Control of the mics

This is quite something. Victoria Derbyshire was interviewing a Conservative MP [Miriam Cates, MP  for Penistone and Stockbridge] and every time Victoria Derbyshire interrupted her the BBC faded out and cut off the MP's microphone. The MP was left talking away unheard as Vic D had her say at length, again and again. Ms Cates was forcibly silenced by technology 9 times. I've counting Vic D's 'talking time' and she talked for 37.8% of the entire interview. Many left-wingers on Twitter were delighted:

 

An absolutely glorious masterclass in how a journalist should hold a Government accountable for its lies & broken promises by @vicderbyshire

Absolutely superb #liarsandcharlatons
pic.twitter.com/O9Ce6eVUH9

— Peter Stefanovic (@PeterStefanovi2) November 18, 2021

Others disagree:

BBC Waste: Is it now BBC policy to cut the mic on guests, Jess Brammar? This is a very slippery slope and ill-advised.

It's an interesting question as to whether Jess Brammar - the controversial new head of the BBC's news channels - was behind this. 

I've seen interviewers faded down but never anything so systematic before.

Echoes

As mentioned a couple of posts ago, I'm so grateful to you all for pointing out the BBC lowlights this week on the open thread. It's keeping the ITBB archive going. 

And the BBC have had quite a week of lowlights.

I

The Great Gambo being interviewed by Victoria Derbyshire was certainly quite something. 

In my teenage years back in the 1980s, Paul Gambaccini was one of my heroes. His Radio One Saturday afternoon US chart show was something I never missed. 

Or hardly ever. And as I was in my early teens at the time and charts-obsessed, and would always be listening to it with my cassette recorder at the ready to catch every new entry on the UK and US charts, I could get quite ratty if Mum and Dad ever made me miss it. I remember going into a particularly huge 14-year old sulk on being taken off to see my gran in Kendal [Cumbrian home of the famous mint cake] one Saturday afternoon and missing the latest US Top 30 countdown from Mr G.

So I've always had a big soft spot for him. And he's always been the broadcasting pro's broadcasting pro. And I'm so glad he's come through all the horrors of hideous false allegations, and that he's now come out fighting, and is seeking redress. I wish him well.

It is intriguing though that he says he'll be coming for the BBC too one day for aiding and abetting such injustices because he does still work for the BBC. I only hope the BBC remember they still have a 'duty of care' towards him, consider their role in reporting [or mis-reporting] these stories, stick by him and avoid the pettiness that the BBC can often sink to when they feel threatened.

II

I'm not one for late nights, but even I stayed up to watch wonderful Emma Raducanu triumph in the tennis. 

She's so much more likeable a UK champion than Andy Murray, and everyone seems to be celebrating her today.

It's probably just a Twitter thing that the usual suspects have been scoring political points though. It's like an obsessive compulsion. 

I've at least left it a few hours before doing something similar and pointing out that Gary Lineker has been busy on Twitter scoring political points over Emma's victory, racialising her achievements and pushing pro-immigration, anti-government comments, and reinforcing crude ad hom attacks on Nigel Farage [with apologies for quoting the attack on Nigel that Gary joined in with, ''the nasty little turd'']. 

I've lost track of Gary's tweeting over recent months [not that I've ever paid much attention to him on Twitter], but to see him in full flow today has reminded me why he's so controversial as far as BBC impartiality goes. He remains very opinionated and politically-focused, and shouldn't have joined in that nasty attack on Nigel Farage. 

Anyhow, it was a triumph for Channel 4 too, ''humiliating'' the BBC by getting the rights to broadcast Emma's match. I hope everyone was watching that rather than Match of the Day. It's something sporting that will be remembered for a very long time. 

Update. And, being the BBC, here we go with the signalling retweets:

Why doesn't Sopes get back to reporting the lying, incompetent Biden administration? He should be rushed off his feet at the moment.

III

As Charlie noted, the BBC's first LBGT Correspondent Ben Hunte's short career at the BBC is ending. 

John Humphrys, on leaving the BBC, specifically named and shamed him for being a new breed of activist compromising BBC journalism. 

And Ben soon landed the BBC in trouble, with an impartiality-busting piece on transgender matters that saw complaints galore, and correction after correction, and BBC clarifications, and ECU rulings against it over endless months. 

He then seemed to have been sent off to Africa for months to do special reports. 

And now he's off to Vice. 

IV

I'd urge any passers-by to click on the following link to another comment on the Open Thread. LINK. 

I've read the thread and it looks like a particularly bad case of the BBC spreading disinformation by failing to check the facts. Please see what you think. 

V

The whole BBC 'allyship' thing may make your jaw drop for not being satire. But it's another bizarre sign of where we are. I'll quote Charlie's accurate summary:

Reported in The Telegraph tonight. You couldn’t make it up! BBC staff have been offered an “allyship” test which identifies whether they are more privileged than their colleagues, as part of diversity training. The manual also sets out seven types of allies that staff can become in the workplace. One of them, the “upstander”, is someone who “shuts down, reports and pushes back on offensive jokes and inappropriate comments, even if no one’s hurt by them”. This type of ally should “check in privately with anyone who’s been offended” by the joke and “don’t just be a bystander”. Another ally type is a “champion”, who “voluntarily defers to colleagues from underrepresented groups in meetings, events and conferences”. Voluntarily deferring to underrepresented groups - the BBC do this already anyway.

