They never will

The BBC is still dutifully addressing the Labour Party’s antisemitism problem. Not exactly addressing. It seems more accurate to say they’re paying lip service to addressing it. They’d like to get to the bottom of it, or they’d like you to think they’d like to get to the bottom of it. They never will though. Not while they’re still broadcasting such biased reporting about Israel from the likes of Jon Donnison and Paul Adams.

I think Jon Donnison’s addiction to ‘the people of Gaza’ is unhealthy. Kind of obsessive-compulsive. At first, I thought he had been banished by the BBC because his bias was getting too obvious; on the verge of bringing the BBC into disrepute. (joke). One could easily assume he’d been sent down under for a spot of rehab and was now deemed well enough to return to the Middle East.

But no. He hasn’t been sent back to Gaza. He’s bringing those heavily slanted reports about his favourite topic from here and he’s somehow wangled Nazi Ghazi Hamas Hamad past the Beeb’s quality control to vouchsafe that there wasn’t a single drop of violence during the peaceful protests along Gaza’s border with Israel (apart from a few packs of lone wolves.)

Paul Adams had already resurrected the story about Gaza’s mental health problems, which has been spun, with a cunning combination of innuendo and omission, to place the blame on Israel.  

On Sunday’s Newshour this story appeared yet again. Fathi Harb’s self-immolation was pitched as the desperate response of a man driven mad by Israel’s blockade.

Adams didn’t recount the words Fathi allegedly cried as he burned, but mumbled something about the “struggle to make a living”. Bizarrely, the pronunciation of the deceased’s name, “fatty”, made the whole thing sound all the more surreal.

Ynet News:

A 20-year-old Palestinian father of two from Gaza set himself on fire Saturday night in the city's Sheikh Radwan neighborhood, all while cursing the strip's Hamas rulers who he apparently blamed for his family's poverty and the dismal economic situation in Gaza. 

Eye witnesses saw the man dousing himself in flammable liquid shouting "damn the government" before lighting himself up. Video footage of the incident shows the young man burning alive and screaming in agony with passersby rushing to put out the flames. 

Fathi's family and associates emphasized that he does not suffer from mental illness, but noting he was distraught over his brother's injury in one of the "March of Return" demonstrations at the border with Israel, which are organized and promoted by Hamas.

If the BBC are genuinely puzzled about surging antisemitism they are playing a ridiculous game of “innocent Face” 

We heard Yvette Cooper speaking to Martha Kearney this morning. She thinks the whole thing would go away if they merely “adopted the full definition,” with all its examples.

“Because it does still, rightly, allow people to criticise Israel for the deeply damaging things it is doing.”

What are these deeply damaging things, I wonder? Are they fag-ends and tidbits overheard from the kind of reporting we’ve just been discussing mixed together with ‘facts’ and statistics regurgitated straight from “the Palestinian Ministry of  Health”. (Hamas)

There was an amusing rant from a former member of Trump’s team this lunchtime. She had a good old go at Mark Mardell.

“Dr. Betsy McCoy was an economic advisor to President Trump when he was President Elect and she joins me now from New York. Hello there!”

“Hello I must say I’ve been listening to this previous interview and the bias is so evident, so appalling, that your narrator used the word  ‘treason’, which even the ‘witch-hunter himself, Robert Mueller has not used. It’s quite shocking, I hope your listeners know what an incredibly biased presentation that was.”

Yikes! Joan Rivers lives!

Talking of Yvette Cooper, did you see Ed Balls strutting his stuff last night? At least his enjoyable film gave these deplorable the space to show that they were not quite so deplorable after all. 

Ed, on the other hand, was positively Gallawayesque in his lycra costumes. (Wow, he’s got hefty since Strictly) He said he was there to listen and learn, but my impression was that he failed to do both. He’s turning into a positive Anne Widdecombe; the Yin to Widders’s Yang. 

I suppose people do change when they leave politics but I can’t help thinking of Yvette’s face, all fired up with indignant righteousness, condemning hatred of the Jews while insisting on retaining the freedom to condemn Israel for “what it is doing” to the Palestinians. 

Missed opportunity

One of the joys of working for oneself is that one can watch The Daily Politics and PMQs live, if one should feel the need.

Yesterdays PMQs was particularly acrimonious. Jeremy Corbyn gave an impassioned speech about the Windrush debacle, calling on Amber Rudd, or possibly Theresa May (some people aren’t quite sure which) to resign. 

The theme was that the Tories had deliberately created ‘A Hostile Environment’ for immigrants and that both legal and illegal immigrants were ‘caught up in the fallout’. It suited the Labour Party to conflate the two whilst angrily accusing the Tories of doing the very same thing. See how Dawn Butler MP operates on The Daily Politics (arguing with David Jones MP.) 

It’s impossible to get a straight answer out of her. She knows what she wants to say and she isn’t budging from the script. I’d like to know what Jo Coburn really makes of this performance.

Isabel Hardman describes PMQs here “The Maybot returns…” but fails to mention the potential elephant trap that the Labour leader set for himself when he chose to refer to the Stephen Lawrence affair and screeches in that old-man-Steptoe voice of his:  “we must stamp out institutional racism”.

You’d think, under the circumstances, that mentioning institutional racism was treading on dangerous ground. Unforgivably, Theresa May missed her open-goal-level of an opportunity to hit the back of the net. 

The most striking contribution, towards the end, came from Yvette Cooper. Looking a bit like a very indignant chipmunk, she blurted out a bombshell that could prove to be a big embarrassment for the government.

