Did the BBC back up misperceptions during the Covid pandemic?

Harry de Quetteville, special correspondent at The Telegraph, has a report on one epidemiologist's view of how we reacted to Covid. 

Of relevance to this blog, Prof Mark Woolhouse of the University of Edinburgh has some things to say about the BBC's role during the pandemic. 

See what you think:

Yet the Government decided that telling half the population that they were at extremely low risk would dilute adherence to the harsh rules it was imposing, and instead ramped up the threat warnings. “We are all at risk,” noted Michael Gove in March 2020. “The virus does not discriminate.” But it did then, and it does now.

“I heard [the official] argument caricatured as: everyone died, but at least no one was saved unfairly,” notes Woolhouse. Policy became a form of epidemiological communism, with imposed equality, even if it was equality of misery. “BBC News backed up this misperception by regularly reporting rare tragedies involving low-risk individuals as if they were the norm,” notes Woolhouse.

When in April 2020, for example, BBC cameras were allowed into an ICU at University College Hospital in London, the first patient interview for News at Ten was Imran Hamid. “I didn’t take this seriously enough,” said Imran, as the sombre voiceover intoned: “Imran is just 37…” Strategies that challenged this universalist dogma by emphasising the protection of the vulnerable were dismissed. “It became a mantra that protecting the vulnerable was actually unethical. Unethical! I mean how on earth did we find ourselves saying that?”

The whistleblower returns

The Spectator's pseudonymous BBC whistleblower is back again.

This time he criticises his employer for “hypocrisy” over Partygate, arguing that the looming elephant in its coverage was that the rules themselves were the problem causing ordinary people so much grief during the darkest days of lockdown and that the BBC played a deeply helpful role: 

Hearing of parties at No. 10 undoubtedly rubbed salt in people’s wounds but these wounds were not caused by ‘partygate’. This wasn’t acknowledged by a single BBC presenter. How could it be? Throughout the pandemic, the BBC has used its platforms to proselytise about every Covid rule and restriction, inducing the public to see unquestioning compliance as a virtue and dissent as sociopathic selfishness.

When it comes to the coverage of ‘partygate’, I find myself wincing at the level of hypocrisy shown, not just by Boris — but by the BBC. It’s pretty clear the PM didn’t want to go down the route of lockdown rules and restrictions. He sowed the seeds of his own destruction and the misery of millions when he bowed to pressure from panic-stricken advisers who had convinced themselves that the repressive example of Communist China must be followed. Once this route had been taken, BBC correspondents pressured the government to go further and further, obsessing over the details of how to correctly follow every rule to the letter, irrespective of the impact on transmission...But the BBC can’t admit this because by doing so it would have to concede that by throwing its full weight behind the lockdown approach, it too should bear responsibility for the harms it caused.

None of that is really whistleblowing. This, however, gives a proper glimpse behind the scenes: 

And this slanted stance continues, evidenced by the BBC’s recent coverage of Novak Djokovic’s ordeal at the hands of the Australian authorities. Djokovic was characterised as the villain rather than a victim. And while much was said of the tennis player’s eccentric attitudes towards vaccinations, reporters displayed a marked reluctance to question the ethics of Canberra’s Covid zealotry or the longer-term implications for international sport, travel and bodily autonomy in general. Talking to colleagues about the tennis player’s plight gave an insight into the Covid groupthink endemic in BBC offices. One called him ‘an idiot’ for declining a coronavirus jab. Another showed barely contained contempt for the unvaccinated, making clear they would welcome any measures that excluded those who decline jabs from wider society.

A BBC whistleblower speaks

The Spectator has a scoop - a detailed critique of the BBC written by a BBC whistleblower, headlined How the BBC lost its way on Covid I’ve seen from the inside how the corporation has failed in its reporting on the pandemic. 

It's written under a pseudonym. The author - who has taken no fee - is described as a ''BBC News employee who has worked at the Corporation for several years''.

It's a fascinating read that won't go down well at the BBC.