In tackling this kind of nonsense, the BBC is a big part of the problem. They aren't just buying the Emperor's new clothes, they're selling them on too.

Double Standards

Tim Montgomerie makes the obvious point: 

Every word of this Tweet is true but did Victoria Derbyshire tweet “left-wing thugs attack police” last week? A BBC journalist needs to be consistent and needs to be seen to be consistent.

Distanced!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Keir Me Out pic.twitter.com/5ncHqfYmBC

— Meggie Foster (@meggiefoster) May 25, 2020

Try this instead.

Another petition

Cancelled

The Daily Mail reports that a petition to save Victoria Derbyshire's dreary TV show has now topped the 12,000 mark. Over a million people signed the 2015 petition for the BBC to reinstate Jeremy Clarkson, and that got nowhere. This has a long way to go to reach that level of public interest. 

...(which I first learned about in yesterday’s Times)

Victoria Derbyshire tweets:

Absolutely devastated at the plan to end our programme (which I first learned about in yesterday’s Times). I’m unbelievably proud of what our team and our show have achieved in under 5 years, breaking tonnes of original stories (which we were asked to do); attracting a working class, young, diverse audience that BBC radio & TV news progs just don’t reach (which we were asked to do); & smashing the digital figures (which we were asked to do). I’m gutted particularly for our brilliant, young, ambitious, talented team - love ‘em. And for all those people we gave a voice to. Love them too.

BBC; enabler.

Various alerts and spoilers pinged into my devices last evening (probably generated by ‘cookies’ and algorithms I’ve inadvertently racked up), so by the time I saw Rabbi Mirvis’s actual letter in the actual Times I already knew what was in it.

Let’s liken the fallout from the Enough is Enough demo to the mini-eruption of a volcano that has been rumbling away for years.

The letter from one mild-mannered grandpa to a different kind of grandpa at such a sensitive time has caused another eruption, the fallout from which is yet to unfold.

The fact that such a mild-mannered grandpa (Chief Rabbis traditionally steer clear of political interventions) felt compelled to speak out in this way has certainly caused a stir.

Craig has spotted a difference between the BBC’s and Sky’s reporting, but I couldn’t face picking either one apart this morning. There might be more on this topic later.

I glimpsed a snippet of Victoria Derbyshire sitting beside a female representative of the Muslim Council of Britain. On the studio monitor, a large talking-head shot of the editor of the Jewish Telegraph, Paul Harris, was ‘explaining’ the Chief rabbi’s concerns. When he’d finished, Ms Derbyshire questioned the headscarf sympathetically about Islamophobia in the Conservative Party.

That more or less sums it up.

The BBC is a kind of enabler.  It’s all very well getting Nick Robinson to grill poor old Alf Dubs, but all that will do is hand (unsound) ammunition to the Labour Party’s many apologists and the ignoramuses in Momentum. This merely skirts around the problem and pays lip service to a bit of gossipy news that they see as ‘nowt to do with us’.

As well as the disingenuous conflation of antisemitism (racism) with a rational (non-phobic) anxiety about a disturbingly hostile religious ideology, we have the willful misrepresentation of all things to do with Israel. The giant woolly mammoth in the room.

Antisemitism is a poison. (So is Islamophobia)

Unfortunately, Blogger wouldn't let me embed the clip above from the BBC's report.  (They offer the code, but it doesn't work!)

If the BBC could somehow magic away all the errors and omission of the past 70 years that would clear up much of the mess. Failing that impossible and completely unachievable ask, a more realistic demand would be - at least to try, somehow - to mitigate the damage. I have no idea how. Maybe start modestly by showing some gripping Israeli-made drama on the scandi noir channel. 

Yes, there are still pockets of traditional right-wing antisemitism around - the foreign office is riddled with it so I’m told, but it’s high time everyone acknowledged the hatred of Jews within the Islamic world, including Britain’s Muslim communities. Instead of airbrushing it out in its painful, politically correct, subservient, Islamophillic fashion, the BBC could promote “Muslims against antisemitism” groups. 

Has the Muslim woman who stood up to the man on the tube been on the VD show yet? Isn’t that’s the kind of story VD usually wallows in? I can picture her with her head tilted, sympathetically ‘listening’. I'm not knocking it by the way. The opposite. Asma Shuweikh was brave and she acted honourably. 

Ambushing the Tory

Why has the BBC reignited Ken Loach? He peaked in 1966 with Cathy Come Home. Please just let the hard-left misery-monger lie. Following his appearance on Question Time where Fiona Bruce interrupted the Conservative remorselessly while allowing the Labour chap to drone on and on in the dullest imaginable manner, Ken Loach recounted a rambling anecdote to show how nasty the nasty party is. Enough, one might have thought. But no.  

Monday’s (or maybe Tuesday's) Victoria Derbyshire show featured a sorry tale about “unsecured” tenants in Barnet living in damp, cockroach-infested flats. The information that this particular block is soon to be demolished to make way for a new, mixed-tenancy (private and social housing) development was alluded to, but only in the derogatory and dismissive context that the new housing will be (probably) ‘unaffordable”.

I’m not 100% au fait with tenancy rules and regs, and I certainly wouldn’t like to live amongst vermin and mould; but for the sake of both the tenants and the taxpayers the issue deserved to be treated in an unbiased manner and not as part of the BBC’s covert and overt campaigning for Labour. 

