hypocritical when applied to Begum. Why? Because he’s effectively saying “Rot in hell you evil bitch - lie in the bed you created” and that uncompromising, harsh, inflexibility is all too reminiscent of radical Islam itself. 

I might be saying something Michelle Obama-ish, like “When you go low, we go high”,  but mirroring the rigid, inhumane and unforgiving characteristics of Islam seems like the wrong way of dealing with the problem.

I must admit that I have some sympathy with a commenter who received an onslaught of hostile, reactionary responses to his contributions. I think his argument deserves more than an avalanche of disparaging and not particularly original thoughts. I hope the author ‘Robin P Clark” will forgive me if I reproduce his comments, which include many worthwhile points, for your information.

“For the first time I have to disagree, totally, with Douglas Murray. He fails to grasp the point that this war is different. Because it is a continuation of the jihad started by an Arabian warlord 14 centuries ago. As part of the biggest hoax in history.

Here is a little education for Mr Murray, which they probably forgot to mention at Oxford. Our civilisation, Western Christendom, was founded on Christianity. A most fundamental tenet of which is: "Forgive your enemies because they do not know what they do". And I don't propose to reckon to know better than 2000-year-old wisdom.

Some people like to be nasty. They kick you for their amusement. They are criminals.

But the Jihadists are not criminals. They are deluded. Their delusion is that the Islam hoax started by the Arabian warlord is the one true good religion.

These terrorists and other jihadists do not need punishment. They need therapy. In particular, they need telling the truth about Islam, that it is a hoax invented by a greedy man to enrich himself.

All those who collude with Islam in baselessly asserting that Islam is a peaceful and noble faith, including pretending to be "Professor of Islamic studies", while doing nothing to expose the exceptionally hateful violence-inciting nature of the Qur'an, are themselves complicit in the huge record of nasty things that have been done and still are being done in the name of this ideology unfit for humans.

Shamima Begum is a victim. A victim of all those who defend Islam as something to be respected. And there are too many of those in high places in this country, not least so-called Lord ****, whose only response to my pointing out to him the facts about Islam was to report my "offence" to the police (so much for his asserted tolerance of divergent views). And Baroness *****, who repeatedly asserted that the terrorists were not the real Islam, yet could never be bothered to engage with the clear evidence that they are. The blood is on such people's hands, whether they intended it or not. But again, "forgive them because they know not what they do".

Less hostile intolerant punishment, more understanding and honest telling of the necessary truths. We are at war not with guns, but with deluded beliefs. No amount of imprisonment and punishment is going to defeat those beliefs. Meanwhile Islam is already in crisis from everyone now being able to read its reportedly perfect Qur'an and many courageous people telling the truth about it. More of those voices, and an end to all the persecution and censorship against pretended "Islamophobia" is what is needed.

 and later:

Mr Murray's grasp of history also appears to be less than comprehensive. There were natives of same states on opposite sides in the 1683 Battle of Vienna, one of the most important events in history (and Europe may well have not survived the Jihad otherwise). Needless to say, no-one learns about it in our "education" system....

"The attraction of war was always the same. Men and women of violence could take what they wanted by force."

Utter nonsense. The Jihadists make clear that they are simply following the commands of the Qur'an to fight those who disbelieve. The Qur'an acknowledged in several verses that the Warlord's subjects would prefer not to join that fighting:

“Fighting is prescribed for you, and you dislike it. But it is possible that you dislike a thing which is good for you, and that you love a thing which is bad for you. But Allah knows, and you know not.” [2:216]
“Have you not seen those unto whom it was said: Withhold your hands and establish worship and pay the poor-due? But when fighting was prescribed for them, behold! a party of them fear mankind even as they fear Allah or with greater fear, and they say: Our Lord! why have you ordained fighting for us? If only you would give us respite for a while. I Say: The comfort of this world is scant; the Hereafter will be better for he who wards off evil.” [4:77]

One could be put off by the somewhat arrogant language with which he addresses Douglas Murray, but his insights into Islam itself deserve to be given due consideration and respect.

