Explaining away

Rembrandt, The Storm on the Sea of Galilee

The Guardian featured a touching interview yesterday with 61 year old Hylton Murray-Philipson. He's been through five days of intensive care and been on a ventilator, 'thanks to' coronavirus. Unlike either a similar aged man on the same ward or an ENT consultant at the same hospital, Mr Murray-Philipson pulled through. He is profoundly grateful to the NHS:

While in recovery, the nurses found out it was my 61st birthday coming up and asked me what I wanted. I felt pretty rough and beaten up so I said I’d love a shave. The nurse gave me one. On the day, the nurses gathered around my bed with a slice of cake and sang Happy Birthday. It was so unbelievably moving. 

NHS staff even gave him a 'guard of honour' and applauded and cheered him when he finally left hospital. 

This morning's Today programme picked up on this good news story and interviewed Mr Murray-Philipson. Something curious happened during that interview though:

Nick Robinson: Those memories that you had in intensive care are very, very intense, aren't they, good as well as bad?

Hylton Murray-Philipson: Well, absolutely. And following those words from Bishop James Jones just now I think it's appropriate to say that one of the many very powerful images I had in that moment of great distress and struggle was the image of Jesus calming the storm on the Sea of Galilee. And that just came to me, and I would like to think that that was Jesus Christ coming to me and helping me in my hour of need.

Nick Robinson: Well, it's so powerful that you have that...partly I have to say, partly because of the drugs that you have to be on in order to be on a ventilator machine which plays tricks with your mind, doesn't it really? But you also had some happy moments, didn't you? There must have been some horror there but also some happy moments?

Hylton Murray-Philipson: Well, to be honest, the happy moments came when I was out of intensive care. Intensive care is a pretty horrendous experience I can't really put the word 'happy' alongside it.

Nick Robinson: (interrupting) I was thinking of your birthday that you spent in hospital.

This was blog favourite Alex Deane's immediate reaction to Nick Robinson's kneejerk 'explaining away' of Mr Murray Philipson's recent deeply-felt religious experience:

• It is Good Friday. The Today Programme interviews a man who was discharged from hospital having had COVID-19. He said that in his hour of need, he saw Christ. Nick Robinson: "Ah, you were of course on very powerful drugs at the time."
• The sense of desperate panic amongst the BBC production team that someone was going to mention his Christianity was palpable.
• There’s no other faith that would have been dumped on in this way on air on the BBC. I honestly think that if the recovered patient had outed himself as a Satanist who’d seen the Devil he’d have got a more respectful time.
• I understand that Robinson felt awkward in the moment & that this was an instinctive remark rather than a scripted one. But it’s telling that that’s his instinct, isn’t it? You sweet, silly old drug addled God botherer, chuckled the host... imagine it towards another faith. Try.
• I honestly don’t think for a scintilla of a moment that there is a chance that any other faith would have been disparaged in this way. 

Nor do I, and I do hope Nick Robinson reflects on this.

Update -  Nick Robinson has asked for forgiveness:

Forgive me. I didn’t mean to dismiss his or anyone else’s faith. I’d been told that he’d had a series of vivid dreams & as it happens I have been on a ventilator & heavily sedated myself & still remember my dreams almost 40 years on. My words got a bit jumbled (like the dreams).

Further update - Ah, but BBC defensiveness is already creeping back in again:

Thanks for re-tweeting my apology & explanation. I can understand why it upset you & others but on the day we heard from Rowan Williams, Vincent Nichols, an excerpt of the St Matthew’s Passion [sic] & Thought for the Day you can’t really argue that we dismiss Christianity.

That wasn't really what Alex Deane was arguing, was it? He was arguing that no other faith would have been treated in this way, however 'accidentally'?

Not a belated April Fools joke

So guess who has been made Shadow Minister for Community Cohesion by Sir Keir Starmer? Yes, Naz Shah, the Labour MP who:

• Was suspended by the Labour Party following tweets she herself conceded were anti-Semitic, including one suggesting Israel should be relocated to the USA with the words "problem solved".
• Marked the death of Winnie Mandela with a quote celebrating necklacing. 
• Denounced the MP for Rotherham, Sarah Champion, for writing an article about how "Britain had a problem with Pakistani men targeting vulnerable white girls".
• Retweeted and 'liked' a post of Twitter that said "Those abused girls in Rotherham and elsewhere just need to shut their mouths. For the good of diversity".

It's a good thing Dr Harold Shipman isn't still alive or Sir Keir might have made him Minister for Palliative Care.

Wonder if the BBC will take Labour to task over this?

Silly new open thread

This is silly, I know, but......

Killer question

If the Halo Trust wants to bring people together, why does Mishal Husain want to keep them apart?

“It’s nice to see people cooperating,” says James Cowan of the Halo Trust. It’s a pity Mishal Husain hasn’t got the message. She doesn’t seem to know that the six-day war arose because of yet another failed attempt (by the Arabs) to annihilate Israel. (Or if she does know, she isn't interested)

Relying on 'our ignorance' of the facts, she posed the carefully formulated killer question she’d been leading up to on the Today programme this morning. (Scroll to 3:2:59)

You need to listen to get the full effect, but there was almost a note of glee in the venomous-sounding tone she used to probe for the context-free answer she sought.  “Who left them?” 

