Same old same old

Today's Dateline London gave us a double treat today - both Abdel Bari Atwan and Yasmin Alibhai Brown. (It still amazes me that they can rant so outlandishly without literally frothing at the mouth.) Adel Darwish, for one, wasn't impressed. He sums it up very well:

Waste of licence money, Dateline London (BBC News Channel), an entire anti-British panel, the only difference is the degree of anti-British & anti-American fanaticism among them. Presenter? Not challenging their idiocy that Iran's terrorism & piracy was Donald Trump & UK's fault!

Straight faces and unfunny jokes

I think they invented the face veil to protect the world from gurning women. 

Yasmin Alibhai Brown says she doesn’t support the face-veil, perhaps because it would inhibit her most effective means of self-expression, which is gurning.

I saw her on Sky this morning performing facial and full-body histrionics at the possibility of Boris becoming PM. “He’s a cad,”  she said “and a liar” but she adamantly denied ever having promised to leave the country if Boris got to be PM. When it was pointed out that she had indeed made such a promise she airily brushed off her own little lie, saying “Well, I’m not!“ [leaving]  

YAB not leaving the country after all? Phew!! sighs of relief all round.

Watching Faiza Shaheen gurning her way through Politics Live and Ash Sarkar making faces and waving her hideous talons around on consecutive episodes of that programme, one might wonder why so many men of that particular faith suffer from verbal incontinence and women from involuntary facial gymnastics.

A video of the Danish version of Geert Wilders - (Rasmus Paludan) being interrogated by a young elfin-like BBC reporter who says her country of origin is Iran, demonstrates the personification of ‘bias by gurning’. (H/T Biased-BBC) 

She started reasonably well, but dissolved into a display of petulant facial antics, including feigned amusement and an exaggerated “I’m listening to a moron” face, which ultimately came across as feigned bravado in the face of humiliation. When excessive gurning comes back to bite you on the bum.

Mr Paludan’s repertoire includes provocatively burning a copy of the Koran in a “Muslim area” to illustrate his right to freedom of speech and to challenge the basic concept of ‘Muslim areas’ within western democratic countries like Denmark and Britain; areas in which freedom of speech is tacitly curtailed through a collective, ultra-politically correct respect for all things Islamic, such as manifestations of Muslimness. I understand Paludan sometimes adds insult to injury by wrapping the Koran in bacon, (which, as you know, is carcinogenic) before setting fire to it. 

I hadn’t heard of Mr Paludan before I saw that video, but I now know that he happens to be a lawyer and (in this video at least) he makes a serious point, which is that the Muslims have managed to create a new norm, predicated on the premise that the sensitivities and taboos of Islam must be respected by everybody, no matter who they are or where they happen to be. I assume it’s because of these views that Mr Paludan has been pronounced “far right’ and no better than Hitler. 

Some say he’s an actual Nazi and a Jew hater, but that might just be wishful thinking on the part of his critics.

He says ”The BBC is renowned throughout the world as being a complete shit-hole media”

I’m keeping a straight face about this.

********

I saw our old friend David Vance coming head-to-head with the comedian whose alias is ‘Jonathan Pie’ on Sky just now. The issue under discussion was Jo Brand’s tasteless battery acid quip.

Vancey was keen to point out the hypocrisy of the BBC. He brought up the incident of Carol Thatcher and the golliwog and compared the intolerance heaped upon Carl Benjamin by people who couldn’t get their heads round the difference between the ‘joke’ in a historic threat (not) to rape an MP  and a ‘joke’ to throw battery acid over Nigel Farage. Double standards.

‘Jonathan Pie’ used the ‘context is all’ argument; he’s smart enough, but I think he was on shaky ground. In the end, they didn’t fundamentally disagree about ‘when is a joke not a joke’. The Sky anchor was obviously on the other guy’s side, but David Vance is no doubt used to being in a minority, and he copes with it well.

Of course there is a kind of a joke in Jo Brand’s quip, but unfortunately, it’s based on a misreading of the entire business of milkshake throwing. It’s a very poor joke because it’s so banal and unoriginal.

This is my take on it. Milkshakes are not an accidental choice of weapon. The substance itself is comparatively harmless, (apart from the cost of the dry-cleaning) it makes the victim look foolish, and it’s a kind of visual play on pouring liquid over someone’s head - usually pints of beer - which of course alcohol-free Muslims aren’t predisposed to do. It expresses disgust in the most visual and slapstick way and saves the perpetrator the trouble of trying to articulate their grievances verbally, which they’re very likely incapable of doing nearly as effectively as covering their opponent with goo.

As well as the above, another reason for choosing milkshakes as a weapon is as an indirect reminder that  “it could be something more harmful, but this time it isn’t”. If you like, it’s an unspoken threat. We’re all well aware that actual acid-throwing is gruesome and depraved and only too real. 

So Jo Brand’s quip is a statement of the bleeding obvious, which instantaneously sucks the humour out of the whole thing  - the opposite of injecting humour into it.

Kudos to Vancey for being asked to join the fun.

