Also very BBC

 A letter to The Sunday Times today from various celebrities and public figures campaigning for the Bank of England to put somebody from an ethnic minority on the new plastic £50 note doesn't seem to have struck the newspaper itself as being one of its top stories today. The Sunday Times has it somewhere around 45th place in its headlines, right at the bottom of the news section. The BBC, in true BBC fashion, has immediately latched onto this campaign and the story is one of its lead stories on the BBC News website at the moment. 

All very BBC

Dear readers. If you want a Christmas present for yourself, I'd recommend treating yourself to David Sedgwick's BBC: Brainwashing Britain? (hot off the presses).

I'm just a few pages away from the end of a first read-through and I've enjoyed every page of it.

It's the book about BBC bias that I've been waiting for, and I wish I'd written it myself.

It covers a lot of ground (from Antifa to Israel, from Grenfell Tower to Owen Jones), with a good deal on the BBC's biased Brexit coverage, though its recurring focus is on the BBC's hostile coverage of the Trump presidency.

And I think it absolutely nails the BBC, again and again and again.

(I'll be bringing you endless highlights from it over the coming weeks).

Admirers of Monkey Brains' fabulous Festive Fifty will also find fascinating examples of various 'bias by...' types detailed therein.

And, pausing to listen to tonight's PM on Radio 4, I now hear it through David's book:

First, as the BBC presenter put it, "no one said that saving the planet would be easy". Yes, it was global warming, and an interview with the right kind of BBC guest for this issue: the intensely activist former Tory minister John Gummer (Lord Deben). He wants the present (centre-right) Australian government chucked out because of its policies on climate change. The BBC presenter didn't defend the Australian government or challenge His Lordship.

Second, delaying Brexit and that 'second referendum', and an interview with Brexit-disliking Stephen Bush of The New Statesman, who very much talked the BBC talk on the matter and was treated as if he were an impartial sage.

Third, the Yellow vests protest in France, and a BBC reporter (Hugh Schofield) giving BBC favourite President Macron a French kiss, saying that he "has diffused this", and that "it's on a classic trajectory, this protest movement. It's dying down. And I think he can be satisfied he's not going to see it up again for a while". (Carry on Emmanuel!)

Fourth, one of the BBC's main present bogey countries, Myanmar, and an interview with a critic of the BBC's fallen heroine Aung San Suu Kyi over the imprisonment of two journalists there. The BBC really do have a bee in their bonnet about Burma.

And, fifth, the usual BBC race thing, featuring an interview with a black sports reporter from the Daily Mirror who reinforced claims that racism in football is as bad as it ever was and that the media is partly responsible for that. 'Discuss?' Hardly. Just repeat and amplify instead.

All very BBC.

Guest Post

By special request, I’m posting this image to illustrate the comment below (Sisyphus10 December 2018 at 10:00)  ‘Out of Office' Open thread.

“I was away for the weekend & accidentally deprived myself of wi-fi, so thanks, Peter for the up-date on the social media response to the Alistair Campbell/Jenni Russell squabble on Newsnight.

What I did not miss, though, was what was going on opposite Worcester Cathedral at about 4.15 on Saturday: having eaten a well-lubricated lunch, my wife & I returned to our hotel for a quick snooze. We had barely zizzed our first zeds when a commotion began outside: a quick peek through the curtains revealed a large yellow bus, bearing the legend:"Bollocks to Brexit," and a group of 15-20 people standing alongside it chanting the slogan. If the BBC reported this, it probably said a crowd of 100,000, so I repeat: THERE WERE 15-20 PEOPLE.

Two questions come to mind: who is funding this? and at whom is it targeted? I just had a look on-line & the organisers claim to be 'crowd-funded.' So, which crowd? Is there an EU slush-fund or is it Soros or Bilderberg types? The BBC is very keen on investigating the funding of referendum campaigners so no doubt we can expect a special edition of Panorama soon!

The target age-group appeared to be about 15 or 16 - have they been tipped off that there is to be a second referendum & a lower age-limit of 16?”

Sisyphus. 