Here’s the transcript:

MH
“Eleven minutes to nine. Churches on the banks of the River Jordan in the West Bank, abandoned for more than 50 years because of the 1967 Arab Israeli war, will now be available to visit, thanks to de-mining work that has been completed there, by the Halo Trust. Its chief executive James Cowan is on the line; good morning.  

JC
Good morning Mishal 

MH
Describe the sites that you’ve been working on. 

JC
Well Mishal, the Halo Trust normally works with communities to help put them back to normal. We work in countries like Afghanistan and Yemen but this is a very special situation, where these eight churches have been mined and booby-trapped during the six-day war and it came to our notice that, it’s a long time ago actually, in 2014, that they needed to be cleared. So we got the various churches together, asked them if they’d work together - eight different denominations - and then we got the Israelis and then we got the Palestinians, and so all three major faiths, and we looked at how we could do this. All the churches had been booby-trapped and then surrounded by a huge mine-field of eleven hundred land mines, so it was going to be technically complicated but also quite diplomatically challenging, and it was great just walking into the Greek Patriarch’s church with the other members of their denominations, big hats, big beards, twinkly eyes, and getting them to sign, for the first time really, a cooperative agreement to do this work. 

MH
And those mines and booby-traps, who left them? 

JC
So they were put there by the Israelis, ah, during the six-day war as a protective belt. And, of course we were appalled at the laying of the land-mines because they remain in the ground, just lethal, decades after the event, but I think, to Israel’s credit, they were at least prepared to join us in removing that threat. 

MH
And the significance of these churches is that they’re all built around the site where Christ was believed to have been baptised. 

JC
Yes, it’s extraordinary and one of the great sites of Christendom and actually the Jewish faith as well, um, should be treated in this way, so it’s really nice that fifty three years after the event we’ve now managed to finish the last land-mine; we blew up five hundred of them actually, in a huge daisy-chain explosion. When we walked into these churches, it was like walking into a time capsule with beer still on the shelf, the table laid for dinner, and it was just wonderful to return there and now we can begin the process of actually restoring the churches. 

MH
Right. So they’re not necessarily in a fit state to have visitors, and obviously the virus is affecting the West Bank and is certainly affecting people’s ability to travel there from other parts of the world but is there a lot of restoration work that now needs to begin? 

JC
There’s a huge amount of restoration work. You can imagine after fifty three years of being abandoned the churches need a lot of work doing to them. But I think in a time of Covid, as you mention, grim times, it’s nice to have a story like this in which there’s actually a bit of hope, and in a place like the West Bank where these three faiths have competed with each other for millennia its nice to see them cooperating. 

MH

James Cowan of the Halo Trust, thank you very much.

(Not) dropping clangers

In a crisis, everyone realises how much we need a charismatic and morale-boosting leader. 

Why do so many get-well wishers think they have to include a caveat:  “…. Boris has so many flaws, but…..”  

No! Just admit it. Boris is irreplaceable.

************

While Boris is in intensive care and we’re all in lockdown, it seems churlish or crass to obsess and/or carp about BBC bias. Especially as all UK TV channels are responsible for imposing their own bubble-dwelling version of bias upon the public. However, I suppose it’s the BBC that has the most widely-understood obligation to be impartial. 

Here, Douglas Murray concentrates on two non-BBC figures. Channel 4’s Cathy Newman and her absurd attack on (his friend and hero) Jordan Peterson and ITV and Robert Peston’s farcical interview with Deputy Chief Medical Officer Jonathan Van Tam. 

“Of course there is, and must be, a place in every society for people asking awkward questions. But asking awkward, difficult questions is a different thing from asking the wrong questions, or asking questions which are ill-informed. And perhaps, during an epidemic unprecedented in our lifetimes, and in which very difficult decisions must be made based on highly complex scientific calculations, that kind of gotcha journalism is no longer a public service but a public nuisance. 

Journalism is at a difficult enough juncture, and there are many people in the trade who know a great deal. But the whole profession would be enormously helped if its most prominent representatives stopped giving off the impression of thinking that the primary problem with real experts is that they don’t listen to journalists enough.”

**********

I haven’t watched any of this programme deliberately. Why needlessly rocket one’s blood pressure into the stratosphere? However, Douglas Murray calls ‘Noughts + Crosses’ an ugly work about racism, and ugly works are bad.

********

At a time when everyone who normally comes into the studio in person to unload their expertise is socially distancing, one can’t but notice the backgrounds they choose to sit in front of while filming, in self-isolation, from home. Some home-videoers place the camera lens low, and the backdrop is an attic with a hipped roof; we get a good view of the ceiling. Others sit in front of a bookcase, which signals both virtue and education. Trying to read the titles on the spines, (which I never can) can be distracting. When more than two talking heads are shown side by side on a split-screen, the difference between the head-heights, some at the top of the screen, some at the bottom, the lack of uniformity adds a comical air. (You’d think some general advice would be offered, at least wrt the ‘lighting’.  

So there I am, nit-picking in a crass, churlish and obsessive manner.

******

I still like our Clanger-oronavirus image. So I’m leaving the open thread as it is for now. What I need is a mug of soup.

Worrying news

Best wishes to Boris. Please get well soon.

