The Story of a Label

Of course, Nick Bryant wasn't the only BBC bod to brand President Trump's "go back...then come back" tweets as "racist". 

Here's Gary O'Donoghue on BBC One's News at Six on Friday:

But of course, Boris Johnson criticised those racist tweets earlier in the week...

And here's Mark Urban on Thursday's Newsnight:

After racist tweets suggesting four American congresswomen go home - three of them were born in the US - the President set his sights at a rally last night on the one who wasn't, Somali-born Ilhan Omar.  

And here's Ros Atkins on Thursday's Outside Source:

...57% of Republicans agreed with the sentiment in those racist tweets at the weekend that the Congresswomen should go back to the countries "from which they came".

 And here's David Willis on the BBC News Channel on Thursday: 

...there were chants at times of "send her back", which is an echo of those remarks, those racist remarks Donald Trump made on Twitter, and that is, of course, disconcerting.

And here's the newsreader on Thursday's The Briefing:

Some Democrats had been hoping to capitalise on the growing criticism of Mr Trump for his racist comments about four ethnic minority Congresswomen. 

And here's the newsreader on the BBC News Channel's overnight BBC World programme:

Mr Trump also returned to the four Congresswomen - the subject of his racist tweets earlier this week.

 And here's Katty Kay on Wednesday's Beyond 100 Days:

You're watching Beyond 100 Days. Democrats are about to vote on whether to impeach Donald Trump because of his racist tweets. 

Wednesday's Business Briefing saw Sally Bundock (of Tim Martin of Wetherspoons fame) reading the following headline (which appeared in the same terms on all the BBC's overnight news bulletins, several times each hour):

In Washington, the House of Representatives has voted to condemn President Trump's racist tweets. 

Ros was back in action on Tuesday's Outside Source:

Meanwhile, the House of Representatives is preparing to condemn his earlier racist tweets.

And here's Christian Fraser on Tuesday's Beyond 100 Days:

President Trump lashes out again at minority lawmakers as the House prepares to condemn his racist tweets. 

Sally was also on Tuesday's Business Briefing reading this (again echoing BBC newsreaders throughout that night on the BBC):

This is The Briefing, I'm Sally Bundock. Our top story: President Trump refuses to back down from his racist tweets attacking four American congresswomen of colour. 

The first instance I heard, as we're going back chronologically, was Emily Maitlis on Monday's Newsnight:

Someone's demob happy. And today, Theresa May called out Donald Trump's racist tweet as completely unacceptable. 

But Ros Atkins on Outside Source was doing it already earlier that evening:

President Trump is pushing back over criticisms of his racist remarks about Democrats. 

And Katty and Christian on Monday's Beyond 100 Days were leading the way:

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, one of President Donald Trump's strongest allies on Capitol Hill, declined to condemn the President over his racist tweets.

And, of course, that evening's BBC One News at Six saw Nick Bryant kick it all off:

Donald Trump was at a 'Made in the USA' business event at the White House today, showcasing the kind of economic nationalism that has become a hallmark of his America First presidency. But it's his white nationalism that's caused the latest political storm, a racist Twitter attack aimed at four women of colour, three of whom were born in the USA. 

As far as I can see, that was the first instance of it. 

So, sometime on Monday evening, four BBC TV programmes - BBC News at Six, Beyond 100 Days, Outside Source and Newsnight - chose to nail their colours to the mast and brand Donald Trump's tweets "racist". 

Coincidence? A senior editorial decision? BBC Groupthink?

Whatever, the BBC is well and truly off the leash now, 'impartiality'-wise.

Of Malleus Episcoporum and Me

There's an ardent atheist chap on Twitter who calls himself 'Malleus Episcoporum‏' ('Hammer of the Bishops') and every week he sends tweet after tweet to BBC Radio 4's Sunday programme denouncing the people responsible for the programme for being shameless apologists for religion.

Similarly, over the lifetime of this blog, I've posted countless pieces denouncing the people responsible for the programme for being shamelessly biased types forever banging on about a narrow range of liberal-left topics in often highly one-sided ways.

What do Malleus and myself get out of still doing this? Well, I hope it's not just because it's become a habit these days but because we still see it as symptomatic of something about the BBC we don't like and don't think is right.

Today's programme, for example, had a discussion about a new book titled 'We Need To Talk About Race' (like the BBC does anything else these days!) which featured (a) its author who thinks we do need to talk about race and (b) another guest who agreed 100% with him (and said as much!).

And there was a typical Sunday interview with a gay Jewish bloke who was appalled by a right-wing religious minister in the Israeli government's supportive comments about gay conversion therapy.