Mishal Goes to Gaza

Something to look forward to... 😐

Appointment with Bias

My sister is an Agatha Christie devotee. She's read all the books and seen all the adaptations. So a new three-part BBC Christmas adaptation of a classic Hercule Poirot mystery, The ABC Murders, will certainly be on her to-watch list. 

Ah but, she voted for Brexit and, by the sounds of it, this BBC adaptation is going to employing all the usual wiles of BBC drama to make a political point about Brexit which she may not warm to.

That point? That there's a direction comparison between the fascist Sir Oswald Mosley and his Blackshirts in the 1930s and the world of Brexit and Donald Trump now. 

I trust my sister not to be taken in by such BBC nonsense.

Anyhow, here are the words of the BBC dramatist behind it, Sarah Phelps, in all their glory:

You don’t try to make [the novels of Agatha Christie] resonate - they just do, because we go round in cycles and the things we think we’ve left behind us historically are there, savage bunches of filth just waiting to erupt into our consciousness all over again. 

Hercule wasn’t born in Britain but made Britain his home during the First World War. In the 1930s, things were very much like they are now. The British Union of Fascists started to gain real traction in a really shocking way that people perhaps don’t know about. 

The language of it is exactly the language of Brexit and Trump. It’s all the same. Economically everything falls apart, with divisions sown and people looking for a scapegoat. 

Having been this celebrated Belgian detective, suddenly, being from another country is not a good thing to be. It taps into now. It’s genuinely chilling how similar it is.

Hmm. I'm no Andrew Neil, so I'm not going to call Ms. Phelps a 'mad cat woman', but maybe, just maybe, she needs to start separating fiction from fact an awful lot more, and also stock up on the Whiskas sachets? 

Anyhow, I don't think there's any great mystery as to what first attracted the BBC's commissioning editors to Ms. Phelps.

So, alas, there's no typical Agatha Christie-style twist here. It's more like Columbo in that the woman responsible for murdering The ABC Murders stands before us already. I only hope Inspector Japp is ready with his handcuffs. 

More hardline activity from the BBC

A quick update on the use of the word 'hardline' by BBC reporters and presenters.

A TV Eyes scan of BBC One, BBC Two and the BBC News Channel from the 1st December till now reveals 4 uses of 'hardline conservative', 11 uses of 'hardline Brexiteers', 2 uses of 'hardline Hindus' and 2 uses of 'hardline' in connection with Frances's Yellow vests.

The BBC reporters and presenters responsible (besides BBC newsreaders) are David Willis, Alex Forsyth, Rob Watson, Jon Pienaar (frequently), Emily Maitlis and Hugh Schofield. 

So: conservatives, Brexiteers, Hindus and Yellow vests. 

There was a use of 'hardline Remainers' but it was by a BBC guest. Naturally. 

The first time we did an extended survey of this there were, of course, lots more 'hardline Brexiteers' (and variations thereon), but also uses referring to President Trump's immigration policies, a Second World War era Japanese governor, Germany's right-wing interior minister, "hardline tax-cutting conservatives" in the US, the right-wing Austrian government for its stance on immigration, the populist Italian and conservative Hungarian governments for their stance on immigration, European governments in general who oppose mass immigration, the conservative CSU in Germany (for opposing Mrs Merkel over immigration), a right-wing politician in Turkey (Meral Akşener), "hardline clerics" opposed to women drivers in Saudi Arabia, and Italy's Matteo Salvini.

I'm still seeing a pattern here. Aren't you?

Herr Flick of the EU

Normal business will resume again next week...

...but, having been out last night and having had ever-so-slightly far too much to drink, I'm hoping I didn't do anything like this over the course of the evening:

#Juncker flips woman’s hair as leaders arrive for EC summit in #Brussels#EUCO pic.twitter.com/DzWTYABWZW

— Ruptly (@Ruptly) December 14, 2018

Maybe it's because I'm hungover, but I'm seriously expecting BBC comedians to go into mockery overdrive over this, and for BBC reporters to endlessly sneer at Herr Juncker, and for Newsnight to do a #MeToo special over him behaviour, and for Women's Hour to spend weeks discussing this kind of patriarchal, misogynistic hair-flipping. (Not really, of course).