Dubious statistics

I need to revisit a post I added on Friday. (The one about Jeremy Bowen.)

At the time I was more offended by the BBC’s Middle East editor’s gratuitous reference to Gaza within his ‘uplifting-poem’ slot than by the dubious numbers he quoted.  I joked that the BBC might shove a statistic about “Gaza” on the end every news report.

I knew I’d read contradictory reports elsewhere but in haste, I moved on, keen to highlight Jonathan Marcus’s heavily loaded anti-Israel language and Hamas’s malicious and antisemitic utterances.

BBCWatch clarifies the ventilator situation here. As well as providing some ‘different’ statistics relating to the proportion per population of available ventilators in Gaza, BBC Watch mentions comparable ventilator statistics from closer to home, thereby surely more relevant to UK audiences.  

Why does the BBC let their employees get away with things like that? Oh! I think I might have answered my own question.

Today is your last chance to protect the BBC from attack. Use it https://t.co/ieQmpNa0w8

— Jeremy Bowen (@BowenBBC) April 1, 2020

(Comments could be going better) as they say.

Worrying times.

Coronavirus: PM admitted to hospital over virus symptoms.

"Scrutiny is important"

"You can see that when the difficult questions were asked on testing, things began to move"

New Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer says "scrutiny is important" to point out mistakes by the government "if they can then be put right"https://t.co/oZXAvYsmbG #Marr pic.twitter.com/WBs5BMRXlm

— BBC Politics (@BBCPolitics) April 5, 2020

Now that he has replaced Jeremy Corbyn,  various skeletons are emerging from Keir Starmer’s cupboard.

On Harry’s Place, there’s what appears to be a (slightly dodgy) anonymous text message alluding to his role in the Jimmy Savile ‘cover-up’ (Yes, they have misspelt “Kier”)

We might take that with a pinch of salt, but in the Evening Standard of January 2013, Starmer blames the police for the cock-up.

“Britain’s chief prosecutor apologised for the failure to pursue four separate allegations against the BBC star, one made as recently as four years ago. 

Director of Public Prosecutions Keir Starmer said there were failures by police in Sussex and Surrey and by the principal lawyer in dealing with the allegations. He issued a personal apology for the mistakes by the Crown Prosecution Service and announced a series of changes to improve the investigation of allegations by child victims.

As Director of Public prosecutions, a few other regrettable decisions of the ‘uman rights kind have also been mentioned.

When Jeremy Corbyn was appointed Labour leader, admittedly it took them some time, but he was eventually held to account by the media for his past unsavoury indiscretions and associations.  

When they’ve finished fawning over him, will the media be interested in the new leader’s track record?

Keir Starmer has apologised to the Jewish community and promised to root out antisemitism in the Labour Party.

As chair of Labour Friends of Palestine, Lisa Nandy has pledged to recognise Palestine as a State and advocate for the Right of Return for Palestinians (and their descendants) who were displaced or fled from the1948 ‘intended war of annihilation.’

Can someone explain how Starmer intends to root out antisemitism when he has just appointed Lisa Nandy as the new Shadow Foreign Secretary? 

Musings from Morecambe

Sunny Morecambe (Saturday 10 am)

Hello. Hoping you're all well.

And thank you all so much for helping Sue to keep the blog not only afloat but positively buoyant, with open threads filling up faster than many people's cupboards with supplies of dried pasta and toilet rolls.

*******

It's been another cloudy day in Morecambe today. So much for my high hopes yesterday that the prognosticators would prove to be correct about the sun driving up the M5 and the M6 and arriving here this morning.

The sun has put in even fewer appearances in Morecambe than me here at Is the BBC biased? recently. Wonder if he's cancelled his appearance today 'due to coronavirus'? If he has I might have to go all 'Peter Hitchens' on him. 

And if he does ignore Piers Morgan and put in an appearance later this afternoon and falls on Morecambe's parks and gardens, and on the Lakeland hills over he brimming bay, I'm praying the police don't launch drones to stop him and send him packing again. We need him!

*******

I'm working from home these days. I actually took Friday afternoon off as a holiday though. 

'Being on holiday' now means 'moving my laptop from one room to another and looking out of a different window'.  

*******

It's been a curious month - especially for me as a long-distance blogger about BBC bias. 

Due to events and a certain resultant disinclination, I've not seen a single BBC news bulletin, or clicked on the BBC News website (even once), or felt inclined to catch up on Newsnight. I've not heard even a minute's worth of Today either. And, brace yourselves, I've not even watched The Andrew Marr Show. Not even today's edition.

And do you know what? I've not missed them, Not even one tiny little bit. I've got my news from other sources, and don't feel remotely uninformed as a result. 

*******

Sunny Morecambe (Sunday 10 am, before it clouded over again)

That said, the curious thing about my working from home is that it's still actually been very, if very specifically, BBC-focused:

On goes Radio 3 at 7am and stays on till I finish working for the day. And I have to say that I've very much liked what I've heard. I'm hoping that music while you work might catch on. (Maybe they could call it Music While You Work?)

The station itself wasn't exactly lacking in coronavirus action as one of their main morning presenters - the beautiful Suzy Klein - got struck with the hippest virus of the moment and was compelled to lie low, and the splendid, male-pale-and-middle-aged Ian Skelly racked up a coat-hanger in his shed and rode in to defend her honour and present the programme in place of her magnificently.