*******

Extensive Boris-bashing continues throughout the day. I have nothing extra to contribute on that topic so please continue to use the open thread to your hearts’ content.  

Our weekly date

Today's introductions on Dateline London ran as follows:

• This week... The caliphate is over but the carnage continues. After losing its last strongholds in Syria and Iraq, will Islamic State go global? And last time President Trump visited London, he criticised the Prime Minister, he kept the Queen waiting and he was stalked by protestors and a giant inflatable. This time it's a state visit. Will the pomp and ceremony keep things on track or will the UK's drawn-out political crisis leave even more things to go wrong? Also I only promised you one Brexit-free programme, and that was last week, so be warned.
• Last week we marked Easter by discussing the impact of religion on our world, including how faith can be manipulated for a message of hate. And then we got a demonstration. One synchronised moment of horror in Sri Lanka which left hundreds of lives destroyed, thousands shattered, a Muslim community in fear of backlash and a tourism-dependent economy reeling.
• Right now we have to talk about President Trump's visit to the UK. It's now official. He's coming in early June. Cue protocol rows, a carriage ride with the Queen and a 20 foot inflatable with tangerine-coloured skin, a shock of gold hair, and a nappy. Protestors say the Trump baby blimp will fly again along with other "creative interventions".

Very BBC!

I don't think Adel Darwish enjoyed it very much: 

Time to tune away from the BBC News Channel. Useless, Americanised waste of time show Dateline London. The entire panel are lefties, europhile, anti-Trump... in short reflects BBC groupthink. Instead of depriving elderly people from free BBC Licence it is time to abolish it altogether.

Thomas Keilinger of Die Welt doesn't really count as a lefty, but otherwise that sums up the 'range' of opinions on offer today.

That said, how could anyone not really enjoy it when it had everyone's favourite Dateline regular on? My heart leaped and I emitted a joyous 'Yabba dabba doo!' as Yasmin Alibhai Brown's ever-cheerful face and wildly gesticulating hands returned to brighten up our screens. Seriously, who doesn't enjoy listening to her unpleasant and unreasonable rants? (Now, where are my happy pills again?)

Yabbing

Yasmin, in mid yab

Ah, Sue did warn me that YAB was going to be on, so I thought I'd give it a miss but, like some hopeless addict, I tuned in to watch Dateline London after all.

YAB (also known as Yasmin Alibhai Brown) has an effect on me, and it's not a pleasant one. And she was certainly on form today. (Oh, the horror!). 

I could write something about the programme as a whole, but I think I'll just leave it to one of the fine citizens of Twitterland to sum it up with this pointed question: 

Is there a world shortage of people for the BBC to find that are not Trump-bashers, and not Brexit-haters to appear on Dateline London?

And now, to calm me down again after all that hectoring from Yasmin (should we coin a new word for it, like 'yabbing'?), here's a lovely soothing photo of Ribbleshead Station set against the backdrop of Ingleborough:

Does nobody hear the cries of a poor old woman?

Yasmin, being emphatic on yesterday's 'Dateline London'

Just in case you missed it...

Someone with a sense of humour tweeted the following:

A well-known journalist with considerably less of a sense of humour tweeted the following in response, in all seriousness:

As John Player commented, "Schoolboy error. I automatically assumed the twitterati had a sense of humour. I was wrong. What a mistaka to maka..."

Many other commenters on Twitter took to quoting a famous Second World War French cafe owner saying, "You stupid woman!"

(Thankfully no one thought of using another of the great man's catchphrases, "Shut up, you silly old bat!")

Meanwhile on yesterday's Dateline London, the ever-delightful YAB declared most emphatically that Jeremy Corbyn is not an antisemite. Oh, and Frank Field is a nativist who is "using racism". (Yasmin is rarely anything other than emphatic about things.) So now we know.

The other guests this week were a Guardian writer, a Le Monde writer and a reporter from the New York Times. 

It's the End of the Age of Aquarius

Alas, alas! It didn't turn out to be the dawning of the Age of Aquarius after all. Today's Dateline London reverted to its old ways. 

All four of its invited guests (Abdel Bari Atwan, Agnes Poirier, Michael Goldfarb and Yasmin Alibhai Brown) were left-wingers (of various hues). Again.

So, yielding to despair perhaps, I now think I must say: "I don't think I'll ever live to see the day when the programme invites four right-wingers to make up its panel. Bari's big, bushy moustache, even more than Hell, will have to freeze over before that ever happens."

That said, I still enjoyed it. Here's why (if you care):

The discussion about Brazil, the World Cup, those doctors, the WHO and the Zika virus found the programme's two most annoying guests, YAB and Bari, squaring up to each other (which was entertaining if not edifying). YAB gently mocked Bari for being a conspiracy theorist. Bari's friend Gavin Esler then gently mocked her back when she (without realising it) began sounding like a conspiracy theorist for the other side of the argument. What larks!

And, being Dateline, the closing segment was all about that ghastly Donald Trump and how poor Hillary might best deal with him in debates. (I think I've caught its general tone by describing it like that). 