And just imagine if Donald J. had done it! (Of course, he's teetotal, so it's a bit different). Katty, Anthony, Jon, Nick, Tara, James, Hugh, the other Nick, Emily, Jane, and myriad dozen others, would have gone into hyperdrive about it. And it would surely have been on the main BBC One news bulletins faster than you can say 'backstop'.

I've not checked any of the BBC One bulletins or Newsnight but I'll place a bet that they didn't report this, even in passing, and there's no video of it on the BBC News website yet.

Use it or lose it. Or: Rod Liddle on BBC bias

Having been a subscriber to The Times for longer than I care to admit, I'm suddenly denied online computer access (maybe because of a recent decline in activity) so I had to copy this piece from another device (inexplicably with normal access) and email it to myself in order to post this.) All for your edification.

(Must get round to reading Robin Aitken sometime.)

To show that I'm still here, I give you a major chunk of Rod Liddle in today's Sunday Times. I've left out the introductory passage because it's about Dr Who. Here's the meaty bit:

"The liberal bias within the BBC increases, almost exponentially, with each week that passes. It managed to behave itself, just about, during the Brexit referendum, but now the gloves are off — as the “editorial director” of BBC News (what’s that?) Kamal Ahmed revealed in a leaked email: ram it home to those thick-as-mince leaver losers just how hellish their lives are going to be if we get out (I have paraphrased his email to staff). Every piece of good economic news prefaced with “In spite of Brexit . . .” and given caveats, every bad piece of news leading the bulletins. 

Seventy MPs wrote to the BBC to complain about its bias on this issue; the Beeb told them to get stuffed. But then, the bias is just as bad on every other issue within the news, especially immigration, which is something to be incontestably welcomed and people who are a bit wary about it are knuckle-browed racists who require re-education. Not to mention foreign affairs, which consists of a perpetual sneer at Donald Trump and a good kicking for Israel whenever it dares to respond to a violent attack from Hamas (which will have gone unmentioned). 

This kind of relentless, institutionalised bias in the news is dismally, but brilliantly, adumbrated in a new book by a chap called Robin Aitken, a BBC staffer for more than 25 years. Aitken, sick to the back teeth of the partisan nature of the corporation’s news coverage, concludes that the BBC has “whether through carelessness or hubris” given up any pretence of impartiality, preferring instead to promulgate its philosophically asinine world view. And with an unrelenting authoritarianism which, as he puts it, demands: “You will tolerate what I say must be tolerated and condemn what I say must be condemned, and if you do not you will be branded racist or misogynist or Islamophobe and be shamed off the public stage.” 

The worrying thing is that Aitken is actually being kind to the BBC. His book, The Noble Liar, concentrates on its news programmes, which are at least compelled by statute to pay some sort of vague obeisance to impartiality. 

It’s in the rest of the stuff that the BBC propaganda really goes to town, as we saw with Doctor Who. The comedy panel shows where every single joke is from the left; discussion forums on Radio 4 and BBC2, where only liberals are allowed to take part; dramas constructed simply to promulgate a liberal point of view; the cringeing tokenism of panel programmes where there must be a black or ethnic minority person no matter how thick or unfunny they are and despite the fact that we are still an 87% white country; even its food programmes, which are relentlessly anti-big business; its soaps; its light entertainment. 

I beg to differ from Aitken — carelessness does not come into it. The BBC promulgates this idiotic world view because it thinks it is the only one that is true. And those of us who think different are simply, objectively, wrong."

Out Of Office Message

Apologies. Things may be quiet here for the next week or so.

The Open Thread remains open for all of your comments - as does this one, when that gets too full. Thank you for all of them.

Open Thread

Hills of the north, rejoice! It's time for the advent of a new open thread.

Thank you for your comments. You're doing us proud.

"I think we pitch it about right"

The Real Simon McCoy

A minor point, but it amused me and regular readers will hopefully appreciate it too. 