And there was the usual pro-immigration Church of England bishop being interviewed about his support for Labour-run Liverpool's decision to oppose the government over its policy on rough-sleeping migrants.

It's not that Sunday can't be interesting at times, but its way-of-thinking is so like that of a typical present-day soggy-left Anglican bishop that I'm inclined to keep on hammering it to infinity and beyond.

Duly noted

As a would-be blog of record about BBC bias, we ought to record the maybe-related fact (noted by Anon on the open thread) that the BBC has apparently admitted that both Fiona Bruce and their business editor Simon Jack were "potentially in breach of its guidelines" by agreeing to speak at "a lucrative engagement for a firm accused of inadvertently helping criminals to obtain passports". Both Fiona and Simon pulled out of the event after the Daily Mail "revealed the potential breach of BBC rules". 

What do they have in common?

As posted by Anon on the open thread earlier today, here's a funny skit from 2007 (though not, of course, from the BBC). 

Less funnily, it suggests that what was satire then is reality now:

Brexit - "such an idiotic proposition"

In case you missed it......

YCMIU

As you'll see in detail below, on the BBC's most-watched news bulletins (on BBC One), again and again and again, the BBC's Nick Bryant used the term "racist" (and "white nationalism") to brand the present US president as a racist. Openly, explicitly.

And yet. this evening, Evan Davis is busy on Twitter engaging with a Buzzfeed article originally headlined Why The BBC Doesn't Want To Call Trump A Racist .

You couldn't make it up.

Identity politics and the BBC Proms

One of the major politico-cultural divides today, across our wonderful, largely blue planet, is that between proponents of identity politics and those opposed to identity politics.

The BBC, being massively 'socially liberal' in outlook, has gone full torpedoes ahead in tandem with the identity politics crowd, even to the extent that BBC Programme after BBC programme (pace Rob Burley) now proudly proclaims that they're going for 50/50 'gender' balance, and the BBC has recently openly advertised for BAME-only candidates for certain jobs.

I've had very little contact with the BBC's output over the past couple of weeks but on the rare occasions when I did listen to or watch their programmes I've heard a few of their linking, between-programme adverts for other BBC programmes and noticed, with renewed force, just how obsessively the BBC now pushes the identity politics angle.

Even the moon landing anniversary programme plugs I (incidentally) heard included an agenda-pushing race angle.

A re-dawning, newly-acute awareness of the BBC's 'woke', socially liberal, would-be-down-with-the-kids identity politics obsession can, of course, inflame a contrary, identity-politics-averse-yet-oddly-identity-politics-obsessed counter-reformatory tendency. That's definitely 'a thing'.

Thus, I worried myself about that after watching last night's First Night of the Proms, broadcast live on BBC Two before being shunted off to the outskirts of BBC Four for its second half.

I was determined to watch it because Janacek's glorious Glagolitic Mass is one of my (putative) eight Desert Island Discs and it was the climax of the concert.

So what to make of the fact that BBC TV had a glamorous not-too-old female presenter (no Miriam O'Reilly her!), a beautiful youngish female 'rising star' conductor (straight out of Countryfile central casting), an opening premiere by a glamorous young female composer (insufficiently famous as to not even merit her own Wikipedia entry), and commentary by a glamorous not-too-old female publisher? 

The mid-concert chat included a young, hip white man prepared to play the hipster goat and dance on national TV and a young, hip black man who immediately spouted the usual tropes about the glories of 'diversity' while sitting alongside the returning glamorous white not-too-old female publisher. 

(And these three, the BBC presenter announced, are to be regulars throughout the BBC's broadcast of the season.)

And, oh yes, the BBC broadcast last night inevitably wasn't in the slightest bit shy about promoting the fact that the female First Night conductor tonight was the first female conductor to conduct the First Night.

And nor has been the BBC News website: Conductor Karina Canellakis makes Proms history with stirring First Night has been its headline, focusing on the fact that "Karina Canellakis has made history, as the first woman to conduct the First Night of the BBC Proms.

Very BBC!

My review? 

Well, The First Night began with a world premiere - a quarter-of-an-hour choral/orchestral work about the 1969 moon landing by Zosha Di Castri.

I think posterity will agree with me in saying that, for all its and the BBC's efforts, it tried to amount to much but (alas) didn't amount to much.

Then came an underwhelming performance of Dvorak's lovely symphonic poem taming of a grim Grimm-like folk tale, The Golden Spinning Wheel. 

And finally, to redeem it all, a thoroughly passable performance of that magical, magnificent, muscular atheist Janacek mass.