An ex-councillor, apparently the only Conservative spokesperson willing to come on the programme, was duly ambushed by the startled-looking tenant whose cockroaches had featured in the film, a shrill, aggressive Ms Derbyshire and Ken Loach. 

It seems that no other Conservative accepted the BBC’s the invitation to appear on the programme, for obvious reasons, which were sadly noted by the hapless Tory. No wonder people are declining these invitations. They have to weigh up the negative implications of refusal. Which looks worse. a) appearing evasive, or b) being stymied by a scripted assault framed as ‘when did you stop beating your wife?’ 

Watch this exchange:

Victoria: Mr Coleman, why are you so unsympathetic? Aren’t you a human being?

Former councillor Brian Coleman claims our filming of poor living conditions in north London flats is a ‘stitch up’https://t.co/UoDAu8mHy8 pic.twitter.com/n0gxQA7SVa

— Victoria Derbyshire (@VictoriaLIVE) October 29, 2019

Well, Is Labour Antisemitic?

As ITBB’s resident antisemitism geek it’s a matter of duty for me to discuss the John Ware Panorama. 

The problem is where to start. A difficulty that constantly dogs my blogging life is the question of background; how much to include and how much to leave out.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, how can you make sense of what I write? Lacking the ability to summarise complicated and nuanced history succinctly yet fully, I’m left with a choice between laboriously reiterating material that becomes more meaningless with each repetition or just skipping it and assuming that it’s a simple matter of ‘any fule kno'.

For similar reasons, I found some of John Ware’s examples of antisemitism from Labour Party members rather tedious. The Ken Livingstone - John Mann shouty contretemps on the stairs, that mural, etc, seemed like a blast from the past. How many more times do we have to sit through that?

But I suppose they had to be in there to substantiate the existence of the antisemitism in question. (Even so, on the ‘day after the night-before’ edition of the Victoria Derbyshire show it was clear that denial of substantive evidence of antisemitism still thrives in Corbynista land.) 

“All one needs to do,” asserted audience member Salma Karmi-Ayyoub “Is to make an allegation of antisemitism, which then becomes the truth” she opined. And Ms Karmi-Aayyoub has apparently seen no compelling evidence of antisemitism whatsoever.  Yet we’re supposed to believe she watched the programme. 

As far as that viewer and her ilk are concerned Panorama needn’t have included evidence in the shape of Ken and his absurd interpretation of the Havaara agreement and his obsession with Hitler, or heard about the more recent activities of the NCC and various heavy-handed and autocratic individuals - or even the verbal insults and abuse of staff trying to do their jobs, because people see and hear only what they want to see and hear. The antisemitism evaporates into the air like a mist of particles from an aerosol can.

The revelations of the greatest significance in John Ware’s programme concerned interference with the disciplinary process and the testimony of young, ‘disaffected’ Labour members, which was riveting in terms of ‘televisual’ impact and for its political significance. The NDA hypocrisy, too.

(How strange that the media hasn’t yet managed to lure Seumas Milne into the studio for a good grilling. Alistair Campbell and Peter Mandelson were never off our screens back then. Why so shy?)

 Throughout this programme, and even more so throughout the subsequent forum within the Victoria Derbyshire programme - there was a gigantic mammoth squatting menacingly in the room. So massive that one dare not speak its name.

Victoria Derbyshire kept trying  to trip people up by asking “When did this institutional antisemitism arise and why?” ‘Where does it come from?” She was virtually begging for someone to commit ‘Islamophobia’, whilst the participants, panel and audience, stubbornly refused to do so. 

She asked the same thing over and over again, but they all kept schtum. But how can you, now that any negativity about of Islam is off limits? How mischievous of Ms Derbyshire to try that on.

The other elephantine but invisible presence in the room is this thing about Israel. The default position, thanks to years of partial reporting which keeps the majority of concerned citizens in a state of ignorance of 90% of the aggression directed at Israel, is that one has to state one’s abhorrence of “What Israel is doing to the Palestinians” before throwing in one’s twopence-worth of opinion on antisemitism. It’s related to the ‘bad Jew’ syndrome where the only good Jew is an anti-Zionist 

At one point in the programme, an audience member announced that he was a Palestinian whose people were ‘ethnically cleansed’ on the establishment of Israel. Predictably, Victoria Derbyshire let that pass unchallenged.

This post has turned out to be more concerned with Victoria Derbyshire’s de-briefing of the Panorama than the Panorama itself. That’s the way these things go. 

I must say that I’m not one of those who dismiss Ash Sarkar as stupid. She’s obviously sharp and bright, but her ideological principles force her to defend the indefensible. She and Owen Jones are passionately opposed to racism (they’ve been fighting it all their lives, you know) and their dogged anti-racism compels them to ignore the racism that emanates from the ‘race’ of people they’re so focused on protecting.  You can’t oppose antisemitism properly if you’re blind to the primary perpetrators of it.

I will also add onto the tail of this post that over on Harry’s Place Sarah AB has effectively equated Islamophobia with antisemitism.  I doubt that she reads this blog these days, but just in case, Sarah! No! You’re better than that.

"I'm asking the questions"

I'm a bit late in the day in posting this because I don't watch the VD show, but what is going on at the BBC? Their tactics are becoming more and more pathetic. Reading out people's tweets? Whatever next?
(Answers on a postcard addressed to the leader of HM's Loyal Opposition)

I see the BBC has selected the very worst bit of the 'interview' to crow over. Frankie Boyle, anyone?