The author criticises the lack of balanced discussion and the heavy-handed treatment of people with concerns about lockdowns and vaccines and sees the BBC as acting as a supporter and promoter and enforcer of further restrictions. He describes the corporation's record as ''a dismal failure'' and argues that the demands of the 24-hour news cycle have ''exacerbated'' the crisis because the BBC panicked and is still panicking.

The atmosphere in these BBC offices in the early days of the pandemic became comically oppressive. Absurd in-house ‘safety measures’ were introduced, including baffling one-way arrow stickers on floors which routinely pointed the wrong way, making navigating staircases the stuff of an Oscar Reutersvärd fever dream. Ludicrous lift capacity limits were also imposed: only one person at a time would be allowed to travel in an elevator capable of holding a small crowd – but only up, not down. Then, in a move that could have come straight from the sitcom W1A, ‘proximity monitoring devices’ were issued to staff to enforce social distancing. These re-purposed pagers issued a quacking noise whenever one colleague came ‘dangerously’ close to another.

This had an effect on the editorial stance of the BBC, he says, and soon saw respected colleagues ''succumb'' to ''the whole gamut of coronavirus measures'' as ''the only viable route out of the crisis'' and ''dismiss'' alternative strategies ''as dangerous or the work of cranks without any effort being made to properly examine their ideas''. And ''in a further deterioration of journalistic standards'', the author says the BBC conflated and confused the effects of lockdown with those of Covid-19, always blaming Covid-19, and changed how they reported the daily death figures and removed context. 

Licence fee payers might have expected the BBC’s well-remunerated senior correspondents to step up to the plate and interrogate the long-term impacts of the lockdown strategy. Covid restrictions may have saved the lives of mainly older people in the short term but what of their impact on the lives and livelihoods of younger generations in the longer run? Anyone who held such hopes was to be seriously disappointed. 

He notes, as we've noted, that BBC political correspondents ''lined up to pile pressure on ministers to take ever more draconian steps to tackle the coronavirus''. And he slams the BBC's Health Cluster news department for failing to scrutinise No. 10’s medical advisers ''but instead amplifying them, becoming, in effect, the government’s Covid propaganda wing'' and says that, ''blinded by liberal sensibilities and hamstrung by an unhealthy departmental culture'' its reporters ''went out their way to characterise the suggestion that Covid-19 might have leaked from a Chinese lab as a conspiracy theory promoted by Donald Trump. 

On a BBC News webpage (which remains online), one BBC health hack said the World Health Organisation had ‘closed the lid’ on the lab leak theory after visiting Wuhan in February. 

He says he thought things might have been getting better as ‘Freedom Day’ beckoned in July, but ''noble cause corruption'' is kicking in again.

The national broadcaster should surely feature both sides of the debate and not just relentlessly make the case for further restrictions while ignoring the toll they have on our society. The BBC insists that it has ‘covered the pandemic with great care and in detail’ but there are signs that the corporation is once again failing in this critical function. 

He foresees this happening again and again. 

This is a heavily abridged version, so please read the whole thing and see what you think of it.

Who can reply? We can

It begins as a Twitter trail, but goes much further...

Mike Wendling, 'Editor of BBC Trending and the BBC News team investigating disinformation', took to Twitter this morning to promote a perfectly-balanced-sounding BBC News website piece headlined Mandatory vaccinations: Three reasons for and against.

That's one heck of an impartial-sounding title.

A chap called Robin Lee, 'writer and journalist - based in London', duly replied, ''This article is a disgrace''. 

To which Mike [after first popping on his Who can reply? People Mike Wendling follows or mentioned can reply message to limit the conversation] replied:

I guess if someone was completely ideologically opposed to covid vaccines for some reason, they might have that opinion about an interesting and balanced story on a matter of public debate.'

Robin replied, ''There was nothing balanced about that article''.

I will lay my cards on the table before continuing...