But, returning to the original point of this rambling post, should such obvious BBC identity politics politicking, tick-boxing underpinning matter as far as the BBC's broadcasting of classical music goes?

Answers on a postcard please to Lord Hall.  Or to us below.

On being accused of 'racism' by "a fishwife on acid"

I don't think the Spectator online has yet got round to posting Rod Liddle's latest magazine piece headlined Don't believe the headlines.

It's a very interesting piece in its own right, but its main purpose is something I'll leave alone until the Speccie gets round to publishing it on the worldwide web (unless I've missed it).

All I'll do instead is to type out - for your delectation - its splendidly splenetic opening paragraph:

I suppose it was a bit naive to wander on to Newsnight having been booked to talk about Brexit and my new book and expect to talk about Brexit and my new book. I should have expected instead to be shrieked at about 'racism' by a fishwife on acid, which is what happened. In the usual calm, measured and unpartisan manner, Emily Maitlis suggested that I spewed bile each week for the Murdoch press. I might have pointed out that at least people voluntarily fork out their couple of quid to immerse themselves in that bile, rather than as in her case being involuntarily taxed to pay for her inflated salary, a reward for lousing up prime ministerial debates and reading an autocue in a bien pensant manner to a pygmy audience. Everything, for Emily, is racist, as it is for the vast majority of the BBC.

Ah, as Sue's already pointed out, if only Rod had said that live on Newsnight. Revenge served cold is never as good as revenge served hot. 

Nick Bryant calls Donald Trump "racist" (again and again)

Having been out of action for most of the past couple of weeks, I've got a lot of catching up to do. I did, however, see the original trio of Donald Trump tweets about 'The Squad' (14th July)... 

(1) So interesting to see “Progressive” Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world (if they even have a functioning government at all), now loudly... 

(2)...and viciously telling the people of the United States, the greatest and most powerful Nation on earth, how our government is to be run. Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came. Then come back and show us how... 

(3)...it is done. These places need your help badly, you can’t leave fast enough. I’m sure that Nancy Pelosi would be very happy to quickly work out free travel arrangements!

...and, though having only come across BBC programmes very occasionally, I did hear a couple of reports by Nick Bryant that focused on the "go back" bit but 'forgot' to mention the "come back" bit and said to my family, 'No wonder Trump accuses the media of 'fake news''.

And, on trying to catch up, it seems as if vast swathes of the world and the media also 'forgot' the "come back" bit too in their urge to denounce the US president as "racist".

Even if Donald Trump's tweets were racist in intent or content, merely reporting him as saying "go back" and not telling people that he continued (within the same tweet) to say "then come back" is surely not honest reporting? Is it?

If a racist tells someone to 'go back where they came from', then that's unequivocal. But do racists usually tell their victims to "then come back"? I bet not. 

I suspect a lot of people have already made this blindingly obvious point, but I'm still catching up and can't be sure that they have. 

Whether the pro-Trump crowd chanting "Send her back!" about the antisemitic Somali-born congresswoman Ilhan Omar was being racist or not, or just registering their dislike of a highly controversial figure who they feel has been ungrateful to the country that took her in, Donald Trump was doubtless right to distance himself from them slightly. After all, he wanted her to then come back. 

Anyhow, back to Nick Bryant of the impartial BBC...

The BBC's high-ups obviously had no problem whatsoever with him repeatedly stating that the President's tweets were racist - no ifs, no buts. 

This is seriously-off-the-scale stuff - angry journalism making a point, relentless opinion-pushing on a matter of controversy.

Seriously, in what way is this impartial reporting?:

15 July BBC News at Six 18:13

Donald Trump was at a 'Made in the USA' business event at the White House today, showcasing the kind of economic nationalism that has become a hallmark of his America First presidency. But it's his white nationalism that's caused the latest political storm, a racist Twitter attack aimed at four women of colour, three of whom were born in the USA. 

16 July BBC News at Six 18:13

Last night, the four non-white Congresswomen who were the target of the President's racist Twitter onslaught stood in shoulder to shoulder solidarity on Capitol Hill.

16 July BBC News at Ten 22:17

Last night, the four non-white Congresswomen who were the target of the President's racist Twitter onslaught stood in shoulder to shoulder in a tableau of American diversity.

17 July BBC News at Six 18:20

On Capitol Hill, fierce words of condemnation for the President's racist tweets. 

17 July BBC News at Ten 22:06

The White House put out this video today - easy-listening patriotism in a week when Donald Trump's brand of nationalism has been more strident and at times racist. 

18 July BBC News at Six 18:24

This is a rally that will be talked about for decades to come. After the racism of Donald Trump's original attacks on the four Congresswomen of colour came the kind of racial demagoguery we've not heard or seen from a modern-day American President.