(I'm sure no one on woke social media will mind my way of putting that).

*******

Radio 3, being the BBC, has, of course, been pushing itself as a beacon of hope in the darkness of the coronavirus lockdown. It has been for me, though it probably shouldn't boast about it as much. That's the BBC for you though - not shy about singing its own praises.

And I've chuckled day after day at Petroc on the Breakfast show telling listeners about some music-related news story. As soon as he begins that I await his mention of where he's read it and (to myself) shout 'Bingo!' when - as far more often than not - it turns out to be The Guardian.

And I've gently fumed at the incessant plugs for the Radio 3 late-evening essays about 'Old Man River' Paul Robeson. Every day, almost every hour, the adverts have poured in, And the presenters have added reminiscences from those who knew him. Nobody at Radio 3 seems remotely bothered that Old Man Paul left the flawed democracy of America for the murderous tyranny of the high-Stalinist Soviet Union, an action which might leave him open to criticism.

But that's the BBC for you - and even wonderful, wonderful BBC Radio 3 isn't immune from the virus of BBC groupthink.

*******

Clapping in sand

The most striking thing though about being quarantined from almost all BBC output for a few weeks is how jarring and bizarre BBC news reporting sounds when it intrudes into your life unexpectedly.

Radio 3, due to coronavirus, has dropped its usual newsreaders and most of its bulletins and merely broadcasts BBC-wide news bulletins at certain points in the day. Thus, at 8 o'clock in the morning, I'm rudely broken out of my working-at-day reverie, day after day, by Tina Daheley telling us what critics of the government (from the non-Peter Hitchens side) are saying about the government. It's pretty much the same angle every day, the same value-laden ways of putting things, etc - very much the kind of BBC we blog about, and frankly irritating. (At least I can't see her tilting her head to the left, as she always does on TV.)

One morning last week Sue's friend Private Pike popped up at 8 o'clock being sarcastic about Donald Trump. I wasn't impressed. I hadn't missed his biased comedy stylings one bit. After the bulletin, Petroc quipped, "I think that's the first time we've heard Donald Trump's voice on Radio 3", and I thought, "I think that's the first time we've heard Jon Sopel being sarcastic about Donald Trump on Radio 3 too". Please let it be the last time too.

*******

More musings to follow, but that's enough for one post. 

A sweary rant

This video well and truly breaks our Comments policy, but I enjoyed it and thought it worth sharing:

Driving to work

The BBC's Dan Johnson (of Sir Cliff fame) has posted a video of his drive to work.

Being speeded-up, it looks as if he nearly crashes into a bus, twice! 😉

Filmed my drive in for the nightshift @BBCNews HQ and added some @MassiveAttackUK. Starts near Houses of Parliament - Whitehall - Trafalgar Sq - Picadilly Circus - Regent St pic.twitter.com/8niONtAdVw

— Dan Johnson (@DanJohnsonNews) April 4, 2020

We are not amused

I know it’s all wrong for someone who co-hosts a blog about BBC bias, but I confess I haven’t watched the BBC for quite some time. I gather Craig is going through a similar phase.

At mine, the family TV is nearly always tuned to other channels. Sky, despite the ads. Al-Jazeera, for some unknown reason. The Parliament Channel. Channel 4. The one exception is BBC 4. *This household can tolerate snippets of Katty Kay and Christian Fraser interspersed with Jon Sopel and - if I remember correctly, Gary O’Donoghue. *In short bursts.

Katty Kay’s appearance is fascinating; eyes heavily eye-shadowed at the outer corners and those flared, flyaway eyebrows, I assume she’s trying to mimic a cat, as I guess one would if one went by the name of Katty. (What sort of name is that?) Miaow. Recently she’s gone for a more natural appearance and her hair even looks as though it could move. So, all good.

While I’m feeling catty, Jon Sopel still reminds me of Private Pike. It’s the wobbly head and the petulant, whiney voice. When he wears a scarf the resemblance is uncanny. 

So, by way of fulfilling a strange sense of obligation, I decided to switch on HIGNFY last night to see if Labour’s catastrophic trouncing had made any impact on the ‘humour’. I have left-leaning friends who loyally tune in, week in, week out, in the hope that this time it might be entertaining. (The residual effect of the long-lost memory.)

What I saw was even worse than anyone could have thought possible. Beyond one’s wildest dreams awful. As the panel and the chairperson were self-isolating, they were filmed in their own homes. The panel members chose to be filmed in front of bookshelves laden with books, (Hislop had tomes, Merton had paperbacks) while Steph McGovern (chair) chose to pose in her kitchen.

A decorative frame (hideous) surrounded each animated vignette, underlining the separateness of the contributors while eliminating any potential camaraderie and bestowing a deadening effect upon the whole enterprise. As if it wasn't laboured and unfunny enough in the first place. Surprisingly, Helen Lewis seemed amused, as did the chairperson. I think the other one was Miles Jupp. 

Or were those toothy grimaces actually signs of hysteria?

Known unknowns

They laughed at Donald Rumsfeld, but all we have with regard to this Corona Virus is a bunch of known unknowns.