When I listened to Andrew Neil and Laura Kuenssberg giving their customary summary of what had just gone before (in case we lesser beings needed to have it spelled out it in big print for the hard-of-comprehending) they described something I barely recognised. More interested in Yvette Cooper’s intervention than anything else, harshly critical of Theresa May, it was apparent that they accepted Corbyn’s histrionics as par for the course, as they ignored them altogether; it’s as if they hold the current Labour Party to a different set of standards than all the rest. As if, like the Palestinians, Jeremy Corbyn and his followers have little or no agency.

As far as a gentler, kinder politics, this was not it. Jeremy Corbyn was rattled; near hysterical, while May’s manner was exaggeratedly condescending and painstaking as if explaining a simple principle to a very thick child (!) and the child was just not getting it. Both sides made a pig’s ear out of the whole thing, and everyone, not least the BBC, missed their respective opportunities, dragging the tone from poor to abysmal.

The two Andys

Now that the election is but a distant memory, the Andrew Marr Show and The Sunday Politics have lost their lustre. Both now seem directionless. Andrew Marr tries to generate some vitality by punching the air with his good arm, but it’s no good.

I suppose the Labour leadership is vaguely interesting to Labour voters. As I watched Yvette Cooper a huge amount of indifference and gloom descended. She seemed to be saying a whole lot of words and sentences that had no meaning. 

I was trying to read an article in the Times by Tom Holland (£) at the same time, but I did observe that Yvette has got quite a small head and rather large feet. Imagine being married to Ed Balls.

Tom Holland has decided that Islam could be reformed if only Muslims were willing to take the prophet Mohammed’s life story with a pinch of salt, since it was written many years after the event, and its accuracy could not be guaranteed. If only some of those literal interpretations of Mohammed’s more unsavoury lifestyle choices could be ditched, posited Tom wistfully, Islam might actually become worthy of its claim to be a religion of peace. All you need is love.  It seems a bit of a long shot. Good read though.

Anyway, Andrew Neil, everyone’s favourite interviewer, tenacious, sharp and ferocious, lost both his bark and his bite, dammit, at a most inopportune moment. On interviewing George Galloway he  just went all limp. 

I tried to see if I could spot where Galloway’s hat was, to no avail. Someone must have persuaded him to take it off and maybe leave it out of camera shot, which must have taken some coaxing. “Hats off” to whoever managed that. 

As. You know, Galloway wears the hat at all times including in the bedroom. You saw it when he announced, from the end of the bed through the medium of Twitter, that his next project was to be London Mayor.

For some reason Andrew Neil had turned on the saccharine; he and George chatted away amiably about Lutfur Rahman and other matters of interest.  

“You declared Bradford an Israel-free zone” challenged Andrew, smiling with amusement. “Will you be doing the same for London?” he probed in jest.

“No” his chum replied.  “It would certainly be my aim to encourage support for the Palestinians. London has more supporters of Palestinians than any other part of the country” said he, modestly. “Me and Ken Livingstone are exceedingly fond of the religion of peace” he added, or something to that effect.

I wonder if IS would let him wear the hat, should he decide to travel. They’re sharp dressers As. You know.

Cure for insomnia

What are you supposed to do when you wake up in the middle of the night and you just know that you’re going to stay awake. Make toast? Or watch Question Time on the iPad. 

If only Yvette Cooper would direct her not inconsiderable passion and intelligence to less juvenile, more sophisticated political ideas she’d be okay. Must be the old man. 

As soon as that poor guy in the audience had finished asking his abominable question, I knew that Yvette was about to say ‘diversity’. 

It’s as if Yvette and co. are stuck in a time warp where landladies automatically have ‘No blacks, No Irish’ notices in the window, and Yvette and her colleagues have to win them round by explaining that blacks and Irish are not all that bad and the landladies should broaden their minds and they’d actually enjoy the craick and the curry.

But times have changed, and now that our noses have been truly rubbed in diversity, some of us are thinking enough’s enough.

There’s a thread on the Spectator about Sajid Javis’s contribution. “I’m called Sajid, and I’m fiercely patriotic about our country”.

Yeah, right. Everyone agrees that old Sajid seems like a nice guy. And he’s patriotic, and a potential party leader and all that. But the way the audience and the panel rounded on the questioner for having the audacity to ask whether ‘British values’ are in any way being challenged by the fact that the most popular baby’s name is now Mohammad (or any variation thereof) was sad to behold. 

The obvious implication was that increasing Muslim numbers might be threatening UK demographics, what with the fertility and the reluctance to integrate. But we’re not allowed to say any such thing these days. 

Another aspect of this baby names malarkey is rarely mentioned. It always struck me as faintly amusing when a clearly ethnic person has been given a bog standard British name.   At the same time rather touching -  and incongruous - like when Levi Roots revealed, to much amusement, that his given name was Keith. Naming your child in the tradition of one’s host country does show adaptability and a kind of respect.

Many eastern European Jews had to change or Anglicize their names when they came here. Some because they were hard for English speakers to pronounce, some so that they could sidestep prejudice, and some just because they were willing to adapt.

If Muslim families determinedly hang on to the name ‘Mohammed’ for ever and ever, could that be interpreted as a statement?

I have to say that when, say, you’re on the phone to some godforsaken call centre and the voice at the other end says ‘You’re speaking to ...” and then mumbles some unfamiliar sound that, unless ask them to spell it out slowly, you will never comprehend, let alone remember, I do find it vaguely annoying that we native indigenes have to adapt to them and not the other way round. 

On the other hand, when you get a call from some impenetrably Pakistani-accented  youth who says he’s ringing about your Windows computer, can he have your bank details and pin number please, and his name is Michael Jackson, that’s equally annoying. 

Oh dear this has turned into a rant.

Anyway, Question Time is a parallel world. No good getting all hot and bothered about an insincerity-fest that is unlikely to develop or change. Might as well sit back and enjoy the  pantomime.