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!

"Not only is tanker heading in wrong direction, but Iran policy generally - and just as Britain is about to change PM"

On the open thread MB wonders whether Jon Sopel failed to read Fran Unsworth's warning not to engage in political tweeting that compromises the BBC's claimed "impartiality" because "Here Our Jon moans that our Iran policy is heading in the wrong direction. Couldn't be more partial...":

Not only is tanker heading in wrong direction, but Iran policy generally - and just as Britain is about to change PM https://t.co/rdEhfcYp9A

— Jon Sopel (@BBCJonSopel) July 19, 2019

We did learn recently that the BBC has relaxed its rules, but this still doesn't get Jon off the hook. He's still bound by the rules:

Under the revised editorial guidelines, published last week, the corporation still bans news and current affairs presenters from making their political views known on social media, or taking a stance on a ‘controversial subject’. 

But the rules say the ‘risk is lower’ where the presenter is talking about a subject unrelated to their field, giving as an example ‘a sports or science presenter expressing views on politics or the arts’.

I agree with Kate

On a similar theme:

Kate Hoey: So BBC PM news bulletin at 5pm can mention Soubry court case but not a word about the electoral commission losing case against Darren Grimes. Bet they would have covered it if judgement different.

I bet they would too.

Watertight oversight?

Fresh from his legal victory over the Electoral Commission yesterday, pro-Brexit campaigner Darren Grimes is turning his attention towards the BBC, who didn't report the story on last night's News at Ten or on Newsnight or on this morning's Today programme.

Here's a flavour of what Darren and his supporters are saying:

Darren Grimes‏: When biased Electoral Commission whacked me with their maximum fine and referred me to the police, their statement was all over BBC R4's Today and BBC News. Now I’ve won my Appeal against that decision, there’s nothing. They haven’t played my statement once. Should I be surprised?

Marcus Walker‏:  Did I miss BBC R4's Today's coverage of Darren Grimes's quashing of the Electoral Commission’s judgement against him? When the initial judgement and fine was issued, they led the news with that story, which caused a tidal wave of abuse to wash over him

Henry Newman‏: Serious issue. If newspapers mess up they must print prominent corrections. Yesterday courts quashed Electoral Commission Darren Grimes decision. This isn't quite the same as newspaper correction, but shouldn't BBC R4's Today give new story same prominence as original, Sarah Sands?

Possibly unwisely, the BBC's Chris Mason chose to chip in a comment:

Chris Mason: Hi Darren, I heard it being reported on The World Tonight last night.

To which came this reply: 

Darren Grimes: My statement?

Chris replied:

Chris Mason: From memory (I was doing the washing up at the time; I wasn’t working) the news bulletin reported what you’d said.

If you were wondering, The World Tonight gave the story a paltry 19 seconds:

The founder of the pro-Brexit campaign group BeLeave has won his appeal against a £20,000 fine imposed by the Electoral Commission. Darren Grimes, who set up the organisation with a focus on younger voters, had been accused of breaching spending rules during the Brexit referendum. He said he was delighted and relieved to be found innocent.

Now, do you think that does justice to Darren's statement?

pic.twitter.com/O4RUrqzcl5

— Darren Grimes (@darrengrimes_) July 19, 2019

Cruelest cuts

You’ll be dying to hear what I thought of the programme about male circumcision, “A Cut Too Far”. 

I have to say I was pleasantly surprised. The presenter Adnan Sarwar is from a Muslim background and his family still live in Burnley where he grew up. 

Nowadays that he’s a cosmopolitan kind of guy with a busy life and an impressively open-minded approach to male circumcision. I breathed a small sigh of relief when I realised that this wasn’t going to be a vehicle for more Jew-bashing. 

As a completely secular person I don’t relate to traditional religious practices at all, but I do understand and half-empathise with the tribal ‘pull’ that keeps them going. 

I liked Adnan’s respectful manner when speaking about this with his father, a fairly immovable traditionalist. At one stage it seemed that Adnan was veering towards the pro-circumcision side of the argument, but at a later stage, he appeared to have swung into reverse.  He hasn't got any children yet, but it does look likely that any boys he might have will remain intact.

Jewish News reported that the documentary “gets a mixed reaction.” Well, at least they weren’t wholly condemnatory of it.

Out of curiosity, I had a look at Adnan’s Twitter timeline, and I think I got a better picture of where he was ‘coming from’ from that. 

I was one of the three viewers that stayed awake long enough to see whether the very last edition ever of This Week was worth watching. After Andrew Neil's scathing remark about the previous programme and the BBC’s non-user-friendly scheduling of his own show, I have to agree with some of the comments on Guido - that a great deal of it was cringeworthy. 