In a week where concerns about possible serious legal problems for Hillary hit centre stage for a wee while (even - to some, small degree - in the BBC's reporting, briefly), those legal difficulties weren't even mentioned in passing. It was all about that nasty, nasty Mr. Trump and how Hillary might perform against him in debate. Agnes P was bullish about Hillary's abilities; the rest less so. 

Oddly, the usually loquacious Bari kept quiet for the most part during the traditional BBC Ten Minute Hate against the Republican presidential hopeful until entering late on, oddly, to compare The Donald to Hillary. The odd thing is that he did so favourably to The Donald. Bari's point? He's got personality; she hasn't. 

What was that all about? Bari's admiration for strong, male rulers with impressive heads of hair/impressive moustaches might, perhaps, have been coming out again...

...but, of course, being Bari, it's also perfectly possible that he sees Mr. Trump as less solidly pro-Israel (seeming) than Mrs. Clinton. 

The most interesting section for me, however, was the central section on Libya and the Mediterranean migrant crisis. 

Everyone agreed (and who can blame them?) that regime change there (courtesy of Mr. Cameron and M. Sarkozy, with backseat driving from Mr. Obama) was a big mistake. 

Bari blamed the West for everything. YAB blamed the West too. Agnes raised her elegant French eyebrows towards both of them, whilst conceding they might have a point. And Michael Goldfarb (ever the defender of President Obama) defended President Obama. 

So far so predictable, but...

(1) Bari told us that 3 million Libyans are now refugees in Egypt and Tunisia. As the internet has told told me that Libya has a small 6 million-or-so population, that's a heck of a lot of Libyans fleeing next door. I didn't know that (if it's true). 

(b) Yasmin Alibhai Brown pre-declared that she was going to give an "emotional" rant - and duly did so, railing against wicked West for failing to help the bulk of the Libyan population which, she said, was fleeing en masse across the Med out of Libya. Her fellow guests - and even Gavin Esler - forcefully point out to her, in response, that very few Libyans were actually crossing the Med. (They were moving sideways, so to speak, into Egypt and Tunisia.) It's mostly sub-Saharan/Horn of African people who are making that crossing, they said. YAB, looking as if she realised she'd been well-and-truly fisked, gave up on her point (and, for some strange reason, that made me smile.)

(c) Michael Goldfarb, in trying to counter YAB's fallacious assertions about those crossing the Med from Libya, instead put the 'they are desperate, poor Africans seeking a better life' point about those sub-Saharan/Horn of African folk. That morning's Today (just after 7.30), to its credit, had shown, however, that Michael G is wrong. Those huge numbers of sub-Saharan/Horn of African folk aren't, by and large, the poor of their respective countries. They are the much-better-off of those countries (those with enough money - a lot of money! - to make the journey). Some of them are coming, said the Today 'experts', just to experience the thrill of the bright lights of Western Europe....and to his credit, Gavin Esler very briefly alluded to part of that point in response on Dateline today (without embarrassing Mr. Goldfarb).

And that's that. (Not the best way to end a post perhaps, but it's all I've got).

SML debates BDS

A few lays ago I linked to Kevin Connolly on the PM programme suggesting to Eddie Mair that Boris should have been more tactful. He was referring to Boris’s disparaging comments about BDS, which got him into trouble with the P.A.

BBCWatch.

“Kevin Connolly later told Radio 4 listeners:
“You know, official visitors here; foreign embassies, international news organisations, us – everyone weighs their words on these matters with infinite, exquisite care – or at least we try to – because it is just so easy to give offence to one side or the other….”

Mustn’t offend the sensibilities of the Palestinian BDS campaigners. 

Kevin Connolly and the BBC may think BDS is a perfectly legitimate campaign. It seems that where Israel is concerned, the BBC deems this topic debatable. Last week’s Sunday Morning Live tackled cultural boycotts. In the current circumstances, I’d have thought that people might reconsider. Israel has considerable experience of dealing with Islamic-inspired terrorism so boycotting Israel seems like a particularly stupid idea. 

It was disappointing that Douglas Murray and Yasmin Alibhai Brown who had been opining  on Daesh in an earlier part of the programme were no longer on the panel when this topic came up. Douglas’s, and even YAB’s opinions would have been more interesting than the fools that were brought in to replace them; a pro BDS actress, and a Jeremy Corbyn-like BDS advocate, unfamiliar to me. 

The actress supports ‘cultural’ BDS because she wants to bring down ‘Israeli apartheid’. No-one asked her what she thought apartheid actually meant. She seemed to think that her Palestinian friend being unable to travel freely between Nazareth and Jerusalem constitutes apartheid. No, apartheid is not precautionary security measures. That’s inconvenience. It’s not apartheid. There is no apartheid in Israel, lady.

In any case, people who claim that the boycott worked in South Africa speak as though it brought about a fairy-tale ending.  Is present day South Africa a model that other countries aspire to? The boycott may have helped bring about the demise of a genuinely racist apartheid policy, but South Africa is no utopia and race relations there are not so wonderful these days.

Imagine how a Palestinian-majority Israel would look. And she’s aiming for that with her BDS?