From all walks of life (as the BBC sees life)

I rather liked Guido Fawkes's recent characterisation of the Victoria Derbyshire show as wall-to-wall "nurses pay and preferred pronouns", and it certainly lived up to that reputation today. 

This was how Victoria Derbyshire herself introduced the International Women's Day segment of the programme this morning:

Happy International Women's Day! Its goal is to achieve gender equality for all - at school, in our health service, in our workplaces, our home life and so. What's it like to be a woman in Britain in 2018? What's it like to be a girl in Britain in 2018? We've gathered nine women and girls from all walks of life to answer that question. Let me introduce you to Yewande Akinola, who has worked in construction for 11 years. Sam Spence, a health visitor for the NHS. Victoria Usher, she runs a global PR agency whose board is made up two-thirds women, most of them working mums. Charlotte Usher is Victoria's 11 year-old-daughter. Marchu Girma arrived to the UK as a refugee and now helps other female refugees. Sharon Spice, an actor and playwright who says she was once paid less than a white woman to do the same job. Michelle Russell says she appreciates women more than ever after she was recently involved in a sexual harassment case at work. She's here with her 15-year-old daughter, Esme. And Hayley Smith, who says International Women's day inspired her to set up a campaign to make sanitary products free for homeless women. 

If these women represent "all walks of life" in Britain today then I'm a monkey's aunt! 

Incidentally, if the VD show wanted nine females to represent Britain in 2018 they could have invited along our present head of state (HM the Queen) , our present prime minister (Theresa May), our present home secretary (Amber Rudd), the present first minister of Scotland (Nicola Sturgeon), the present director-general of the CBI (Carolyn Fairbairn), the present general secretary of the TUC (Frances O'Grady), the present commissioner of the Metropolitan Police (Cressida Dick), the present chair of the London Ambulance Service (Heather Lawrence) and the present commissioner of the London Fire Service (Dany Cotton). 

Happy International Women's Day! 

Complaints and Clarifications

The BBC's listen-known-about Complaints and Clarifications page has been very quiet recently, so much so that I suspected they'd chosen to abandon making their findings public. Then suddenly, this past week, came a small rush of rulings.

Here's one of them that you may have missed:

Victoria Derbyshire, BBC Two & BBC News Channel, 6 June 2016

A viewer complained that, during a debate on the issues in the referendum campaign, Victoria Derbyshire had misleadingly suggested that reallocating the UK’s net contribution to the EU budget to other areas such as the NHS would have a severe impact on farm subsidies.

Challenging a point made by Jane Collins MEP, Victoria Derbyshire said “if that £8.5bn went to the NHS, that would mean farmers who get more than 50% of their income from the EU would be decimated”.

This reflected a confusion between the UK’s net contribution (of £8.5bn after payments from the EU to the UK, including agricultural subsidies, have been taken into account) and its gross contribution. 

Although Ms Collins tried to rebut the suggestion, she did not do so in terms which would have removed the misleading impression.

The complaint was upheld and the relevant information was drawn to the presenter’s attention after the broadcast, and will be borne in mind when the programme returns to the subject.

And here's another story you might have missed, as reported in The Catholic Herald...

The BBC's editorial complaints unit has ruled against BBC One's News at Six for a July report that stated “Silence was the response of the Catholic Church when Nazi Germany demonised Jewish people and then attempted to eradicate Jews from Europe.” 

The ECU called that "unfair", saying that the BBC's reporter “did not give due weight to public statements by successive popes or the efforts made on the instructions of Pius XII to rescue Jews from Nazi persecution, and perpetuated a view which is at odds with the balance of evidence.”

It resulted from a complaint from cross-bench peer Lord Alton of Liverpool and Fr Leo Chamberlain, the former headmaster of Ampleforth. 

The complaint took "nearly six months" to resolve, says The Catholic Herald (though as the report went out on 29th July and the Herald reported this on 9th December it might have been more accurate to say 'over four months'). 

Not a nice man

It still surprises me that Facebook is ram-packed with otherwise nice sensible  people saying what a good chap Jeremy Corbyn is. 

Don’t they know?

The trouble is that even if they do know, it doesn’t seem to make any difference. It must be some kind of syndrome. An epidemic. A cult.

Are we really in the middle of a slow-motion re-enactment of Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America?

Jeremy Corbyn is no Charles Lindbergh, but some people see him as an anti-establishment hero, worthy of their undying devotion.

I know that a few hundred thousand followers is but a drop in the ocean, but one mustn’t be complacent. Is the unthinkable absolutely unthinkable? 

I can’t bring myself to criticise the BBC for sometimes letting its disapproval of Corbyn show through its veneer of impartiality, even for the sake of my own personal veneer of impartiality.

Yes, I do realise that’s playing straight into the hands of those who accuse me/us thus:  ”You don’t want an unbiased BBC at all. You want it biased your way.” Yes. I admit it. In this particular case, I’m in your hands; be gentle.

The BBC actually had Ruth Smeeth on the Victoria Derbyshire programme on Friday morning. She’s been receiving thousands of vile antisemitic tweets, and all Jeremy Corbyn can do is simply drone “There’s no room for racism in the Labour Party,” probably with a little intake of breath in between ‘for’ and ‘racism’.