"A final act of scheduling stupidity" @afneil talks about the "final cut" of BBC schedulers#bbctw pic.twitter.com/3j4MoZYzFa

— BBC This Week (@bbcthisweek) July 18, 2019

Magnetic attraction

You know how the Mail Online's sidebar is so distracting that your eyes are irresistibly attracted to it against your will. I couldn't help it, but

Maybe Eddie Izzard identifies with Emily Maitlis and I think I identify with the woman standing behind him (her/them/ze).

Who am I?

This blog has an agenda. We contend that the BBC is biased towards the political left and against the political right.  

Clive Lewis and his fellow Corbynistas also believe the BBC is biased, but as they see it, the bias swings the other way. To them, anything a fraction to the right of magic Steptoe appears ‘right’ (and wrong.) They say the BBC is the voice of the ‘establishment' and mouthpiece of the government.  

But their outdated perception of  “the establishment” is based on the 1950s, when the subservient lower ranks knew their place and willingly doffed their caps to the gentry and respectable folk had a short back and sides. (What goes around comes around, they say, and oddly, after its journey through the decades through the Beatle cut, the mullet, the curly perm and various gravity-defying gelled concoctions the Hitler hair-cut is back; Kim Jong Un is today’s hair icon.) (Oh, young man! )

Corbyn’s Labour Party is still childishly fighting an establishment that is nothing like the post-war prim and proper, hang ‘em and flog ‘em ruling class of their imagination.  They’re stuck in a time-warp and they can’t digest the fact that the present-day progressive establishment is liberal, non-binary, LGBQ, same-sex everything, tattooed, pierced and (cognitively dissonantly) Islamophillic. 

As evidence that the BBC has a right-wing bias, they produce a biased study by left-wing academics, and on the rare occasions that the BBC ‘gives a platform’ to people with whom they disagree (It happens - Rob Burley says so.) they screech “Triggered!” and “no platform!” and insist it shouldn’t be allowed.

Our agenda tells us that the BBC’s institutional, socialist, leftie-liberal consensus is so consensual that they’re inured to it, as if they’ve been immersed in a never-ending version of the of ‘who am I?’ game, only the post-it notes stuck to their foreheads with ‘socialist’ written on them have been there for so long that they’ve lost interest in playing.

Back in the days when we started this blog, BBC bias-spotting was more niche. Nowadays everyone and his dog are on the case. (And a fat lot of good we’re doing, sitting here in our mothers’ basements in front of our greasy keyboards with our acne and our cauliflower ears because the bias is getting worse, not better.) 

I’ve been conscious of the anti-Israel prism through which the BBC taints its Middle East reporting for years. Several MPs are in on it too,  perhaps ‘radicalised’ by the BBC, or through their constituents.  It’s not just within Labour,  but it affects individuals from both ends of the political ‘scrotum’, as someone once malapropped when searching for ‘spectrum’. 

The Lib Dems with their David Wards and their Jenny Tonges, and some Labour backbenchers including Jeremy Corbyn, the late Gerald Kauffman and Andy Slaughter are renowned for anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian activism and have been for years. There is also the newer intake, the Naz Shahs the Tulip Sadiqis and assorted MPs representing predominantly Muslim constituencies.

If Corbyn’s unexpected elevation to chief puppet for the opposition was worrying, then the media’s inability to recognise the racist nature of his little clique’s pro-Palestinian prejudice was even more so. 

When the spectacle of antisemitism in the Labour Party was propelled into the limelight, largely due to the marathon evidence-gathering exercise of investigative journalist David Collier things changed. He came up with a catalogue of damning evidence, and the mainstream media belatedly pricked its ears up. Now you can read all about it in the OMG Mail online. 

EXCLUSIVE: Corbyn met with group of Hamas extremists in PARLIAMENT who called for attacks on the Royal Navy, boycotted Holocaust Memorial Day and praised suicide bombers - as it emerges he secretly visited terror group in Ramallah

“It comes as it emerged that Corbyn went with spin doctor Seamus Milne on a secret visit to Hamas extremists in Ramallah in 2010, failing to declare the trip in violation of parliamentary rules.”
A picture from the 2015 event in Parliament shows Corbyn flanked by Daud Abdullah, who signed a letter saying that the Royal Navy should be attacked if it tried to help prevent weapons from being smuggled to terror groups in Gaza.

Here he is with BBC Dateline’s Abdel Bari Atwan and Azzam Tamimi.