The pro-boycott chap with the Jeremy Corbyn aura must have been an academic. He said he thought BDS was a good way of engaging with the Israeli academics he was boycotting. Then why boycott? Why not simply engage? Cut out the middle man. His dysfunctional cultural boycott looked like covert attention-seeking. 

Annoyingly, Sian didn’t want to let the argument deal directly with the specifics, as in the ethical and moral legitimacy of boycotting the one and only Jewish State. She wanted it to be a debate about the efficacy of cultural boycotts in general; but it was never going to be that, because these boycotters were indeed boycotting Israel in particular and no other country. Let’s face it folks, the truth is that boycotting Israel while not boycotting any of the vast array of genuinely abusive regimes in the world is plain racist.  

Did anyone catch George Osborne today announcing his plans to defeat cyber crime?

Israel happens to lead the world when it comes to cyber security and Osborne is asking for Israel’s help. I suppose the BDS idiots would rather boycott it. 

Do they actually realise that what happened in Paris last Friday wasn’t so very different to what Israel faces, day in and day out. We could all learn a lot from Israel but I suppose the idiots would rather boycott that too.

Slinging mud

“You know what their goal is. They can bring Israel to the point where white South Africa was 25 years ago. Y’know, the subject of a boycott, which gathers momentum and which isolates. Do you think they could succeed?”

Is what Kevin Connolly asked Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely in July.

Does Kevin Connolly believe that life for Israeli Arabs in Israel is presently the same as for blacks in ‘white South Africa’ of 25 years ago, and does he imagine, if BDS were to “succeed” it would bring about some kind of justice? Perhaps he thinks Palestinians who live under Hamas and the PA should have voting rights in Israel, or that Israelis should be governed by Hamas or the PA?  We need clarification.

Most South Africans I’ve heard find this comparison not only offensive, but insultingly dismissive of the degree of the malignancy in a genuine apartheid system. 

Giving a platform to BDS chief Michael Deas, perhaps in the name of ‘balance’, if that’s why this was aired, gives credence to a false moral equivalence. Deas seems quite stupid as well as, dare I say this -  racist.  On the BBC website it says:

“The international pro-Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanction (BDS) movement has been using the same techniques as anti-apartheid campaigners who worked to bring down white minority rule in South Africa.”  

Does Deas mean he wants to “bring down” the current  Israeli government, or bring down any Israeli government, preferring to install the PA or Hamas, or the Middle East’s equivalent of the ANC,  as the new, improved government in the region?

In other words, does the BDS movement want to turn Israel into another Islamic state because they find the concept of a Jewish state in the region “racist”? 

The irony of calling Israel racist is so outrageous that I can’t believe anyone takes BDS seriously. But they do!

Here’s the latest manifestation of BDS. It entails not just boycotting anything produced in settlements, nor merely boycotting anything produced in Israel proper, but vetoing performances by Jews - unless they sign an anti-Israel disclaimer. 

You might have heard about this before. Douglas Murray points out why BDS is a racist concept, if anyone didn’t already realise it. 

Spanish pro BDSers required a Jewish performer to sign an anti-Israel style declaration before performing at their a music festival. He wouldn’t so he couldn’t.

   

“For Matisyahu is not an Israeli -- he is an American. Yet after the intervention of the BDS protestors, the festival's director tried what he presumably thought was a perfectly reasonable request: Filippo Giunta asked Matisyahu to produce a "signed statement or video" stating "in a very clear way" that he supported the creation of a Palestinian state. This was made a precondition of performing. "If you sign these conditions, you can continue the performance," the festival's director told the artist.”

“... perhaps we could also initiate some other geostrategic questions that might be demanded of all other performers in the future” 

says Douglas Murray.

“...Maybe the rest of the world should demand that all musicians from Spain sign a statement or make a video supporting Catalan independence if they are to be allowed to perform in public?

“....To my knowledge Turkish artists are nowhere in the world asked to condemn their country's illegal occupation of Northern Cyprus

“...........to demand such an action or statement from an artist as a prerequisite to perform would be not just outrageous, it would be regarded as surreal. Why then is the BDS campaign able to normalize such a demand, and for a festival to cancel a performance based on non-compliance with such grotesque demands?The answer is the fever of our time. For a while, only Israeli Jews were made pariahs among the nations because of an unresolved border dispute involving their country. Now it is Jews born anywhere else in the world who can be targeted in the same way. They are singling out Jews -- Jews and only Jews. And their singling out of Jews, wherever they are from, makes their racist motivation abundantly clear. If the Rototom Sunsplash festival wants to take part in this racist BDS fever then it is them -- and not Jews -- whom the world must make into global pariahs.

Michael Deas does not recognise the hatred for the Jew (‘Yahud’ ) within Palestinian society; he isn’t even aware that such a thing exists.   

He only wants the right of return to Israel for seven million Palestinians, the descendants of the Arabs who were ‘ethnically cleansed’ in 1948 (and he demands they ‘tear down that wall’) It’s another of those faux reasonable “innocent face” pleas for justice.