 So what’s the answer? How do you solve a problem like Shamima?  

For one thing - slightly deviating from my own unanswerable question - it is being argued by Begum’s lawyers that the school or the authorities in question must take responsibility for not having warned the families that their daughters were ‘being radicalised’. Well, if I remember correctly, the families were pretty much  ‘radicalised’ themselves. 

Prescribing a dose of harsh, retributory punishment seems to me like doing the very thing you condemn in others.  Giving your foe a taste of their own medicine might offer a certain amount of gratification, but when specifically dealing with an ideology that is beyond reason, which Islam surely is, creating martyrs isn’t much of a deterrent; in fact, it’s the opposite. I think the term is 'recruiting Sargeant' (!)

 

I had an email disagreement with Melanie Phillips once, in 2008, about ‘smacking’. She was against bringing in a ‘no smacking’ law and I was in favour. I’m very likely on my own (politically homeless) there, too. I won’t go into it now - but suffice it to say my offspring (grown-up) won’t be perpetuating any form of corporal punishment, as the “Smacking never did me any harm” brigade are wont to do. The anti-smacking philosophy is constantly misrepresented and misunderstood, and I’m willing to expand on it any time you like. (Other than now)

If you’re going to boil these arguments right down to the bone, we seem to end up with ‘might is right’.  Which (sadly) puts me in the wrong. Or does it?

 

It seems the problem is far deeper than just whether or not a brainwashed young woman deserves to be allowed back to the UK. The big mistake was ever allowing Islam to seduce us. ‘Woke’ is the least appropriate term for permanently sleepwalking useful idiots. 

The Blair Government’s cynical and (transiently self-serving) immigration policy has one hell of a lot to answer for. 

The media is running the country

I’ve been searching online for a piece that most reflects my feelings on Cummingsgate.

Somewhere, during this absolute waste of my time, I spotted a commenter speculating about what would happen if the media loses its all-out quest for a scalp?  Is it a quest or a crusade?

If it wins, the scent of blood will further empower the media, which seems already to be running the show; but if the PM stands his ground, the puffed-up media might deflate like a burst balloon.

Just to clarify, as Mishal Husain repeated several times as she grilled Robert Jenrick with chilling savagery this morning. In her case ‘clarify’ means ‘crucify’, but my position is that I think dancing on the head of a pin to justify Dom’s shoogley defence is 100% counter-productive. 

I just think, in the scheme of things, the media should never never be allowed to play judge, jury and executioner, nor should the BBC be allowed to act as stand-in for H.M. opposition in the absence of a credible Labour Party.

What does the media, particularly Sky and the BBC, actually want? A Labour government? Do they really think that the same bunch that happily abandoned any principles they might have had to campaign for Jeremy Corbyn as Prime Minister, would have handled the pandemic more competently? I bet they’re wholly relieved that they avoided that unexpected(!) gift of an escape so that they can continue sniping comfortably and sanctimoniously from the sidelines.

Just two relevant examples.

Eric Kaufmann UnHerd

We should be able to distinguish between various degrees of violation of norms, on the one hand, and sentencing, on the other. On the basis of these standards, and the precedent set to date in Anglo societies, he did wrong and should apologise but did not breach the threshold required for him to resign.

Who's to blame? Jonathan Eida

However, the real scandal in all of this fiasco has been the role of the media in deliberately misguiding the public, producing stories aimed to bring down the credibility of the Prime Minister and his office. It also seems, with many outlets, that they had some personal vendetta against Cummings, who himself has been hostile to them in the past.

Mishal Husain was outrageous. It’s not so much the insultingly rude, argumentative interruptions delivered in that exaggeratedly sugary, saccharine “You’re trying my patience” voice, - we’re almost used to that from Husain - it was the undisguised contempt for the government in her line of attack. All the gleeful announcement of that poll.