Harriet Harman condemned him for not acting decisively. As leader he should take full responsibility and do something about it, she opined. Mind you, she was lobbying for Owen Smith at the time.

This is what a Corbynista spokesman said:

"Jeremy has consistently spoken out against all forms of anti-Semitism and has contacted Ruth Smeeth to express his outrage at the abuse and threats directed against her. 

"Jeremy condemns all abuse, and no one responsible for it is a genuine supporter of Jeremy's. He has repeatedly called for a kinder, gentler politics. 

"This is why he launched Respect and Unity, a code of conduct calling on all Labour members and supporters to conduct themselves with a high standard of behaviour. Evidence of threats and abuse should be reported to the party and police so that action may be taken against those responsible.”

There you are! Sorted. But not really. Over at Harry’s Place, ATL poster habibi has provided yet more examples from the bottomless pit of Corbyn’s treachery.  This has been picked up and reTweeted by JK Rowling. 

JK Rowling is a popular author (I hear.) She might be able to influence those oh so nice people (probably not including Corbynista Daniel Radcliffe) who are dithering over how deep their loyalty to The Jeremy needs to be. Having grown up with the Guardian  - grown up is perhaps the wrong term - where the Seumas Milne worldview reigns supreme, enlightening these hard-core Facebook Corbynistas will be a challenge, even for JK Rowling.

The Times (£) has a piece about The Jeremy’s appearances on Press TV

I used Iran TV role to promote human rights, insists Corbyn 

  

Who’s tittering? He was addressing the issues of human rights (in Iran)  - a somewhat fanciful explanation since three men were executed for being gay during the time of his appearances. (‘Issues’ is The Jeremy’s top word, which he pronounces with extra hissing; vague and getting more meaningless with every utterance.)

 “Footage of Mr Corbyn’s appearances show him failing to question contributors for calling the BBC “Zionist liars” and describing Israel as a “disease”. Organisations such as the Anti-Defamatory League have accused Press TV of providing a platform for figures to expound antisemitic conspiracy theories about the media, finance and 9/11.”

The upshot is that the more we see and hear about The Jeremy the easier it is to see that he is not at all the ‘very nice man’ that one hell of a lot of Labour MPs  seem to think he is. Or are they only pretending they think so and are using it as a kind of apologia - as a preamble to declaring a preference for Owen Smith or anyone-but-Corbyn?

Remind me again why I don’t tweet. Actually, no, don’t bother.

This appeared on Twitter. It’s an example of the abuse that Ruth Smeeth has received. (Why does this deranged person even feel that way?) Is that much less abusive than tweets that have attracted jail sentences?  

Corbyn supporters need to be told. They need to know what they’re voting for. The BBC has a duty to educate and inform as well as entertain, even if doing so necessitates making quite a lot of indirect value judgements. Letting Ruth Smeeth have her say on TV is a start, but it’s the tip of the iceberg. 

Can the tip of an iceberg also be the thin edge of a wedge?  I hope so.

Footnote: I tried to embed Harriet, but the dashboard initially refused to accept it. Now it has suddenly appeared  as if by magic, at the end of this piece rather than in the relevant place. Please forgive. 

Islam for dummies

Polls are in the news. Has anyone conducted a poll to assess the general public’s perception of Islam?

One problem is how to broach the matter delicately without antagonising the man on the multicultural omnibus.

My poll would be designed to find out how much people know about current issues, and what they think about them; Islam, the Arab world, immigration, Israel and antisemitism. I’d also need to ask where they learn about politics and current affairs.  I’d have one box saying ‘BBC’ and another saying ‘other.’

I don’t have a Facebook account myself, but I have access to one, and I’m taken aback by the inexhaustible torrents of pro Jeremy Corbyn posts that keep appearing in front of me. More and more and still more. Am I hallucinating already?

Are all those star-struck fools really oblivious to Corbyn’s affiliations with radical Islamists and antisemites? Love is blind; even if they were aware of something nasty in the woodshed they’d play it down or they wouldn’t even care. 

One obvious piece of advice to myself. Don’t go on Facebook. Don’t look.

If they choose to advertise their ignorance, who cares?  Am I bothered about those who ‘don’t know much’ about world politics, but ‘know what they like’? Should I care or just go ‘so what?’ 

When questioned, Dara O’Briain explained why he never makes jokes about Islam. The main reason, (apart from the obvious) was that he doesn’t think the public knows much about the subject, other than that  Muslims pray five times a day. He felt, quite rightly, that in order to be funny, a joke must be based on a fundamental truth, and if no-one knows enough about Islam to recognise truth, they won’t get the joke.

I think he may be right. Having just watched a Tommy Robinson video in which he also expresses concerns at the public’s ignorance of what Islam actually is, I think it’s fair to say that universal ignorance is a pretty well substantiated fact.  So - how come? How can it be that no-one knows much about Islam?  It’s topical. More than topical.

If public figures don’t really know what they’re talking about maybe they should just shut up. 

Rod Liddle is having a laugh at this issue over at the Spectator.

“.... the renowned Quranic scholar David Cameron” he writes. That’s heavy sarcasm, in case you didn’t recognise the joke.

Where’s the BBC? We employ the BBC to inform and educate us. We pay for this. Give us our money’s worth! 