I had my booster jab today, and was perfectly happy to do so, and hope that I'm helping by doing so. And I'm not where many people hereabouts are on the issue of lockdowns. I'm one of those cautious types. And I'm as far from being an 'anti-vaxxer' as it's humanly possible to be. But I don't want people forced into having vaccines and I'm seriously alarmed by the draconian actions of some governments abroad, as cited in the BBC article, to cajole and punish refusers. 

So, knowing that, here's my take on this BBC article: 

Despite its promising title and Mike Wendling's protestations, it is far from balanced. 

In fact, it's almost a template parody of BBC impartiality. 

It begins by framing the argument and casting the actions of those many foreign governments enforcing vaccinations in a positive light, as if they're behaving reasonably and proportionately, thus implying that if so many reasonable governments from France to New Zealand to Canada are moving in the direction of compelling vaccines why shouldn't we?  

Then come three FOR points, alternating with three AGAINST points. 

Read them for yourselves and you will see straightaway that FOR Point No.1, Vaccines save lives, is straightforwardly a FOR case.

Then comes AGAINST Point No.1, There will be resistance. And this, in contrast, is also a FOR case scantily dressed up as an AGAINST case. It says, ''The point is, whatever a government does, it will face opposition'' and then piles on two experts, one presenting the 'resistors' as being emotional, the other neutrally summarising both the FOR and AGAINST cases in a single sentence. A photo of a 'gammon' with a placard saying THIS IS WAR comes midway.

So far, so unbalanced. 

It goes on. 

FOR Point No.2, We've exhausted other options..., even has a graph to support its point. It's another pure FOR section.

AGAINST Point No.2, ...or maybe not just yet, is the best yet. It begins with a classic bit of BBC 'impartiality', pretending to be an AGAINST point but starting by basically ruling the argument over in favour of FOR:

While there is a strong health argument in favour of mandatory vaccinations, it is not the only way to boost levels.

Do you see what I mean about this being ''almost a template parody of BBC impartiality''?

FOR Point No.3, End the cycle of lockdowns, is one obviously designed in a rather blatantly propagandist way to appeal to those opposed to lockdowns whilst being a FOR argument. An expert is on hand to agree with the BBC line. Midway comes a video when a passionate case is made for people to get their vaccines. 

And the final AGAINST Point No.3, It could prove counterproductive, is simply weird - and very BBC. It's the only AGAINST case this BBC piece presents as if it's a genuine concern. It features a couple of experts worrying that mandatory schemes might embolden conspiracy theorists and nasty right-wing political parties. 

Seriously, if Mike Wendling believes this piece is genuinely ''balanced'' then Marianna ought to be be pursuing him down the rabbit hole armed with Elmer Fudd's shotgun accusing him of 'FAKE NEWS'. 

The BBC reporter here, Thom Poole, is new to me, He's another BBC 'senior journalist'. 

Mr Marr's Antepenultimate Sunday Morning Sermon

There aren't many shopping days left till Andrew Marr Day, so I hope you're ready for 19th December, the date of Andrew Marr's final Sunday show on BBC One. 

Order your supply of tissues now! 

And if you just can't bear the thought of no more Andrew Marr on a Sunday morning, here's today's sermon to savour and return to and linger over as the nights draw in and we are all left feeling bereft when we wake up on a Sunday morning only to find that Mr Marr has mounted his reindeers and sleigh and flown off to the Left Pole at the New Statesman - and LBC and Classic FM.

Now I know that some of you on reading the bit in the transcript below about ''to snog, or not to snog'' and talks of ''hugs'' might start thinking of inventive ways to substitute ''snog'' and ''hugs'' with ''grope'', but I couldn't possibly comment.