I haven’t changed my mind;  I still feel it’s 'too soon to know'.  Meanwhile, I’m obeying the rules on the principle that it’s better to be safe than sorry. I’m not doing it to ‘save’ the NHS. I’m with Margaret Ashworth. 

We don’t know how long the pandemic will last.

We don’t know what the fatality rate is. (We never can know)

We don’t know how long the incubation period is. Speculations vary - a lot.

We don’t know if survivors have immunity; if they do, we don’t know how long it lasts.

We don’t know of a treatment or a cure. 

We don’t know how to make a vaccine.

We don’t know if the remedy is worse than the disease.

We’ll never know if the deaths ‘with’ coronavirus were ‘from’ coronavirus. Even if they weren’t, it’s reasonable to assume that coronavirus hastened or contributed to the death;  it’s unknowable.

The scarcity of tests. Unless there was a way of testing every single person in the world, (every day) we can never rely on the accuracy of statistics. Even if more tests become available, a-symptomatic and incubating cases will slip through the net.

As long as the disease is rampant a ‘negative’ result is only as good as the day of the test; presumably, those with immunity can still transmit the virus through touch, maybe not person to person, but from contaminated surface to person (?)

How coronavirus affects the body, spreads and kills

It comes as a wolf in sheep’s clothing: once in the body, it tricks cells into replicating itself. For a minority this means a hospital stay or worse. Tom Whipple traces the viral journey

A convincing article by Dr Matt Strauss explains why ventilators aren’t really much help, and may even be harmful (Someone kindly  tell Jeremy Bowen)  

Ventilators aren’t a panacea for a pandemic like coronavirus    

We haven't found an effective treatment and we haven't so far invented a vaccine. At the moment, it seems we’re truly stuffed.

Guest post

This is a guest post by Arthur T

But what about Gaza?

What if every item of BBC news had to include a comparison with “Gaza”? That seems to be what Jeremy Bowen has in mind.

Today programme. (2:28:47) 

“….someone usually on this programme to talk about the Middle East” 

says Mishal Husain as she introduces Jeremy Bowen and his 'choice of poem' at 8:28 am. 

“G’morning to you and y’now I’m gonna be as cheerful as possible because this is a very hard time and it’s miserable for so many and people are dying. Y’know, we’re gonna get through it. 

Um. There have been some comparisons made with this fight against the virus and the war, and I think that’s valid - without the bullets - now, a reason why this is so shocking is because usually in this country and most other developed countries we have pretty secure - most of us - and stable lives and in wars that mass security gets taken away I’ve seen it all over the world many times, and that’s what the virus is doing; now - it’s not a competition of course, but man people around the world never have that kind of safety and security that usually we’re used to. Untimely death is always part of it for them. 

And so think about all that and the fact that, you know, we have the NHS and many countries don’t, and figures I’ve seen lately - forty ventilators in Gaza for two million people - three ventilators in the Central African Republic for five million, so it’s a time to count our blessings, I suppose is what I’m saying. Now this poem………

Jeremy Bowen, your agenda is showing. Why on earth did you shoehorn that particular statistic into your ‘cheerful’ intro? (I suppose it cheered you up to do so)

Is there a new rule that every item of BBC news has to include a comparison with “Gaza”? 

BBC Watch has been monitoring the BBC’s agenda-littered reporting of Israel / COVID-19 related issues, which invariably includes snide anti-Israel innuendo. For example, just examine the emotive language in one passage of Jonathan Marcus’s report. One could easily omit the gratuitous insinuations, without compromising the accuracy of (e.g.,) the following report.

“But the densely populated Gaza Strip presents an altogether more worrying case. The population there is isolated; the Palestinians are under effective blockade from both Israel and Egypt, who say it is a necessary security measure against militants. 

There has been a long-running debate between Israel and the international community as to its abiding responsibilities for the territory. Israel’s troops have left and it insists that it is no longer responsible for events there, which is now the job of the Hamas rulers. 

But if the pandemic sweeps through Gaza this may become a very difficult case to argue given the grip that Israel still retains from outside. 

No wonder there have been calls from Palestinian experts and humanitarian agencies for the so-called Israeli “blockade” to be lifted, and for Palestinians in both the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and the Israelis to make common cause to fight the pandemic.”

Here’s a suggestion:

“But the Gaza Strip presents a worrying case. The population there is isolated; the Palestinian residents are under effective blockade from both Israel and Egypt, which is a necessary security measure against Palestinian terrorism. 

There has been a long-running debate between Israel and the international community as to its responsibilities for the territory but Israel is no longer responsible for events there; this is now the job of the Hamas rulers. 

There have been calls from Palestinian experts and humanitarian agencies for the so-called Israeli “blockade” to be lifted, and for Palestinians in both the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and the Israelis to make common cause to fight the pandemic.”

Contrary to the BBC’s insinuations, it has been widely reported on the pro-Israel press, (not the BBC) that Israel has continued to supply goods to Gaza including medical supplies, throughout the epidemic and the ubiquitous references to the density of the population do not give a true picture of reality in terms of ‘comparative densities’.   

The Palestinian Authority leadership has done virtually nothing to help the Gaza Strip confront the coronavirus pandemic. Ironically, the only country that has been helping the Gaza Strip in the past few weeks is Israel. https://t.co/QQUYpuCOn2

— Gatestone Institute (@GatestoneInst) April 1, 2020

and yet:

Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar threatened to kill all of Israel's Jews if Gaza does not get enough ventilators. 