Yasmin Alibhai Brown, one of the BBC’s speed-dial talking heads, is now defending Jeremy Corbyn with precisely the same faux reasonableness. There’s such a lot of projection going on in her painstakingly manipulative logic. She  is supposed to be evidencing a lack of racism in Corbyn and his associates, seemingly unaware that she’s using racist arguments and emotive turns of phrase in the attempt. 

Surprisingly, for the Independent at least, the below the line commenters have seen through her argument.

Here are a couple of the responses: 

"the forces of darkness", well that is some fine unemotional fact based journalism for you.
I wonder if she would be as keen to defend the man if he associated with, financed and called friends people who denied Idi Amin did anything untoward, and drew cartoons depicting Uganda's Indian population as bloodsucking, money grabbing exploiters of real Ugandans?  Doubt it somehow, but as usual she has special rules to apply when it comes to some people.

and another:

Mr. Corbyn calls Hamas and Hezbollah his friends and demonizes Israel. He ignores hate speech against Jews and actively supports those who spout it. And I've not heard a word from him against any other nation in the middle east... just the Jewish one.
Why is it the only thing this 'decent human being', this non-anti-Semite, cares about is Israel?
It is not the duty of every decent human being to 'criticise Israel' particularly when your criticism is solely intended to demonize the Jewish state and not make life better for the Palestinians (Otherwise you'd be 'criticising the PA and Hamas too) and once you do that Israeli injustices fade in to the background.”

Here’s an excerpt from Yasmin’s article, which goes under the nifty title :

“Fling mud if you must, but don’t call Jeremy Corbyn an anti-Semite”

“So here is the new claim being put about assertively: those who want to destroy Jewry hide behind the Palestinian cause. They are right, up to a point. Veiled anti-Semitism is around us, and most of all on university campuses, where Palestine is a burning issue and convenient alibi. Attacks on Jewish Europeans are also rising.Just as pernicious is the way Zionists use the charge of anti-Semitism to block probes into Israel’s oppressive practices, its weaponry, and its influence in Western parliaments. Some public intellectuals and politicians – who should have some understanding of nuance – have become propagandists for Israel, be the country’s actions right or wrong. They use images of Nazism and excruciating memories to whip up fears of a new horror, an impending extermination of the plucky nation by its cruel colonial neighbours. I myself have been subjected to such intimidation and branded an anti-Semite over the years. More such muck will be thrown at me when this column appears.

*******

“I myself have been subjected to such intimidation and branded an anti-Semite over the years.”

Oh noes!

Pass the muck Ariadne, quite a lot of throwing is called for. 

What sort of country do we want to be?

Further to Craig’s Sunday Morning Live piece, I’m going to deliver my Sunday Morning Lecture. If you don’t like being lectured to, look away now.

If you don’t like being lectured, you certainly won’t like  being proselytised by the BBC.

The sanctimonious tone of all those heartwarming stories about virtuous immigrants is pretty counter-productive. 

The other day Mishal Husain interviewed a 20 year old who is now studying at Manchester University.  His mother sent him away from Afghanistan for a better future in England. He travelled alone at 12 years old. “She didn’t want me to be killed by the Taliban or the American forces”

He described a harrowing journey, and some equally harrowing experiences on arrival in the UK.  Somehow he is now a student.  He also has a massive chip on his shoulder, a decidedly subversive attitude and unless he calms down a bit he could be a potential troublemaker. He believes his predicament is ‘our fault’ for messing up his country (Afghanistan) and he thinks we have a duty to take responsibility. He didn’t say whether or not he’d have preferred the west to have stayed away from Afghanistan, or if he was willing to live under Taliban rule. 

The BBC’s left-wing ‘let them all come” agenda is so obvious and preachy that it antagonises recalcitrant viewers and makes it easier for them to harden their hearts.

Anecdotes about individual asylum seekers who overcame numerous insurmountable obstacles and are now “studying for their masters” or their PHD tend to invite reflection upon the ones who are not studying for anything apart from how to get around the welfare state.  Or, to be less emotive, at least the ones who are less industrious or less integrated.

  

The message from people like Owen Jones and Yasmin Alibhai-Brown is that we must regard would-be migrants as potential professors and engineers, therefore we should welcome them all..

Of course, this is silly. Do they really believe that the Somali gangs who are here already, supposedly hanging about on street corners dealing drugs (or whatever they allegedly get up to) are the exception, and completely unrepresentative of all the potential philosophers and leaders of industry who are throwing themselves over, under or at lorries in desperation to get to Britain? 

The trouble is there is truth in there somewhere. Surely the struggle involved in getting so far indicates enterprise and dedication, especially when looked at in comparison to the ennui and apathy of some of the indigenes, whom Christina Patterson reminded us were only here by accident of birth?   Calling migrants ‘cockroaches’ and suggesting all manner of hard-hearted solutions seems very wrong as well.

We can’t ignore our instinctive humanitarian reaction to genuinely affecting stories, but however much we sympathise with the plight of the would-be migrant, at some point we have to ‘get real’.

Don’t we have enough problems already?’It’s one thing to keep repeating “What sort of country do we want to be?” as they did on Sunday Morning Live.