Political choices

Antisemitism is just a political choice. Remember that! (One has to wonder, though, if the same can be said of Islamophobia and all other forms of racism)

When Ms Unsworth did her best to justify the BBC’s commissioning of a known antisemite to appear on the “Tory Takedown” episode of Panorama, various BBC scrutineers took up the case. Guido Fawkes  had:

Back in 2012 when Ashton was campaigning against health reforms, CCHQ got sick of the BBC, issuing the statement “The BBC has a responsibility to report news objectively. They should always inform their viewers if the person they are interviewing has political motives”. Eight years on and the BBC are still refusing to adhere to their own guidelines…

And the Campaign Against Antisemitism had

CAA INVESTIGATION REVEALS EVEN MORE RACIST TWEETS BY PROF. JOHN ASHTON AS WELL AS HIS TROLLING OF THE BBC TO INCLUDE GAZA IN A HOLOCAUST COMMEMORATION, WHILE HUNDREDS SIGN OUR PETITION TO TAKE HIM OFF AIR
After antisemitic comments made by Prof. Ashton were revealed in the Jewish Chronicle last week, Campaign Against Antisemitism launched a petition to urge the BBC, ITV and Sky News to stop inviting him to appear as a regular commentator on their news programmes. 

As well as his comments revealed last week (in tweets he has since deleted), which included phrases such as “time for Jews to reflect” and “Zionists behave like Nazis”, we have now uncovered further comments which show the extent and venomousness of his obsession. 

In light of these revelations, and the BBC’s and Sky News’ dismissal of Prof. Ashton’s antisemitism as mere “political views”, we call upon others to join the hundreds who have already signed the petition to get him off our television screens. 

Although this seemed to me to be an obvious breach of the BBC’s obligation to identify their guest speakers’ political affiliations and advocacies, it set me athinkin’.

In what turned out to be a never-ending exercise of whataboutery, I was able to list dozens of known antisemites, Jew-haters and Israel-bashers who appear fairly regularly on our screens without even having to wrack my brain cell.

For one example, take emotional-meltdown-prone, exBBC staffer Chris Gunness. Formerly Gaza-based head of UNRWA, the discredited Palestinian aid agency, Hamas affiliate and recipient of $squillions of international aid, having had his Twitter account suspended for tweeting an obnoxious poem, Gunness has reinvented himself as a music critic. The biggest mystery of all is how he got away with both being gay and collaborating with Hamas. 

Perhaps, for Hamas, the perceived benefit of his anti-Israel advocacy outweighed their inherent homophobia. At any rate, he escaped being dragged behind a motorbike or thrown off a building or whatever they like to do to gay men in Gaza.

Then, of course, there’s QT panellist Richard Horton of the Lancet. He’s well known for his ‘political choice’.

We mustn’t forget Dateline London’s most frequent guest, Abdul Bari Atwan  Usually introduced simply as the editor of Al Quds magazine, our ‘Bari’ is famous for his Jew-hate and for saying he’d ‘dance with delight’ in Trafalgar Square if Iran attacked Israel with a nuclear weapon.

That’s quite strong for a political choice, wouldn’t you say, and worth a mention in the introduction to any platform the BBC might be offering him.

Ken Loach, Miriam Margolyes a multiplicity of pop stars and thesps, they’re all at it - they’ve been spoon-fed the anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian fiction for so long that no kind of enlightenment whatsoever is likely to dawn on any of them 'anytime soon'. 

So without boring myself rigid with further lists and links, I’ll say what I originally set out to say. With the pro-Palestinian narrative firmly embedded as the default ‘political choice’ of the many (not the few), I keep asking myself how did we get to this? 

Most antisemites, anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian advocates must know there’s ‘another side’ to the story. (surely?) Aware of it or not, they choose to dismiss it. Let’s call that a political ‘choice’.