“If ventilators are not brought into [Gaza], we’ll take them by force from Israel and stop the breathing of 6 million Israelis," he said, as reported by Times of Israel and Arab media.

In it together

Firstly, something has gone wrong with the Spectator link on our sidebar.

Having unsuccessfully attempted a series of fixes, neither Craig nor Sue have managed to reinstate it. So, for the time being, I’ll just have to link to Rod Liddle’s piece here, (£) and hope you’ll bear with me while I refer to it now.

I usually enjoy Rod’s stuff even when I don’t agree with all of it, but I was sorry to see him begin with what looked like a long list of tedious complaints about plod. The same stuff that Hugo Rifkind dragged out the other day, you know, drones filming antisocial ramblers in the Peak District and the abominable black Lagoon.

Times subscribers pointed out below the line that the black lagoon affair was merely the police’s way of deterring people from immersing themselves in the existing toxic swamp. I suppose if you did, you’d be irradiated AND (assuming you weren’t one already) simultaneously turned into a Person of Colour.

That, and the curtain-twitching snitches that were salivating at the prospect of seeing their neighbours acquiring criminal records for going outside on non-essential errands.

However, I was relieved to discover, halfway through, that Rod wasn’t having another gratuitous go at plod and Boris after all. In fact, he was quite supportive of the government’s ‘human’ if slightly wobbly navigation through the storm. 

“The truth is we do not know. We don’t know and the experts don’t know. The epidemiologists are captured by their own paradigms and see only one small margin of what is a very large picture. Further, they change their tune with every day that passes. Fair enough — that is how science works. It is not pristine — it is practised by fallible humans, however admirable its methodologies. And science is never, ever, certain — something new always comes along, so we should always have our doubts.

However, Rod does dent his ‘no-one knows’ thesis a little when he vehemently dismisses Jonathan Sumption’s  proposition that the ‘cure’ for this pandemic may be worse than the disease by describing it as “the pompous meanderings of a glorified lawyer.”

But then back on track:  

“the epidemiologists see only a small sliver of the bigger picture, Sumption — and I for that matter — can see only the occasional pixel.
To my mind the government seems to be navigating reasonably well between the imperative demanded by the scientists — who have skin in the game — and the rest of us, who also have skin in the game.”

We don’t know what’s going on, and it seems almost reckless and deluded to act as though we do. I haven’t watched much BBC, as others in the household keep switching to Sky, ITV, Channel 4 and even al-Jazeera, but I sense that the BBC has reined in its continuous carping at Boris just a bit. Or has it? At least, someone somewhere said they thought Laura Kuenssberg was holding back.

Let’s remember, Jeremy Corbyn might have been PM and thank the Lord for small mercies.

Viral Open Thread

New gone viral Open Thread for all your comments on the BBC's bias and other relevant matters.

"Palestine" and other non-coronavirus musings for April fool’s day 2020

Part One: Jeremy Corbyn

“Under his dull, dismal leadership, Labour has become a byword for animus against Jews and every strain of conspiracy theory that proceeds therefrom.”

So says Stephen Daisley 

“Every Labour MP returned in December, every Labour activist who knocked on doors or delivered leaflets, knowingly tried to elect an antisemitic government out of sentimentality and tribalism.”

This taints the whole lot of them as far as I’m concerned. Including  Hilary Benn, Yvette Cooper, Liz Kendall, Uncle Tom Cobley and all.  Might as well throw in the contenders for the leadership and deputy leadership while I’m at it.

“Decorbynisation cannot be a trim job; the diseased roots must be hacked out. As well as reforming the complaints process along the lines proposed by Lisa Nandy, Labour will have to rid itself of the fallen redeemer and his sullen apostles. Expel him. Expel everyone who nominated him. Expel everyone who voted for him. Burn it down and salt the earth.”

I love that expression: ‘salt the earth’. It reminds me of “Quick! Get rid before it lays eggs” if you see what I mean.  Yup. Sanitise all the surfaces, wash your hands to two verses of The Red Flag and mind you don’t catch your keffiyeh in the door on the way out. 

Part Two: Sarah Champion.

I have a long memory. Certain things, such as my longstanding awareness of Jeremy Corbyn’s petty-rebellious antisemitic antics are etched in the hard-wired department of my brain.   

I well remember Corbyn, (alongside characters like Andy Slaughter, Paul Flynn, Grahame Morris and a clutch of Muslim Corbyistas like Zara Sultana lobbying furiously and viscerally against Israel and for “Palestine”, but I won’t be joining the anti-Corbyn brigade when they cite Sarah Champion as some kind of martyr for being demoted by the dear leader for (belatedly) naming and shaming the ‘Pakistani grooming gangs’ that had been operating in her constituency (Rotherham). 

 Some people regard the article in the Sun that got her into trouble with Corbyn as an ‘act of bravery’  - but it took her long enough to get round to writing about a crime that had been going on under her nose for some time and the true nature of the crime had already been pointed out by others as they expressed sympathy with the victims. 