“Jenny Tonge sits in the centre, surrounded by her mates.Extremists listen to Corbyn's speech. Azzam Tamimi, left, said he wanted to blow himself up in a suicide attack; Mohammed Swalha, who represented Hamas in a visit to Russia last year, second left; Jenny Tonge, who was suspended from the Lib Dems for anti-Semitism, third left; Daud Abdullah, who called for attacks on the Royal Navy and boycotted Holocaust Memorial Day, fifth left”

and Corbyn’s deputy antisemite Andy Slaughter is pictured with Hamas officials.

Collateral damage

You will have seen or heard about PMQs with Theresa May’s attack on Corbyn and his mishandling of his party’s antisemitism crisis, and his reflexive counter-attack on the Tories’ you-know-whatophobia.

I’ve just been notified of a programme about male circumcision “A Cut Too Far?”  scheduled for 22:35 tonight in the Question Time slot. (Bated breath.)

By pure coincidence, I also came across a half-hour debate in Westminster Hall about religious slaughter. 

Animal welfare concerns about religious slaughter were expressed by (as it happens) my own local MP George Eustice. Concerns about religious slaughter (and some dodgy practices going on in Halal abattoirs) threaten to undermine the religious freedom currently enjoyed by observant Jews. 

Coincidentally, I’d just written about a related topic in a comment on the open thread. 

I understand that Shechita (Kosher) and Halal slaughter have certain principles in common - that the animal must be slaughtered ‘uninjured’ (this precludes stunning the animal before its throat is cut) but that the Jewish and Islamic requirements are not identical. 

This may be a question of my own personal bias, but I have read several accounts of Halal abattoirs where animal welfare is the last of their concerns. As far as I know, Jewish slaughter is considered to be as clinical and humane as non-Jewish slaughter; that stunning is not always effective and that Shechita doesn’t require prayer as part of the procedure.

As I have said before, the Muslims are always ‘spoiling things’ for the Jews. Their demands and prohibitions have antagonised others and Jews are caught up in the flak - collateral damage if you like. 

It seems inevitable that eventually, Britain will have exchanged its Jews for Muslims. 

Essay By Sebastian Vilar Rodrigez

“I walked down the street in Barcelona , and suddenly discovered a terrible truth - Europe died in Auschwitz ... We killed six million Jews and replaced them with 20 million Muslims. In Auschwitz we burned a culture, thought, creativity, talent. We destroyed the chosen people, truly chosen, because they produced great and wonderful people who changed the world.

This is a controversial topic. You may disagree. Feel free.

Early July Open Thread

A spot of high culture for a new open thread, as the great Flemish master Pieter Bruegel the Elder envisions the building of Broadcasting House as early as 1563...

Thank you for your comments. 

Raaccissst!

At about ten past eight this morning. Today Programme. Cosy chat with John Humphrys and Chief Strategist for Barack Obama, David Axelrod.

The BBC is cherry-picking again. John Humphrys was oh so chummy with David Axelrod as they vied with each other to find the most fitting superlative to emote President Trump’s racism.

“Isn’t Trump racist?  

“Yes he certainly is, but he’s not only racist, he’s playing to his base - a bunch of racists. 

 “Yes, and the more racist he is, the more they love him.  

“Yes, and it’s hard to see how much more racist he could get.  

Yes, and to tell four Americans to go back to their own countries, well, just how more racist-er could anyone be? 

 “No, this is the ultimate racism of all racism, on stilts.  

“And he’s rewarded for it.  

“Mmmm.

Not verbatim, but that was the gist of it. Then, on the line, Brian Lanser was introduced as one of Trump’s deputy communications directors from his presidential campaign. (I couldn’t find him online - maybe he spells his name differently) 

The atmosphere froze. An argumentative, waspish tone crept into Humphrys’s questioning.

Hear me out while I cite Sir Rod of Liddle. (£) writing about something Matthew Parris (miss)-spoke about (which resonates with what happened in the Humphrys - Lanser interview)

Rod Liddle:

“A perfectly sensible observation from Matthew Parris has incurred the wrath of his colleagues on the Times. Speaking of Trump’s “racist” comments, Parris writes: 

“I don’t like his attacks but I think they will strike a chord among millions who should not be called racists. It’s just futile to suppose that arrivals from another country, and their children, immediately and automatically assume an identity as citizens that is indistinguishable from that of the population already there. They have all the same rights but will be seen, for a generation or two, as neither better nor worse but different.” 

That seems to me precisely the case. And I suspect the majority of Americans think the same, not to mention British people.”

That’s almost exactly what Brian Lanser replied when Humphrys stated confidently that the ‘majority of Americans’ were horrified at Trump’s racist Tweet. Wrong. Most Americans probably agree with Rod and Matthew.