 Well, for a start we might say charity begins at home. We might say, as Liz Kendall and George Osborne seem to agree, that we need a strong economy before we can implement all our idealistic, charitable principles.

Immigration is already a shambles in this country, isn’t it? I understand that illegal immigrants keep disappearing. If the border agencies can’t even keep track of who’s coming and going, how on earth could they cope with hundreds or thousands more?

Did I hear Owen Jones saying that we should follow Germany, and take in our fair share?   What about this?

 "There are districts where immigrant gangs are taking over entire metro trains for themselves. Native residents and business people are being intimidated and silenced. People taking trams during the evening and nighttime describe their experiences as 'living nightmares.' Policemen, and especially policewomen, are subject to 'high levels of aggressiveness and disrespect.”

I don’t suppose those problems are caused by PHD students and philosophy graduates, although some of the most radical Jihadis apparently are from that milieu.

Did I hear you ask what was all that to do with BBC bias? I might be straying away from the core point, but I’d love to ask Jones and Alibhai-Brown and anyone else who asks “What sort of country do we want to be?” if they want it to be the sort of country that tolerates this?

H/T Daphne Anson

Personally I was disgusted and alarmed. Where’s the crackdown? 

In fact at the end of Sunday Morning Live, they managed to come to a sort of consensus. There should be a cap, or a quota. Although that lets Britain off the hook in terms of rich European countries taking equal responsibility for absorbing immigrants and refugees,  it doesn’t actually solve the moral dilemma, because once the cap is reached, we’re back to square one.  

A bang or a whimper

No sooner was The Big Questions getting into its stride under the masterful chairpersonship of Nicky Campbell than the series ended. I’m not even joking now. 

Don’t let’s forget that not so long ago that programme was such a shambles that watching it turned you into a voyeur, like when you stumble upon Jeremy Vine (update: I think I meant Kyle) and are momentarily transfixed.

However, it’s gone and now there’s Sunday Morning Live. 

I don’t know why we lost Samira Ahmed, who was rather good, and got instead Sian Williams who sports the roundest face ever to be televised.

Like TBQs SML has three topics and a panel, but even so the format is weak and wibbly wobbly. The discussion is less interesting and more superficial than TBQs, and were it not for the audience’s vote, which always goes resoundingly and gratifyingly against the panel’s moral guidance, the outcome would be completely inconclusive. 

The roundness of Sian’s countenance gave “Are British Muslims complacent about extremism?” a distinctly comical air. Also comical were the passers-by who scampered incongruously back and forth outside, visible through a window behind Sian. They had an air of  “thank God we’re not stuck indoors with you and Yasmin Alibhai Brown.”

Since her infamous spat with Rod Liddle, to whom and of whom she proclaimed her loathing, thrice, on air, Yasmin Alibhai Brown seems to have been granted yet more airtime. It looks like she’s been bestowed ‘freedom of the BBC’  for gallant services to the ratings. Grazing rights, maybe and a big symbolic key?

She explained with deep frown, jabbing hands and much sorrow, that she had failed to secure funding for her ‘idea’, which was to examine the brains of extremist Muslims in prison. Muslim parents are confused, she added.

Sian was also confused, and turned to Daniel Johnson, addressing him as Leo and asking if he agreed that we fail to understand Muslim youth and that is why they’re turning to radicalism? He thinks the Muslim community has to take responsibility, specifically in ‘our’ mosques. Has everyone except me got a Mosque now?

Leo McKinstry was more forthright.  

Here’s where I get disrespectful. Look away now if you’re easily offended, but I’m sure the sofa was silently pumping air into the two panellists sitting at Sian’s right. The pressure is probably calibrated so that at the end of the programme they are fully inflated, whereupon depending on the vote they either tragically burst, or deflate, noisily phutting around the ceiling. We don’t get to see this because the Sunday Politics comes on.

I normally support Camilla Batmanghelidjh. I like the way she endeavours to understand antisocial and destructive behaviour rather than dishing out Sharia-like punishments willy-nilly, but today something seemed to have gone awry. Every time the camera went to her she and her outfit had expanded; her head-to-toe Carmen Miranda costume covered everything including most of both her hands. Only her glasses had nothing to do with fruit. Specsavers, have you no imagination?

I was surprised to hear that Camilla only saw the good side of Islam, the side that gives structure to the lives of disenfranchised Muslim youth, when ‘normative’ Islam is the antithesis of everything she espouses (understanding, creativity, self expression, humanity etc etc.) 

It must be those blinkers that the BBC hands out before participants go on air. Does she genuinely think Islam is the one and only religion that is getting kids off drugs? WTF? (as they say on the interweb.)

Who wants to know what Jimmy Osmond thinks about anything, let alone Mormon-ophobia, an imaginary phenomenon known only to him.

As Sian calls time on the vote (although you will still be charged) you just know the public will ignore the panel and vote overwhelmingly YES, the Muslims ARE complacent, which they duly did.