I’m afraid I well remember Ms Champion sitting at the head of the table presiding over a 99.9 % Asian council committee meeting castigating Israel with great gusto at the time of Israel’s 2014 incursion into Gaza. Where Ms Champion is concerned, I believe a large dollop of opportunism is involved as articles on this blog can testify.

Part Three: Lovely Poem

Today Programme

On #R4Today some of the BBC's best known voices will offer their favourite poems of #comfortandhope.

Here @MishalHusain reads 'On Time' from The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran. https://t.co/tSSau3acnC pic.twitter.com/4NTeotibGW

— BBC Radio 4 Today (@BBCr4today) April 1, 2020

“That was lovely,” said Nick Robinson, choking back emotion.

Part Four: "Palestine"
There’s no sport, due to the lockdown, but sports commentators are still in full swing, so Rob Bonnet interviews 10-year-old skateboarding whizz, Roxanna Howlett, from Exeter. Roxanne is a versatile skateboarder and she has travelled widely through her sport.

RB

"Well, I hear that you travel a lot with your skateboard. Where’ve you been” (as if he didn’t know)

RH

"Palestine, Sweden, Berlin, Amsterdam, America

RB
"Goodness me, you’re the best, well-travelled ten-year-old I think I've ever met. That’s fantastic! What about Palestine? What was that like?

RH
It was amazing, actually. It’s quite a poor country.

RB
What did you do there?

RH

We met up with the State Pal, they’re a charity and they help children from all around the world

RB

How much equipment did they have in Palestine?

RH
They didn’t have very much it was quite bad to see but they had brilliant skate parks

Good to know Rob Bonnet has such a keen interest in …. “Palestine”.

Emergency measure

Opining on the way the government is handling this pandemic is above my paygrade. How do I know which experts are the stablest geniuses? 

We’re seeing a stream of contradictory and confusing advice. For example, I can’t drive a short distance to take my normal daily walk in a virtually deserted open space, despite the fact that it’s impossible to stick to the requisite social distancing if my allotted hour’s exercise must be taken in my immediate vicinity. Andrew Marr was on the case this morning, and it seems that the ‘logic’ for this rule is the possibility of having a driving accident which could divert essential resources from the virus.  

However, I assume we can drive to the supermarket. Which creates another contradiction. Can we confine our shopping to the ‘immediate needs’ principle, while going out shopping as infrequently as possible? Surely it’s one or t’other. It can’t really be both.

The Labour Party’s newfound cry for ‘unity’ seems absurd in the light of their recent electoral disaster. They behave as if their support for the government is some sort of altruistic act.  From such a position of weakness, it’s ludicrous for the Labour Party to pretend that supporting the government amounts to a concession on their part.

As for Jeremy Corbyn’s delusional assertion that Labour’s economic policies were right all along, well, the illogicality of that apples-and-pears comparison shows that his grasp on reality has departed. If it was ever there in the first place. It’s beyond satire. “Of course, I’m a human, (!) of course I make mistakes”. 

Some Labour MPs can’t put their destructive criticism and accusations of governmental negligence on the back-burner. Negativity shines through all those cries for unity and togetherness. 

The Doctor

Take Dr Rosena Allin-Khan, who is currently doing night-shifts in an NHS hospital. She couldn’t resist complaining to Sophy Ridge about the government’s failure to provide adequate PPE for ‘the front line’. Sure, that’s a genuine cause for concern, but wouldn’t it be more productive for the BBC  and the media in general to investigate the reason for any alleged delays rather than just endlessly disseminate criticism of the government. 

They could send Greg Wallace to visit-a-factory-in-a-hairnet to find out if something in particular is holding things up.  One of their investigative reporters could ferret out the source of blockages twixt manufacturer and recipient. Perhaps un-sequester John Sweeney for the task? 

The Sweeney

I’ve learnt a new word: Furlough: ‘leave of absence, especially that granted to a member of the services or a missionary’ Am I the only person who hadn’t heard of the word before this crisis, and might something similar be applied, in this emergency, to the BBC?

Inappropriate invitation

“It is a national scandal, we shouldn’t be in this position” Richard Horton (Lancet)

“It is a national scandal, we shouldn’t be in this position”@RichardHorton1 says the UK has “wasted February” when we should have been preparing the NHS for coronavirus #bbcqt pic.twitter.com/mcwgBJWrxI

— BBC Question Time (@bbcquestiontime) March 26, 2020

I’m sorry they brought in Richard Horton to harangue the token Tory on last week’s Q.T.

I can just about accept the BBC’s justification for inviting Emily Thornberry onto the panel despite the fact that she seems more and more odious with each media exposure, but even though there seems to have been a change of heart.......

"It was during this period that The Lancet began publishing numerous articles advancing this poisonous political agenda, through allegations of medical and health-related abuse of Palestinians. This activity took place under the aegis of Richard Horton, who has held the position of Editor in Chief since 1995[5] and who frequently generates controversy by using the journal to gain visibility for his pronouncements on major social and political issues associated with progressive liberal agendas.

....The Lancet has an appalling record of inappropriate political advocacy when it’s supposed to be a medical journal.

Open Thread

In a time of uncertainty, (and as the old one has reached an unprecedented 200 comments) here is a new open thread. Keep safe.