Rod again:

“Yet you would have thought he had donned a pointy white hood to listen to the wailing from Caitlin Moran and Sathnam Sanghera who said:
‘I’m forever being told, as a second generation immigrant, that I should be “more grateful”, when I’m just doing the same job as him, being critical of aspects of Britain. That is racism.’
Followed up with:
‘I’ve left a comment on the website, Matthew often responds, so hopefully he will reflect.’ 

Me sticking up for Parris will simply confirm to people of such Manichean, absolutist beliefs, that Matthew is a raaaccissst. They are impervious to everything else. There is nothing else but racism. No nuance, no context, no truth.”

That’s it. The way the BBC has been running with this story for two days. No context, only Racism. Racism. Raaaccciismmm. Race. Ism.

Trump’s biggest error was probably including the word “back” in that dreaded Tweet. It was technically incorrect, at least in respect of three out of the four. 

The BBC and most of the MSM completely ignore the context around this storm-in-a-teacup, while amplifying the juiciest fragment of ammunition with which to attack Trump is the only thing that interests them. That’s what they all do these days. 

They speak as if the ‘squad’ are clean and unblemished, 'without sin',  confident  (because of their blind-eyed, politically correct reporting) that hardly anyone knows what these four ladies have constantly been saying. If a fraction of their ugly rhetoric had been honestly reported it would be plain to see who the actual racists are. 

Newsnight gawn mad

Yes, everything seems to have gawn mad.

Yesterday Rod Liddle plugged his upcoming appearance on Newsnight in the Speccie. He was a little apprehensive, and with good reason. 

Reinforcements had been brought in to back up Emily Maitlis. Rod is never as biting or quick-witted in person as he is in print, but here he was at a distinct disadvantage; two against one. Emily Mailtis made a particularly revealing onslaught on Liddle's writing midway through, which I'm sure will have antagonised every one of his fans. What was it she called it? Bile something or other?

“The bile that you spew up has to be who you are”

“(Rod’s) paid a lot of money… to be a scourge on what he calls the establishment.

“The trouble is, you are the establishment.”

- Tom Baldwin from @PeoplesVote_uk says to author Rod Liddle #newsnight | @maitlis | @TomBaldwin66 pic.twitter.com/ne6G5tiO1p

— BBC Newsnight (@BBCNewsnight) July 15, 2019

The case for a people's vote made by Tom Baldwin and his cohorts doesn’t make any sense to me.  In my opinion, it’s by no means ‘the only answer’.

First of all, surely a referendum is binary, like tossing a coin. Tails you lose, kind of a thing. The trouble arises when you fail to catch the coin and it lands on its edge and rolls off the table. When the result is close, but you’ve agreed to abide by it come what May, (sorry) you have to abide by it. 

“Oh, sorry, wasn’t ready’” doesn’t cut it.

Remainers argue that the peoples’ vote is the ‘answer’. How can this be? Despite all their claims that “Brexit has divided the country!!”, they now assume that this time the result will be decisive - for Remain.

But what if it turns out to be another half-and-halfie? Worse, what if ‘Leave’ still wins, even by a different (greater or smaller) margin? 

If it’s close, will the “Leavers” make a fuss and call for a third-time-lucky?  Unless Remain wins (decisively) we’re back to square one with all the difficulties of the WA, the backstop and the added obstacle of a slightly different cast of negotiating partners?

Even if they get the outcome they want, and we vote for Remain, can we really remain after all that acrimony?

It doesn’t seem at all logical to me, and Tom Baldwin just seems deluded by his own wishful thinking.

*******

Yesterday the BBC was headlining with ‘Trump is a racist’. (Everyone’s a racist these days.) I must be one. 

The missing bit is that Trump was criticising the congresswomen (who ARE actually racists) for their anti-Americanism and racism, but the BBC could see no further than an opportunity for splashing out on a ‘Gotcha’ over Trump’s ‘gaffe’ in omitting to mention that all but one of the four ladies were born in the USA. (Somalia) 

Well, you can’t take Somalia out of the Somalian (or “Palestine” out of the Palestinian) can you? So to speak.

(We also had the spectacle of Jeremy Hunt’s absurd non sequitur about his half-Chinese (or Japanese) children. Has Jeremy Hunt’s wife ever influenced him to defend China’s totalitarian regime against Britain’s interests and has anyone consequently advised him and his wife to ‘go home and fix his own country’?’ )

I didn’t think so.

 like to get you on a slow boat to China

Update:

"Complaints are piling up" and "Rod Liddle v people's vote campaign boss"

Are e-petition debates useless?