Anyhow, here's today's scary and opinionated Andrew Marr Sunday Sermon - his intro to today's show:

Hello. More information coming in this morning on the Omicron variant. And it isn't, I'm afraid, hugely cheering. 160 cases officially identified here, maybe many more. Both England and Scotland are affected, we know this spreads very quickly. And, yes, vaccinated people are being infected. So, this leaves all of us with immediate Christmas dilemmas. To party or not to party. To snog, or not to snog. See older relatives for a mince pie and a hug, or pass on that this year. In normal times, we would look to the government for clear direction, but during this week, the messages from those in charge have been so confused, and so contradictory, it's really very hard to know what they think at all. Perhaps, at least for the moment, it's up to us to make up our own minds about how to behave this Christmas.

BBC navel-gazing and metropolitan elitism

Here's a little Tuesday morning reading from the newspapers, starting with Anita Singh in the Daily Telegraph:

There is navel-gazing, and then there is the sight in The Princes and the Press (BBC Two) of BBC presenter Amol Rajan reporting on media editor Amol Rajan reporting on the Royal family criticising the BBC. Absurd doesn’t cover it.

After the second and final episode of a series that has caused so much controversy, what have we learned? That there was rivalry between the Royal households. That Harry hates the press, and Meghan got terrible headlines. That Palace sources, whose job it is to secure favourable press coverage for their royals, may have briefed certain journalists in the hope of doing exactly that. Any and all of this information has been available to read in the newspapers for several years. Recycling it for television has achieved nothing, except to sour relations between the BBC and the Royal family.

And David Blunkett is back on the subject of 'woke' BBC Radio 4, this time writing a piece for the Daily Mail. He says:

Radio 4 has become so determined to address multicultural diversity, gender issues and identity politics that it forgets about all-embracing inclusion. People who live outside a narrow class of well-off professionals with rigidly right-on opinions, almost all of them in London, no longer feel included by the station. If you’re not part of the self-proclaimed metropolitan elite, you are unlikely to hear your views reflected. The BBC seems to ignore the obvious fact that ‘B’ stands for British — and its remit is to broadcast to the whole country, not just a few fashionable streets around Islington.

Meanwhile, The Times has a piece by Jawad Iqbal headlined The BBC has a blind spot over the bias of its Covid expert Susan Michie. It begins...and ends:

The BBC is guilty of a grave disservice to its audiences in continuing to give prominent airtime to a communist-supporting scientist as one of its go-to experts on pandemic restrictions, without any real attempt to contextualise or counterbalance her criticisms. Professor Susan Michie, of University College London, a super-rich longstanding member of the Communist Party of Britain, was lined up as a main expert to pass judgment on the prime minister’s announcement of measures to tackle the new Omicron variant....Michie’s revolutionary views — she is said to be dedicated to establishing a socialist order in the UK — are surely relevant when evaluating her critique of pandemic policies. The BBC, which prattles on endlessly about the importance of impartiality and objectivity, seems to have a blind spot when it comes to Michie. Its first duty must be to its audiences, who have a right to be told much more about the experts given valuable airtime.  

On which theme, by the way, I noted down the names of the first four interviewees on the BBC News Channel immediately following Boris's press conference the other day. All were what might be called 'lockdown hawks'. In order of appearance they were: Professor Susan Michie, University College London; Alex Norris MP, Shadow Health Minister; Professor Devi Sridhar, Chair of Global Public Health at the University of Edinburgh; and Dr Sarah Pitt, University of Brighton.

"Why aren't we going harder?" / "Plan B now!"

   

Madeline Grant of the Telegraph has, I think, the driest take on today's Boris-led Downing Street Omicron Press Conference where the journalists from the BBC, Sky and ITV all asked basically the same question - the same question they've all been asking for well over a year now:

One can't help but admire the persistence of these lobby journos, who plug on with their "Why aren't we going harder?" / "Plan B now!" questions, even after they've already been posed by about 15 other people at the same press conference. True grit and determination. Reminds me of turning up at uni tutorials having not read the book, and someone else in the class has used your one talking-point, so you have to make it again but using a slightly different form of words.

Mark Easton follows suit

You know that thing about how pretty much every single question from the BBC's posse of political reporters at recent Downing Street briefings has asked precisely the same thing, "Why isn't the Government acting fast enough or hard enough over lockdown?"...