One would think that in the current circumstances the BBC would fully enlighten the audience so that they can make up their own minds about what’s racist, what’s phobic and what’s incompatible with British values.  

This needn’t violate the BBC’s controversial edict that prohibits BBC reporters and journalists from making and airing value judgments. So don’t. Simply equip the people to make them for themselves.

As it is, the BBC seems to be doing their utmost not to do so. Instead they do everything possible to muddy the waters, particularly by overlooking some of Islam’s most outrageous cultural and religious practices, supposedly to maintain social cohesion. I think that bus has already left.

 “It may well be that when you first heard of the barbarous Islamist atrocities in Paris you thought: ‘My God. My God. How could they do that? At least now maybe the scales will fall from some eyes and we will tackle the problem head on.’ And then, like me, having thought this, you will have watched a BBC news programme and very quickly realised — nope, not a chance, business as usual. The same delusional rubbish, the same gerrymandering of public opinion, the same absurdities.”

Says Rod. Yep. That’s the BBC. 

A French reader pointed me to a video of Nabila Ramdani being interviewed sympathetically by Victoria Derbyshire following the terrorist attack in Paris. The entire interview was conducted on the topsy turvy terms of the (hypothetical) imminent anti-Muslim backlash.

  

Nabila decided to tell Ms Derbyshire that Muslim children in France who had refused to observe a minute’s silence for the victims had been taken to the police.  Our reader said this was false, and I failed to find any evidence of such a thing on the internet. Please correct me if I’m wrong. Until then I’ll assume it didn’t happen. 

Making a potentially inflammatory allegation could have been deliberately  designed to ‘anger the Muslims’. Was Ramdani deliberately setting out to engender a backlash? Why? What is she up to?

Why was Victoria Derbyshire interviewing a distinctly antisemitic Islam apologist in the first place? I wonder if Victoria Derbyshire knows much about Islam. Has she read the koran? Has she heard the rantings of radical preachers whose videos are all over the internet? Has she seen the opinion polls? She probably just dismisses uncomfortable facts as Islamophobic smears.  We can see where Victoria’s sympathy lies. With the lies. 

Rod Liddle refers to a ‘French Algerian’ woman who told Kirsty Wark that the attacks could have been by rival drug gangs’ I assume this was Nabila’s expert contribution to our enlightenment before she thought of plan B. The backlash schtick. 

If Victoria Derbyshire wasn’t savvy enough to apply a healthy dose of skepticism to exaggerated Muslim grievance-mongering, was the BBC acting responsibly in handing the topic over to her? Andrew Neil might have approached Ramdani’s imaginative testimony with suspicion and might even have raised an eyebrow. 

The casual viewer is so anxious not to be thought racist that he tends to soak up lies and propaganda as long as he seems tolerant and right on as he does so.

We can’t be sure how much of the BBC’s sheer disinformation is responsible for the current political situation but if politicians insist that it’s ISIS alone that’s evil, and that it’s solely Isis, not Islam itself, that means us harm, then it’s high time the public were given a fuller picture.  Why did al-Qaeda instigate 9/11? Are Al Shebab and Boko Haram  peaceful? Are they all nothing to do with Islam?

Rod has also noticed. 

“Meanwhile, the Home Secretary was telling us that the terrorists represent a ‘perverted’ form of Islam. Hmm. The same perverted form of the religion as practised by Abdul’s home country, Saudi Arabia? Or in Iran, or Libya, or Palestine, or Somalia, or . . . the list of countries which kill apostates, persecute Christians, Jews, homosexuals and women is longish, you have to say. We must grasp that the proportion of Muslims worldwide who hold this ‘perverted’ view is far, far, higher than Mrs May or the BBC would like you to think. Some 27 per cent of British Muslims, for example, expressed sympathy with the Charlie Hebdo murderers. This week it was reported that one in five British Muslims sympathises with Islamic State fighters. That is a number which is, as John Major might put it, not inconsiderable.”

I note that Rod has come round to the opinion that the conflict in ‘Palestine’ might have something to do with Islam. Long time coming, but hopefully worth waiting for.  

If the BBC did its job properly we could tell our MPs how we feel, robustly reminding them that their job is to represent us. That is instead of being expected to to believe, despite all evidence to the contrary, that Islam is the religion of peace. Rod again:

“I stared at the screen, mouth agape, unable for a while to believe what I was hearing. A whole programme about the Paris attacks in which three words — Muslim, Islam, jihadi — were not used at any point. The desperation to exculpate the ideology was present long before the bodies had been carried away. Then, when it was revealed that some attackers had entered the country as refugees, the Today programme had a fair, balanced and unpartisan debate between three people who agreed that we should take more refugees, because getting tough is ‘what they (the nasty terrorists) want us to do’”

I find assertions that we mustn’t do this, that or the other - because it’s “what the terrorists want” deeply irritating. Usually it’s said in defiance: “We refuse to alter our normal behaviour, because altering our normal behaviour is what the terrorists want.” No they don’t;  they want us to keep repeating our normal behaviour so that we keep on being sitting ducks. They don’t want us to take precautions because they want to kill us.  Where’s the logic in deliberately being an easy target?  

I’d put a question about that in my poll.  What do you think the terrorists want? I could send the questionnaire to Victoria Derbyshire but I doubt she’d bother to tick my boxes.