Internet rage and real rage

The other day I grabbed a trolley in supermarket entrance, but unbeknownst to me someone had silently crept up behind me, very close, like a kind of pedestrian tailgate.  Taking a step back to extricate the trolley I came unexpectedly into contact with a body; smack!

Slightly shocked, I let out an involuntary “Sorry” - for the bump - not an admission of liability; for who in their right mind would push the trolly further into the stack when removing it, rather than taking a small step back? Not I.  

The collision was obviously the fault of the person facing forward, (again not I) who had unwisely and unnecessarily come into close proximity with a person (me) whose next move could only be backwards.

I know you need to look behind when you reverse a car, but I am not a car. I have no rear view mirror. I am in a virtual dead end and I am going to reverse one small step. I have no choice.

Who would have come up from the rear so close?  my husband, maybe? But no. A woman of  “Backpfeifengesicht”  from whom emerged a short burst of foul expletives.

 “That fucking hurt!” she whined “Why don’t you look where you’re fucking going?” and with that she suddenly about-turned and fled.  I muttered weakly, to thin air: “It’s you who should look where you are going.” No one else was there, and it wasn’t just any old downmarket supermarket, it was M & S Food!

Anyway, I came across this new word which comes in German only, (H/T Nick G on H/P) and it beautifully describes Yasmin Alhibai Brown whose exaggerated facial expressions and gesticulations I have written about before. Eye-rolling, smugness, hubris,  faux despair, pomposity, primping, priggish self-importance and, as they say in those ads, much, much more.

Other candidates for das Backfeifengesicht, with varying degrees of annoyingness include Paddy Ashdown, Russell Brand,  and of course Diane Abbott. Peter Oborne comes close.  I’m sure everyone has a favourite. (Someone might nominate me!)

Caitlin Moran has a piece in today’s Times Magazine (£) in which she suggests the internet needs policing. She argues that people ‘on the internet’ think that if something happens on the internet it’s ‘not real’, when she believes it is real.

Depends what she means by ‘something happens.’ If someone actually threatens violence online they already don’t get a free pass - people were jailed the other day for making threats online, as they would have been for doing so in person. It’s very true that “the internet’s tone is increasingly one of hair-trigger fury and paranoia” but we are emboldened by our anonymity and everyone knows that’s the case; it’s tacitly understood and accepted. We radicalise each other with our ever-increasing verbal audacity.

There already is the internet police. It’s public opinion, so it is. Look at that hysterical Twitter-related palaver that began with Yasmin Alibhai Brown’s nasty interview on Channel four, when an MP called Michael Fabricant got into trouble for Tweeting that YAB made him feel like punching her in the throat. If he’s said face instead of throat he  might have got away with it. “Throat” sounds too graphic, and goes with “slit”, not “punch”, and sounds more threatening. But he didn’t actually make a threat, whereas Yasmin boasted in her most annoying manner, with her funny little cupped-hand movements, that she loathed Rod Liddle, and she felt somehow proud of this loathing, which to me sounds quite similar in tenor, if not worse, than what Michael Fabricant Tweeted. 

Then there was a sequel, in which Channel Four’s Cathy Newman revisited the whole thing by interviewing James Delingpole and bringing Yasmin back for an encore. Dellers went some way to demolishing Yasmin’s self-pitying, race-hustling argument but came a cropper when he seemed not to have heard of another incriminating Tweet concerning ‘deportation’, which momentarily gave Yasmin half a leg to stand on.

There has been a ridiculous furore over this trivial pantomime, but the upshot is that public opinion has policed it by expressing its disapproval, which has pressurised Fabricant to apologise and so we don’t need another hastily thought-through law that we’d have to repent at leisure. 

People are saying that Yasmin Alibhai Brown sometimes talks sense, that some of her criticisms of Islam are intelligent, but I think that’s what makes people like her even more annoying. Practically all my suggested candidates for  Backfeifengesicht can be sensible some of the time. Even George Galloway manages to say normal things in certain situations. So does Oborne. The more credibility they have, the more you want to punch them in the face when they suddenly “go off on one”. You want to say “That’s fucking crap!” and “I’d like to punch you in the fucking face,”  then, maybe, about-turn and flee.  

Immigration’ and ‘The Truth’

The BBC trailer gives us a quick impression of what we’re going to see.

 “BBC Political Editor Nick Robinson reveals the full impact of the extraordinary demographic change Britain has undergone.” 

He’s going to talk to some politicians, Labour and Conservative, and:

 “untangle the truth about immigration from the political rhetoric.”

So you see, the BBC plays down Nick’s criticism of the corporation and their trailer concentrates on the demographics and the politics he’s about to highlight in his documentary.

“In Southampton, Nick visits a school where 42 languages are spoken – including two Zulu dialects. In Kent, he meets not just a handful of Bulgarian and Romanian footballers, but discovers an entire league of them”.

Oddly enough, the pieces I’ve been reading in the Telegraph, the D.M. and others, have concentrated on a different angle. They are going with:

“BBC accused of bias on immigration...by its own political editor. Nick Robinson says Corporation made ‘terrible mistakes’ by not reflecting public’s concerns.” 