Well, today's briefing, starring Priti Patel, featured a rare appearance by the BBC's home editor Mark Easton. 

What question would he ask? Something a little bit different? 

No, he asked exactly the same question:

A question for the Home Secretary. We were warned we may be health facing health service catastrophe, so why are the rules of this lockdown not as tough as they were last spring?

Journalists have the opportunity to ask anything they like, questions the public might like an answer to, but they all ask that. Why?

I am a grumbling embittered resident of Cornwall

Future posts from moi will likely be OT for the simple reason that I don’t watch the BBC very often these days. 

And, for another reason. The non-leftist media are on the BBC bias case at last. Like Rottweilers. See Tom Harwood in the Telegraph, Guido, and - do I need to list them? No.

FYI, unrelated to the pandemic, Cornwall is gradually being trampled to death by the fallout from the problems of the country as a whole.  Its natural wildness is disappearing. Its tranquillity is all but lost and its quirky ‘back in time’, “dreckly” culture is being swallowed up by ‘budget’ tourism and white flight (an ex-councillor says.) 

The silhouette of ugly, tacky new housing developments despoils every horizon. Vast estates of substandard, poorly constructed and badly insulated housing shoot up like mushrooms. A surveyor friend says they will be ‘un-mortgageable’ in a few years time due to in-built design flaws and shoddy workmanship. 

Strong rumours have it that Cornish councils are rewarded handsomely by inner-city councils for taking ‘problem families’ off their hands. Bulk, off-plan reservations are made at the planning stage; Locals need not apply. “Councils will deny this”, warns a local gov. employee but empirical evidence attests to the veracity of it. 

In summer, roads are choked; locals must wait days for an appointment with a doctor. In summer, supermarkets swap their regular stock of fresh ingredients for overpriced ready-meals ‘for visitors’; mile-long queues of holidaymakers whose bank cards are lost or ‘don’t work’ clog up the local branch of Lloyds bank, which is due for imminent closure so tough if someone still wants to pay in an old fashioned cheque.

This is about yesterday’s press conference - the PM’s first post-illness performance.

Here’s the press report of the relevant question: 

The first question from the live briefing came from Michelle, from Cornwall, who said:  

"We are getting enquiries daily to book a holiday let from June onwards. 

"We're worried there will be an influx of people coming away from the cities and to tourist hotspots which could bring a second wave to areas such as Cornwall. 

"Please can we ask how tourism within the UK will be managed in the coming weeks?”

What transpires is a profound misunderstanding of Michelle’s question.

“No-one can doubt the pressure he was under from his own party, including a number of big donors, who have been warning of the ever-more terrible damage to the economy if the lockdown continues"

says Melanie Phillips, which helps to explain why this was a misunderstanding waiting to happen. Under pressure to ease the lockdown before the impending, possibly irrevocable, economic armageddon, Boris immediately assumes Michelle from Cornwall is asking solely because she’s eager to get back to work. 

Like many of us who reside in Cornwall, Michelle is probably worried that the seasonal ‘influx’ of carriers and spreaders will overwhelm Cornwall’s less than adequate medical facilities. 

So far, Cornwall has suffered a comparatively low rate of infection. This is fortuitous because of Cornwall’s relatively meagre healthcare provision. The main NHS hospital isn’t exactly renowned for its cutting edge efficiency. 

In a normal summer, all services are under strain. The quality of life plummets, but complaining looks ‘selfish.’ A typical comment in the Telegraph goes:

"Cornwall would be wonderful without the grumbling, embittered Cornish.I have yet to hear of a successful Cornish Person"

That's why Michelle feels she has to couch her question in a manner that won’t make her look too much like a yokel and a nimby so she refers to the pressure to ease the Lockdown by mentioning a ‘holiday let’. Big mistake. Big red herring.  