What baffles me is why anyone in the post-Christian, liberal/libertarian largely secular democratic Western world would align ideologically with radical Islam? Why would they simply believe the infantile lies, the more absurd the better it seems, of the fanatics and religious bigots who simply loath Jews?

And the anti-Israel narrative is so embedded in Britain, sad to say, that anyone trying to explain the case for Israel is asking to be ridiculed and scorned. The most recent example I can give is Israel’s strategic decision to annex settlements in the West Bank. 

The legal argument for this is set out by Michael Calvo here,:

“According to international law, the Jews are the indigenous people of the lands referred to as Judea, Samaria, Palestine, Israel and the Holy Land, and therefore fulfill the criteria required by international law. The Jews are the ethnic group that was the original settler of Judea and Samaria 3,500 years ago, when the land was bestowed upon the Jews by the Almighty. Leaders of this world, who chose to make abstraction of history, misleadingly refer to Judea and Samaria as the "West Bank" of the Jordan River (which includes Israel) or the "Occupied Palestinian Territories”.

but who’s going to bother with trying to get to grips with that?

“With the Mandate for Palestine, accorded to Great Britain in August 1922, the League of Nations recognized "the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country". The Jewish people's right to settle in the Land of Palestine, their historic homeland and to establish their state there, is thus a legal right anchored in international law. 

UNDRIP reaffirms the right of the Jewish people as the indigenous people, and "especially their rights to their lands, territories and resources."

That’s not going to be very popular, is it? So the Israel-bashers in the UNGA  get round it by making hundreds of non-binding declarations and treating them as though they’re legally valid.

“Recent UN General Assembly Resolutions stating that the settlement of Jews in Judea Samaria is contrary to international law are no more than recommendations and have never led to amendments of existing binding treaties. 

“UN Security Council Resolutions, stating that Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria are illegal, are not binding. Only resolutions taken under Chapter VII of the UN Charter are binding on all UN member states. For example, Security Council Resolution 2334 was adopted on December 23, 2016 by a 14–0 vote. Four permanent members of the Security Council -- China, France, Russia and the United Kingdom -- voted in favor; the US abstained. This resolution was not adopted under Chapter VII of the Charter. It is not binding. That resolution states that Israel's settlement activity constitutes a "flagrant violation" of international law. It has "no legal validity". 

We’re in there, look! The UK voted in favour of another ‘non-binding’ resolution crafted to undermine Israel’s legitimacy in favour of the Palestinians and their fairy-tale fantasy!

“This position is political, not legal. Despite UN resolutions to the contrary, the establishment of Israeli civilian settlements in the West Bank is not inconsistent with international law.

Will the case for Israel ever be heard with a sympathetic ear? Not very likely, is it?  And just as I was thinking all this, and realising how hopeless it would be (for anyone) to try, in the face of such a resistant audience, to persuade the British establishment to be reasonable, this popped into my inbox. Unherd

Anti-Semitism runs deep in BritainThere is a strong native tradition in this country and it cuts across party linesBY MATTHEW SWEET

He starts off with an anecdote. It’s the kind of anecdote that I could easily have recounted myself. This sort of thing has happened to me many times over. I think it’s why I blog. He’s describing the belly-blow one feels when someone who seems perfectly nice and ‘relatable’ turns out to be a raging, antisemitic, ignoramus. His contention is that embedded antisemitism isn’t confined to the left. It’s also a feature deeply ingrained in the right (left and centre.)

“The journal Political Quarterly has just published the first academic study of Labour’s anti-Semitism crisis. Its authors are the sociologists Ben Gidley and Brendan McGeever, and the historian David Feldman — all attached to the Pears Institute for the study of Antisemitism at Birkbeck University of London.
[…]
Their conclusions will comfort few. Conservative voters, the data suggests, are more likely to assent to an anti-Semitic proposition than their Labour equivalents. These numbers are alarmingly large: added together, they work out as about 30% of the population.