(Daily Mail) and 

“Nick Robinson: BBC made a 'terrible mistake' over immigration debate” 

(Telegraph.)

It’s not surprising that the BBC didn’t take that particular angle, but the Telegraph and Daily Mail articles are extremely interested in Nick’s attack on the BBC for making a terrible mistake. More, even, than they seem to be about his findings about the demographic changes and the politics that engineered them. 

He says the BBC did not reflect public opinion and they feared having a conversation about immigration - they feared the consequences - ”that it would unleash some terrible side of the British public.”

The Telegraph is typically restrained, but the Daily Mail is Daily Mailish and tabloidy and has gone for a robust approach. “stoke racism”

Mr Robinson said: ‘The same people who said you couldn’t have [British National Party leader] Nick Griffin on Question Time said: “Don’t talk about this. Do you know what you’re going to unleash? Do you know the horrors that are going to come?”

‘There was huge argument within the BBC about that.’

Anyway, Yasmin Alibhai Brown has weighed in with a cross-sounding piece in the Independent.  Her take on this is that the BBC has a duty to “moderate our national conversation”. That’s a weird concept. I assume she hopes they moderate it in a convenient manner and not some manner she doesn’t agree with. Perhaps she would like to be on the board deciding which way the BBC should manipulate their reporting? I suppose in a way she already is, and that, in a way, is what people are slowly waking up to.

Anyway, Yasmin wants Nick Robinson to look her in the eye and tell her it was a big mistake to let her people - the Ugandan Asians - into this country. I think she is confident that no-one, including Nick, would entertain the idea of doing any such a thing as that would entail depriving the country of her colossal charm and wit. 

She accuses Robinson of “once” being an “ardent chairman of the Young Conservatives,” and adds: “If that feels like a slur, forgive me.” 

Oh dear. 

Let’s pause for one second. I’m an immigrant - third generation - so I wouldn’t like to align myself with the anti-immigration brigade. A trickle of new blood is fantastic. By all means encourage limited immigration as long as it doesn’t overwhelm the host society. People will assimilate if there’s a will. But my understanding of the issue is entirely different from Nick’s, Yasmin’s, the politicians’ and the BBC’s. 

When the BBC issued a tacit moratorium on discussing immigration, real people were quietly beginning to worry about the BBC’s sanitising of Islam. They were obviously doing their utmost to ‘normalise’ it. People who found it unsettling would talk about it apologetically for fear of being thought (or actually being) racist. Somehow they got it into their heads that criticising Islam was racist, and they felt guilty for thinking racist thoughts.

Then we had Bigotgate, and Gordon Brown’s high-profile embarrassing moment in front of the cameras. It was a small blessing because people began to discuss immigration. But only in terms that couldn’t possibly be interpreted as racist. The BBC had to acknowledge the public’s dissatisfaction, but on certain terms only. It’s the ‘taking our jobs’ objection, the 'taking our benefits', our housing, our hospitals, our schools objection. You couldn’t be racist about Poles, could you? 

No-one could openly admit that they were really concerned with the demographic elephant in the room, the ever increasing demands by Muslims and Muslim organisations, and the disturbing signs that Britain bends to the will of the Muslims. That would be racist. So instead we say “At last we can talk honestly about immigration” but of course we can’t.

Everyone, the government, the opposition, the BBC are all terrified of saying out loud that the sort of immigration we are afraid of is the sort that is itself unleashing some terrible side, not of the British, but of the third world, and the racism that is being stoked, which is is the racism of the Muslim against the non Muslim.

There you are, call me Enoch. Someone had to say it.

Update.

Further to this (and Craig’s updated) post below - Nick Robinson has been all over the place today, talking to his BBC colleagues. He was chatting with Humph on Today, and again on News 24, explaining, as Craig has noted, that: “We got it wrong before, but now we’re getting it about right.”

Poles, Europeans, so-called ‘white’ immigrants and the upcoming hoards from Romania and Bulgaria, i.e., the imminent mass invasion of people who might be more industrious than we are, who would be more draining on our resources, whose presence may or may not be of net economic benefit to the country, these are the concerns that are now being aired, openly, as part of the reformed transparent BBC. All in the name of liberty, freedom of speech and apple pie, with a smattering of scaremongering.

There’s still the question of a type of immigrant whose identity can only be whispered between consenting adults in a soundproofed room. Where’s the scaremongering about that threat when you need it? Oh yes; they do their own 'scaremongering'.

A bizarre item, brought to you by way of Newsnight. 

An ongoing filmed report, designed to reassure anxious viewers that the forthcoming invasion of Romanians is nothing to worry about. Newsnight is going to follow some prospective Romanians who are about to invade the UK. 

Contrary to rumours circulating within the underbelly of right wingers and Daily Mail readers, Romanians are not  pick-pocketing Romany-type beggars, blaggards and thieves, but charming professional ladies whose English accents are more cultured than your average Brit's. They plan to come over and work, shoot and leave. 

Nick Robinson’s mea culpa looks just like a cloak, a veritable burka, thrown in a panic, over the real problem.