Boris’s over-defensive reaction to the anti-Lockdown sentiment leads him to disregard the important part of her question - her worry that the government isn’t taking sufficient measures to prevent Cornwall being overwhelmed by ‘a second wave’. He reinterprets the thrust of the question and the media, constantly gunning for Boris and eager to condemn him for prolonging the Lockdown, goes along with it. 

“In his response, the Prime Minister acknowledged the hit taken by the tourism industry due to the lockdown. 

He said: "I sympathise very much with everybody in the tourism industry who has taken such a hit and it’s been one of our jobs to make sure that we look after business as far as we possibly can through our loans, our support schemes, our furloughing schemes for workers.
"But you will come back Michelle.”

I feel sorry for Michelle whose question was couched much too ambiguously. And I feel sorry for myself and all residents of backwaters in the country formerly known as Britain.

Epidemiologist wars

Epidemiologist wars

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

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

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

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

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

Trusting the media

To while away a locked-down day blog favourite Alex Deane proposed a game yesterday: 

Tweet an unfashionable opinion. I don’t mean one that you pretend is unfashionable but really makes you look “cool”. One that makes most people say NO. I’ll start. Most Bob Dylan covers are better than the originals. 

Suggestions included "Wine doesn’t actually pair very well with food", "Two spaces after a full stop. Unfashionable, but correct" and "The Victorian Workhouse was an excellent idea. Feckless wastrels got a roof over their heads and three meals a day in return for gainful employment".

The undisputed winner, however, was:

I'm a big fan of the journalists asking questions at the daily press conference...They're doing a great job.

(Just between us, I think this canny chap was cheating by being sarcastic 😉) 

Humour in a time of crisis: 

The splendid Rich, who I also follow on Twitter, posted something the other day which others then swiped (without crediting him) and wrote close variations on:

This is how it'll play out if we make the vaccine:  

*Hancock calls briefing, says we've created world-saving vaccine*  

BBC: Will you apologise for not creating it sooner?  

ITV: Isn't it true that it contains dead kittens?  

C4: Why didn't you join an EU vaccination scheme?   

Sky: You said creating a vaccine would be difficult, do you now accept that you weren't telling the truth?  

Buzzfeed: 37 reasons why the UK is still a shit country  

Independent: Isn't it true that austerity stopped the vaccine being made sooner? 

Guardian: Vaccines are racist  

Then 12 days later, in what he thinks is a massive scoop, Robert Peston will tweet that his well-placed sources have informed him that a vaccine may be close.

*******

Whether that's fair or not, something definitely gone badly wrong for the media during the coronavirus crisis - at least if Sky/YouGov's poll into public trust is anything to go by:

While the NHS has a +81 trust rating and Boris Johnson a +12 rating, TV journalists have a -40 rating and newspapers a -55 rating.  

Newspapers have long had dreadful ratings, but for TV journalists to plummet to such dismals depths when it comes to public trust is highly striking, and ought to give them considerable pause for thought.

So why has the public drastically lost trust in TV journalists?

One possible factor is that the public has, by all accounts, seen a lot more of these TV journalists than usual - through watching the daily press conferences and by tuning in in greater numbers to BBC One's news bulletins, etc. (Even Newsnight cites a rise in viewing figures). Could it be that familiarity has bred contempt - and distrust?

Reading the non-bubble parts of Twitter, those daily press conferences do seem to be a particular bone of disquiet with the public. The likes of Laura Kuenssberg, Robert Peston, Beth Rigby, etc, now stand charged with all manner of things - including (to be brief): grandstanding, making fools of themselves, asking the same questions day after day, asking the same questions other journalists have asked before them (even during the same press conference), asking ill-informed questions, betraying scientific ignorance, being rude, asking the wrong questions, adopting a hostile tone, pushing an agenda, all singing from the same hymn sheet, failing to reflect or give voice to minority opinions (e.g. over the usefulness of lockdowns and the harmful economic effects of lockdowns), asking too many 'Will you apologise?' questions, being knee-jerk anti-government, and going for 'gotchas'. And, above all, of failing badly to catch the public mood.