Tactical and defensive

Some of us are forced to vote defensively. No one party has sounded convincing. They’ve all wasted too much energy making far-fetched accusations against their opponent and making vague unrealistic promises about what they’ll do if elected without revealing too many secrets as to how they’re going to go about it.

We can’t vote because we truly admire any party, only out of fear of another one gaining power. We have to vote tactically, plumping for the least bad in the hope of keeping out the badest. I’m beginning to sound like Nicola Sturgeon now. She wants to ‘lock the Tories out of No 10.’ I want to lock the anti-austerities, the unilateral nuclear disarmamenters and the apologists for Islam out. Oot.  

I don’t trust any of them to do that elusive thing they always say they've already done or are just about to do. The Right Thing.  According to who, is what I want to know. Or ‘whom’.

Many of the BBC’s critics say that the only decent, right thinking man left standing at the BBC is Andrew Neil. I agree that he’s sharp, occasionally entertaining and not blatantly batting for the left, like his colleagues.

However, I happened to see him having a go at the Bow Group’s Ben Harris-Quinney the other day (or was it this morning) and I was a bit taken aback.

Mr H-Q has advised people to vote tactically, and if necessary vote UKip. 

Well, sacrilege! A Conservative telling people not to vote Conservative! 

Andrew Neil had a really vicious go at Mr. H-Q., accusing him of being variously: a Walter Mitty character, a fantasist, an impostor, a nobody and, if I may say so, all-round bad egg.   ;-)  It built up to a crescendo, and by the end he couldn’t get a word in edgeways.

   

Michael Heseltine was in the studio, looking on. I think even he was shocked, but it’s a bit hard to tell with Michael Heseltine. He sat there with a particularly expressionless face until he was asked to opine. 

“You destroyed him” was the verdict. “He is of no account”

My point is this. (and I don’t know the history apart from what emerged from the grilling) If Mr. H-Q is indeed such a nobody, an impostor, not a proper Conservative and  first class nonentity, why did they go to the trouble of getting him on the TV to undergo all that exposure and ridicule in the first place?

 But I haven’t even finished. A couple of minutes later another guest appeared on the screen. This guest was getting a gentle, wheedling questioning; being humoured and treated with reverence. 

Who might that guest have been? Why,  the supposedly great orator George Galloway. The obnoxious, pompous, self-serving, overrated personage who allegedly used parliamentary funds to send his parliamentary secretary out to buy his underpants. 

Andrew Neil has blotted his copybook as far as I’m concerned.

Another bad sight this morning was a kind of mash-up from that unpopular lightweight morning show hosted by Victoria Derbyshire. It looked like one of those ‘best bits’ films with which they console the “You’re Fired” candidates on The Apprentice.

Victoria Derbyshire is not easy on the eye; a politically incorrect, un-feminist thing to say, I know. Her best bits, if that’s what they were, were not impressive. Watching her would have to be tactical. Like, you’re at home, nothing much to do but watch TV, and the only other option is Sky, BBC One, Al Jazeera or Dave. 

You might be forced to watch Victoria Derbyshire interrogating a hapless UKipper and pretending to be a barrister in the style of Jeremy Paxman on a bad day, but doing so would be purely tactical and defensive.

Chris Huhne, climate change, toddler victims of the government's benefit reforms, Kim so-fat and Alex Salmond (not at all fat) & the EU

Despite my pledge to let it fester...

Last night's Newsnight, presented by Radio 5 Live's Victoria Derbyshire, opened (as it ought to have done) with the subject of the floods.

The introductory seconds of the programme, however, included a clip of disgraced Lib Dem ex-minister Chris Huhne denouncing right-wing 'climate sceptics' in the Tory Party (in his capacity as a Newsnight 'talking head'.)

[Chris Huhne was, you may remember, released only last year after being sent to prison for perverting the course of justice and, from the moment of his release, Newsnight has been at the forefront of the BBC's attempts to rehabilitate him back into the community (along with the Guardian.)]

Curiously his attack stood unattacked, as no right of response from those right-wing Tories was granted in the course of Laura Kuenssberg's subsequent report on the issue (and, yes, Laura has now finally arrived back on the BBC). 

Curious indeed.

The other 'talking head' in Laura's report was another Laura - Laura Sandys MP, one of the leading 'greens' in the Conservative Party (retiring in 2015), who expressed further criticism of 'climate sceptics'. 

So far, so BBC. 

(If you're of the Steve Jones persuasion, that's good; if you're of the Bishop Hill persuasion, that's bad).

The following Victoria Derbyshire interview did, however, balance a 'climate sceptic' with a 'climate non-sceptic'. 

We heard from Kevin Anderson of Manchester University, who Vicky introduced as a "professor of energy and climate change", and from Andrew Montford, who Vicky introduced as an "author". 

Hmm, so Kevin Anderson is an expert and Andrew Montford merely an author, eh? 

My 'bias by authority' antennae began twitching slightly at that point. 

They twitched even more when, after asking Prof. Anderson a couple of questions, Victoria turning to Mr. Montford (aka Bishop Hill) and began her first question to him with the words:

Andrew Montford, you're not a scientist, you have been writing sceptically about this for a while now

which seems to me to have been a less-than-subtle attempt to paint him as a non-expert in the field - as opposed to the scientist (expert) Prof. Anderson. 

Andrew Montford, however, responded - as if in passing - that "Kevin isn't a scientist either. He's an engineer", and Kevin didn't demur from that statement either. (His subject really is Engineering.)