Since I brought this matter to your attention I felt duty bound to watch the debate at Westminster Hall yesterday. It was billed as an e-petitiion debate on BBC bias, but the entire caboodle was hijacked by the over 75s licence fee debacle. 

The proposed withdrawal of the existing BBC tax exemption or the over 75s is certainly a worthy cause, and the majority of the near-identical speeches on that topic put the blame on the government for passing the buck to the poor cash-strapped BBC, which apparently was left with little choice. I mean how else are they going to maintain Gary Lineker? 

In total, throughout the whole repetitive process, in total, I’d say about two and a half references to the BBC’s actual bias could be detected. If one managed to stay awake.

One speaker made a fleeting observation that the BBC was virtually the mouthpiece of the Guardian. 

There was a lengthy complaint from Clive Lewis. You may be able to guess the type of bias he was worried about. For added emphasis, he cited that dog-eared study by that bastion of impartiality and rigorous academic integrity, Cardiff University. 

There was one other speech that focused on the issue of bias. Graham Stringer MP went into considerable detail about the scandal surrounding a ‘set-up’.

“The BBC procured and presented on BBC Three, when it was a channel, a series of programmes called “People Like Us”. That was based in the ward that I used to represent as a councillor and that is still in the constituency I represent. Frankly, it was poverty porn. It gave the most distorted view of one of the poorest wards in the country. 

Depending on how we count these things—it is not a competition that any ward or constituency wants to win—Harpurhey is the poorest or the third poorest ward in the country. Cameras went along and the people making the programme pretended—it was a pretence—that they were following how people in Harpurhey lived. They were not; they were distorting it. They paid girls to fight each other. They opened a pub and created a most peculiar party of transvestites. I ​have nothing against transvestites, but that kind of situation had never happened in that particular public house, which was being closed for a couple of years. They got a pretend landlord in to talk about how he was very happy for his tenants to take drugs. It was clearly a put-up job. And some of the people who said outrageous things were taken on holiday by the company doing this. 

It was a shocking and terrible thing, and I do not believe that if people from that kind of background had been part of the BBC, that programme would ever have been made. Fortunately, there was not a second series. The head of BBC Three was good enough to see me and Councillor Karney, who represented the ward. I do not know whether it was down to our lobbying, but there was not a second series.”

He also touched briefly on other issues - climate change and Brexit, but that was it.

Many of the speakers were wildly complimentary about the BBC, some inadvertently damning it with faint praise with their emotional pleas that elderly people rely on it 'for company'.  

It was almost as if they hadn’t watched it since 1970. They say MPs are out of touch. I know we at ITBB are a bit geeky about it, but this was a demo of 'Westminster bubble gawn mad'.

Corbynist-Kernow

I was just about to switch off the TV when this came up. Sunday Politics South West.

Would you believe that antisemitism problems have penetrated the Cornwall branch of the Labour Party? 

Having lived most of my life ‘undercover’ if you know what I mean, I’ve found myself within earshot of low-level antisemitism from the mouths of people who would have been mortified if they’d realised they were offending an actual Jew and even more surprised to discover that the friend they’d been interacting with quite happily for years was secretly a hook-nosed, money-worshipping, miserly, horned individual with a rudimentary tail and a plan to take over the world.

The most overt antisemitism occurred ‘out of county’ and could pop up unexpectedly in whatever location I happened to be in at the time. (All over the place, that’s me.) In fact when we first returned to Cornwall, (where I grew up) the place seemed so remote from metropolitan politics that the identity thing never seemed an issue. 

However, now that full-on Marxism has taken hold of Labour, we have to acknowledge that the virus of antisemitism is part of the package. When you see messages like ‘Oh Jeremy Corbyn' inscribed in the sand on some of Cornwall’s magnificent beaches, it’s time to wake up and smell the coffee.

Cllr Tim Dwelly seems like a good man. He resigned from Labour because of this scandal and stands as an independent. And here in the regional edition of Sunday Politics, we see the prospective Labour Party parliamentary candidate (Jennifer Forbes PPC) trying to defend dear leader by suggesting we look at “Jeremy’s history”. Of course, the examples of Jeremy's history she specifies include “Signing EDMs in parliament to support Jewish people” and not his ‘history’ of commemorating the graves of terrorists, inviting Raed Salah to tea on the terrace of the HoC, supporting Hamas and Hezbollah, advocating the RoR for the 5 million Palestinian refugees and so on.

Cornwall is currently embroiled in a row about plans to build thousands of new houses in the county, some of which are apparently set aside to accommodate Manchester’s (and other cities’) overspill.

 The councillors have a lot on their plate.