Also: Could that anti-media stat have something to do with a swathe of the public reacting against swashbuckling, high-profile loudmouth Piers Morgan?

Or maybe it's because of people disliking aggressive, gotcha-style interviews by TV presenters/journalists? From Naga in the morning on BBC Breakfast to Emily in the evening on Newsnight, I'm seeing complaints along those lines chiming and rhyming with other complaints on my broad Twitter line. Such interruptions and gotchas are, understandably, winning our Naga and Emily & Co. vociferous plaudits from the tiny minority Twitter bubble and their media colleagues, but are they alienating/angering the vast public beyond that bubble?

And finally: Is more and more of the public starting to see such journalists as being little more than a vast ocean of agenda-pushers? 

Whatever, it's still quite something when the public trusts the politicians more than they trust the journalists who believe themselves to be holding the politicians to account. 

"The media has failed to ask the right questions"

This episode of the New Culture Forum is worth watching. You get a better view if you watch it on Y.T. rather on this site in its cramped form.

Scuppering Boris

I feel I’ve been unfairly lumbered with a ‘right-wing’ label. All because of the defensive, pro-Israel stance I take against the BBC’s institutional anti-Israel bias. But I’m not particularly right-wing.

I share some of the sentiment I read on conservative blogs, particularly in relation to the family, but I’m not at all on board with the ‘spare the rod and spoil the child’ approach, or the ‘hang ‘em and flog ‘em principle that lies behind or goes together with the so-called traditional right-wing philosophy.

Personally, I can boast of an old-fashioned marriage and a brood of kind-hearted, industrious, law-abiding children to show for it. There you are.

I (we) value your engagement and I certainly wouldn't want to discourage or make anyone think they’re not appreciated, but I beg to differ from some of the (in my opinion) prematurely dogmatic below the line responses I’ve read. 

I’d be the first to acknowledge that the lockdown/shutdown strategy is risky and has massive downsides. As someone whose particular circumstances have, over the years, had a habit of slipping through all manner of Rishi-type safety nets, I still say it’s impossible to calculate a final tally while we’re in the midst of the crisis. 

Even when it’s all over, the wisdom of adopting a strategy (albeit belatedly) that depends on 100% co-operation will be open to interpretation and politicisation. For now, I think that dogmatically expressed dissent of the Peter Hitchens variety recklessly ‘rocks the boat’ and sabotages the journey, holes the ship below the waterline and other nautical metaphors. “Scupper” is the word I’m looking for.

The police’s interpretation of the rules is another matter. Some of the things we’re expected to go along with are utterly illogical in practice. Our regular, pre-lockdown ‘walk’ is a short drive away. It’s a vast open space where you rarely see another soul. The edict that one mustn’t ‘drive to walk’ is effectively a sledgehammer to crack a nut -  just because some people drove miles and miles for their exercise, potentially causing traffic-related incidents and wasting resources. Tough nooks. (we used to say at our school) So we suck it up and don’t go there any more.

Then there’s the shopping conundrum. How can you shop infrequently when you’re not allowed to buy sufficient goods to tide yourself over for more than a day or two?  But for the potential ‘good of the cause’, we do our best, like good boys and girls (and all genders in between.)  Let’s hope someone finds a vaccine or a treatment PDQ. 

Big Question

Who is (was) on Question Time tonight? (Last night)

The fact is, (as they say on W1A) who cares? I have to level with you - I didn’t watch it. Did anyone?
In the era of Lockdown, Q.T. is incontrovertibly dire. ‘Direr’ than usual. There’s not even a whooping and hooting audience to complain about. But that panel even surpasses itself in terms of irrelevance and dullness; the antidote to click-bait.

Let Q.T. join HIGNFY as another casualty of coronavirus. But (in the absence of a suitable test) did it die OF coronavirus, or WITH?

Worrying times.

Coronavirus: PM admitted to hospital over virus symptoms.