Still, despite Vicky's question's seeming (at several points) to urge Kevin Anderson on, both guests got to make their points. 

Now, if you believe that 'climate sceptics' are no more deserving of either airtime or respect than flat-earthers, deniers of the germ theory of medicine, creationists or moon-landing 'debunkers', then you'll probably find this kind of blatant bias acceptable, maybe even right and proper. 

Next up came a one-sided report about people adversely hit by the government's benefit reforms. 

It was undoubtedly one-sided in that everyone was (in some way) 'aggrieved' about the reforms. We heard from a charity leader, and from two benefit claimants who have had their benefits 'sanctioned', for various reasons. Everyone of them was feeling down.

The background music chosen told us to feel anxious too, and the sorry-sounding plight of the two hard-hit benefit recipients was presented without counter-balance. (I could almost hear Iain Duncan Smith fuming about BBC bias as the report preceded.)

Still, if people who deserve our sympathy are being adversely hit by the government's benefit reforms, then such cases should be brought to our attention...

...and a supporter of the government should immediately be invited on to put the other side - the case for the defence.

Such a government supporter was indeed then summoned for interview by Newsnight - namely, Conservative MP Nadhim Zahawi. 

However, he was put up against a further critic, Labour MP Debbie Abrahams. (Quite why she was needed after such a one-sided report may be questioned).

Still, things could still balance out if Mr Zahawi was treated fairly and allowed to put the other side of the argument without too much interruption. 

That didn't really happen though. Debbie Abrahams was given a gentle devil's advocate treatment by Victoria Derbyshire while Nadhim Zahawi (standing, as he was, 'in the dock') was given a surprisingly emotional grilling by Vicky, with talk of poor benefit-sanctioned Zak and his "toddler", and a remarkable grilling of the Tory MP over his father's experiences of being on benefits. 

Balanced it certainly wasn't - and, as further evidence of that, Debbie was interrupted on just two occasions while Nadhim interrupted ten times - i.e. five times as often.

I can hear BBC supporters at this point saying that this is just an example of the BBC holding power to account on behalf of vulnerable people (regardless of which party is in power) - i.e. the argument that it may not be balanced but it's 'ultimately' fair. 

I'll leave you to judge the truth of that.

Next, North Korea.

The U.N. has spoken, and Newsnight leaps into action.

North Korea is perpetually fascinating - and horrifying.

Those digital channels which broadcast endless programmes about the Nazis know that pure evil fascinates audiences. The North Korean regime is pure evil too.

I've noted before that, almost alone among foreign news stories, stories about North Korea seem to generate large numbers of hits on the BBC News website or the Telegraph website - or any website, presumably.

Why? Well, here's my best guess...

We laugh and we simultaneously chill and thrill at the spectacle of the young Mao-suited Fatso and his applauding, glitteringly-be-medalled lickspittles: The god-king communist leader, descended from the smiling, mass-murdering Great Leader (teeth, fancy suits) and his curly-haired, porn-loving son (grey Mao suits, fancy shoes), waddling along, looking at some new construction (probably built by prisoners from his vast gulag), surrounded by adoring, note-taking, diminutive generals (each with more medals than Michael Phelps). Mountains, earthquakes, heavens dances at their birth. Ha ha.

Young Kim's fatness (in a land of famine) seems disgusting yet absurd - and the funniness of that absurdity tends to blunt the edge of our disgust.

His attractive but probably-soon-to-be-machine-gunned-to-death wife also arouses our interest (disgust? concern?). Will she live? Will she die, like 'the excellent horse lady' ex-girlfriend of Young Kim, recently machine-gunned to death.

An uncle (by marriage) is denounced as 'scum' and butchered. His Rosa Klebb-like widow (aunt to Young Kim) lives on. How fascinating!

Whole families imprisoned for the supposed failings of one individual member of that family, like something out of an ancient barbaric myth.

Almost perpetually drunk, porn-fixated proles (a la 1984).

To describe it is to at once recoil and revel in its evil and totalitarian glamour...and, yes, we've probably been here before.

The BBC's blessed United Nations concurs, as of yesterday. It has compared North Korea to Nazi Germany. It has excoriated the North Korean regime's ongoing crimes against humanity.

Newsnight duly runs the UN flag up its pole and salutes - and who can really object to that, in this case?

Enough laughter, more action. Something must be done. Etc.

Scotland and the EU. That was the next subject. The BBC's Matthew Price reported. Will Alex Salmond's independent Scotland even get into the EU? We heard from Pia Ahrenkilde Hansem, EU Commission spokeswoman, equivocating publicly but being very emphatic privately (according to Matthew) - that if Scotland votes 'yes' to independence it will be out of the club and find it hard to get back in. Matthew cites Alex Salmond doubting that will really happen. "But", said Matthew. But, he said, European anti-separatist nations - like Spain, under the Partida Popular, will make an independent Scotland wait and sweat. Still, said, Fabian Zuleeg of the pro-EU think tank the European Policy Centre [fancy Newsnight talking to a pro-EU think tank!/sarc], Scotland won't be kept out indefinitely. And Matthew ended outside a building that "maybe, just maybe" could "eventually" be Scotland's embassy to the EU.

I doubt either Scots Nats or Eurosceptics would have reckoned must to that report.

Finally, David Bailey. A plug for the photographer's retrospective. I'll say no more about that.