Open thread

No-one knows how long this situation will last, but underneath the BBC’s negativity, I sense a spirit of togetherness. It seems unhelpful to focus on finding fault with the government’s handling of the emergency. We need reassurance and encouragement.  

Walking in the lovely chilly sunshine while it’s still allowed. This wonderful place is called Upton Towans. Not many people around and plenty of space to social-distance.

Stay well.

Strategy for a deadly contagion

Alerted by a comment from MB including an H/T to Guest Who and two responses form Sisyphus.

(Yes, Farrow and Ball is posh paint with names like “Elephant’s breath’.  Posh in a Samantha Cameron kinda way, (ideal for one’s shepherd’s hut) but I think the brand might have already been superseded by other, even posher, more subtly-coloured versions, like the one you can get in Aga shops) 

I am grateful to the government for designating journalists as key workers, mainly so @MarinaHyde can continue to do what she does best: pouring industrial paint-stripper on the thin veneer of Farrow and Ballsh*t wherever she finds it https://t.co/Hggx0rBsWT

— Gabriel Gatehouse (@ggatehouse) March 20, 2020

See! I do read the open threads. Honest. I thought I’d like to expand on the topic of Marina Hyde, who seems to be one of Gabriel Gatehouse’s favourite paint-stripperers.

Venomous Guardian columnist Marina Hyde is no stranger to this blog, and before you say anything else, here is one I baked previously.

"I’m reminded of that phrase “It takes one to know one” because I recognise the habit of using excessively emotive and disparaging language to express 'passion' in the most effective way possible because I do the same thing myself in my own bloggeringly amateurish way.

(I might have said ‘startlingly offensive’ rather than ‘effective’.)

The piece in question today is Ms Hyde’s current torrent of Boris-bashing in the Guardian. Here we have a much better example of ‘it takes one to know one’ because it seems that Marina Hyde is accusing Boris of being a flippant, verbose, lying,…….. journalist. 

Why, she even plagiarises ‘spaffing’. All this without realising that she could easily have been outlining her own characteristics and then complaining about them, the difference being that Boris’s rhetoric is humorous, while, well …… you know.

The point I’m trying to make is that as she goes to town on Boris’s inept, incompetent, ineffectual mishandling of the current crisis, she has not offered a single constructive suggestion. So, does she think that Jeremy Corbyn would have handled the situation any better?

Come on! Negativity, negativity, negativity. How helpful is that, Gabriel Gatehouse?

I don't know if Boris is handling this situation well. After all, everyone seems to agree it's unprecedented. Constructive criticism is one thing, but unadulterated Boris-bashing is simply nasty

Stan and Ollie

#LaurelAndHardy pic.twitter.com/S7U3u4sq1V

— Laurel and Hardy (@Stan_And_Ollie) March 21, 2020

Double standards

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Brendan O’Neill has written a sharp piece about ‘the problem we don’t like talking about.’

I urge you to read it, as well as the responses below the line. 

I’ll try to summarise, which is very cheeky and presumptuous, but I’ve learned that not everyone (especially me) has the time and patience to click on every link.

O’Neill is concerned that the conviction of Hashem Abedi for the murders of 22 attendees of Ariana Grande’s concert at the Manchester Arena hasn’t engendered an appropriate amount of media coverage. Although his brother Salman was the actual suicide bomber, Hashem Abedi was equally responsible for the crime.

Where is the debate? asks O’Neill, where is the concern that ISIS-inspired extremism has fuelled such atrocities?  He identifies the media’s gross double standards, comparing the ‘Don’t look back in anger’ approach and the therapeutic style ‘deradicalisation’ strategy prescribed to treat violence and terrorism motivated by “Islamism” with the unadulterated ‘blame’ we attach to ‘far-right’ acts of terror, which must somehow be defeated.

"The very use of the term ‘radicalised’ reduces them to passive creatures who have had something bad done to them, probably by a twisted preacher on the internet. Apparently, they need our help. Fascists must be defeated, but violent Islamists must be cared for, put on the couch, pitied.

It’s a powerful piece, but it leaves me with one or two unanswered questions.

 1) Why do people like Brendan glibly condemn Tommy Robinson in such a reflexive and out of hand manner? (However, I now see Brendan has cautiously re-framed that condemnation - I suppose I'll have to search again for 'people like him' distancing themselves from Tommy Robinson )  After all, Robinson, (aka S Y-L ) has made an admirable effort to study the ideology that’s at the very heart of the problem. In other words, his Luton accent and his volatility are not enough to make him into a mere racist thug.  In fact, it’s his fearless, perhaps innately pugilistic quality, (lacking in many a lesser, more easily intimidated critic of Islam) that has protected and prevented him from being utterly intimidated and silenced by ‘the system’. 

2) The murky distinction between the ’ism’ in Islamism and Islam proper is problematic. In some ways, it’s a mirror image of the ‘good’ (anti-Zionist) Jew and the regular Jew. After all, when push comes to shove, a Jew is a Jew is a Jew.  Are we now saying the only good Muslim is an ex-Muslim? I kind of think we really are.

See the comment from Geoff W 18th March 2020 at 8:51 pm (I don’t think I can provide a direct link) but arguably the way forward hinges on some sort of future enlightenment within the religion. But, isn’t there a built-in super-injunction (within Islam itself) against reform?