I’m not totally convinced by all the reasoning, but 30%! That sounds pretty bad. 

“They suggest that most of the participants in the crisis — from Jeremy Corbyn to Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis — are guilty of the same intellectual error. They have chosen to characterise anti-Jewish racism as a poison, a virus, a disease — a foreign pollutant that has breached the defences of a 120-year-old British institution. “Figures on all sides,” the article concludes, “conceive antisemitism as an exogenous force which contaminates and spoils the political body it inhabits.”

I had to look up exogenous. It means “external force”. I can’t see that it is such a big blunder to mischaracterise a “reservoir: a deep reservoir of stereotypes and narratives, one which is replenished over time and from which people can draw with ease”  as an exogenous force, or to confuse one for the other. 

Whatever it is, exogenous force or deeply embedded reservoir, it’s real, and the examples of cultural (and casual) antisemitism he cites are all too familiar. 

It’s in the literature of John Buchan, Graham Greene and the antisemitic sources upon which many of our favourite black and white movies were based. It seems that these movies were ‘sanitised’ before release by Jews running the big studios of the time.

Interestingly, Matthew Sweet declares:

The deadlines for peer-reviewed academic journals are long. Gidley, McGeever and Feldman were committed to print before the new Labour leader issued his thoughts on the anti-Semitism crisis in his party. Keir Starmer’s language was much the same as that of his predecessor, though he did add a slightly confusing horticultural layer: “Antisemitism has been a stain on our party,” went his victory speech. “I will tear out this poison by its roots.”

and concludes:

“Prejudice does not show up on an X-Ray. It can’t be collected on a swab or in a blood sample. It lives in our actions and utterances and encounters, and in the culture they generate — on pages and screens, in workplaces and social media feeds. We are, however, a metaphor-loving society. The present moment demonstrates that. Covid-19 is a virus that we discuss in terms of war; racism is a form of human conflict that we discuss in terms of virology and toxicology. 

When words fail, sometimes our ideas are at fault. It is an opportunity to find better ones. Better deeds, too. And better friends.

This brings me back to the BBC. (At last)  Can antisemitism be seen in terms of war? Is it something nasty and pervasive to be rooted out? Is it a virus that someday a vaccine to prevent it or a treatment to cure it can be found?  Or is it deeply embedded in our reservoir of memes and tropes, and (unlike any other form of racism) for the BBC simply a matter of political choice? 

Epidemiologist wars

Epidemiologist wars

I still believe it’s far ‘too soon’ in the coronavirus journey to prepare end-of-year accounts’, and as far as I’m concerned the fat lady hasn’t even opened the score yet.

Since Boris’s current strategy relies on 100% cooperation, near as dammit, I’m still in favour of giving Lockdown a chance.  I wouldn’t go as far as to invite Nick Hornby to cross-post this BBC-related article: "BBC should be 'untouchable' after coronavirus"   but hey, a balanced view is better value than an echo-chamber. 

A wide debate on the pros and cons of the way the government has handled Coronavirus, as well as the media coverage of it, is just what the doctor ordered.

I‘ve listened to the Swedish strategy, (which is not nearly as far removed from ours as it’s cracked up to be) and I’ve listened to Neil Ferguson and professor Johan Giesecke and their detractors and heard Boris’s plea to hang on in there.  Neil Ferguson is not a personality you’d immediately warm to. He does a funny thing with his jaw. He’s been wrong before - but haven’t we all? The Swedish death toll is rising.  Freddie Sayers thrashes it all out here in Unheard. 

“Are you more Giesecke or Ferguson? The expert that most resonates is unlikely to be entirely down to your assessment of the science — more likely a complex combination of your politics, your own life experience, your attitude to risk and mortality and your relationship to authority. Perhaps each of us have elements of both instinct within us — but what do they really represent?”