And if they don't, well, I think we've broadly landed in the right place. 

The BBC News Channel's much-appreciated Simon McCoy was on Samira Ahmed's Newswatch this week and was asked, "Are you in danger of letting your on-screen persona take over the news?", to which he replied, "I think we pitch it about right".

Alas, he wasn't being deadpan there, so that's another one for the collection. 

Meetings of minds

Helen Pidd (for old time's sake)

As raised by Ozfan on the open thread, the opening stretch of this morning's Broadcasting House consisted of two interviews, one after the other - the first with Ian Hislop, the second with Helen Pidd of The Guardian - both essentially focused on the 'bored with Brexit/let's move on and focus on other issues' theme which the BBC has been raising a lot recently. 

Some say (as they say on the BBC!) that this is also a key theme for the Government in its bid to get the public and, therefore, MPs to 'move on' too and accept Mrs May's Brexit deal. 

Conspiracy, or mere coincidence of interests?

And then the programme used the Kindertransport anniversary to draw an equivalence between Jewish children fleeing the Nazis and today’s refugees and economic migrants. 

In fairness though, during the paper review later Peter Hitchens objected that "it doesn't really do" to compare or equate the persecution of the Jews by the Nazis and present-day largely economic migration. 

Mr. Hitchens, one of the BBC's right-wingers of choice, was on alongside new BBC regular Grace Blakeley of The New Statesperson. She was displeased by his objection here, though they had a strong meeting of minds over the need for rail nationalisation and the wickedness of "the man who calls himself Tommy Robinson/Mr Yaxley-Lennon, who calls himself Tommy Robinson" and the "insane, racist" leftovers of UKIP. 

Still, we did get to hear some boiled eggs boiling, and the bit on the Shipping Forecast was pleasant, moderate becoming good later. 

Headline news

Among the headlines stories on the BBC News website - yes, BBC News website - this morning is:

It looks as if I'm not the only one to have thought, "This is news, apparently".

BBC employees back an anti-Israel stunt

The estimable Daphne Anson notes a recent stunt by anti-Israel activists.

This last Friday, a group called inminds projected a slide show onto the walls of Broadcasting House in protest at Israel hosting the Eurovision Song Contest next year. They want the BBC to pull out of the competition.

The protest group's own website says:

'The projection lasted over an hour during which time many passers by and BBC employees came to congratulate us for voicing their own concerns of how inappropriate it would be for the Eurovision to be hosted by Israel, and shameful for the BBC to support it.' 

"And many BBC employees"? Why doesn't that surprise me?

Anyhow, happy Hanukkah to our Jewish readers!

Mr Marr's Advent Sunday Sermon

'O Come, O Come Emmanuel'.

No, that's not what the French are currently saying about President Macron (definitely not in fact) but rather the title of my second-favourite Advent hymn.

And after the hymn, here comes the sermon:

Good morning. Well, the countdown has started. No! Not to that. Today is the first day of Advent. It ought to be a time when we are reflecting on those worse off than ourselves, and after a withering, controversial UN report on poverty in Britain, it's hard to avoid the subject. I am not getting party political, but if we don't notice the rough sleepers all around us at this time of year, as the sleet comes down and the Christmas lights go up, then there is something wrong with all of us. 

Amen.

That wasn't the famous 'fake vicar' from Newsnight, but Andrew Marr opening his show this morning. 

You may be seated. 

Sir Roger Scruton on scapegoats

Credit is due to BBC Radio 4 for not yielding to the witch-hunters vis-à-vis Sir Roger Scruton, and for retaining him as an A Point of View regular. Good on them!

Here is his latest A Point of View in full:

*******

Three years ago the distinguished biochemist Sir Tim Hunt, recipient of the Nobel Prize, Fellow of the Royal Society and one of the jewels in the crown of British science, made a casual remark during a speech at a conference of science journalists which seemed to imply that women and men might not be equally suited to a scientific career. The remark was tweeted, and the mob got to work on it. Very soon Sir Tim found himself forced out of his position as Honorary Professor at University College, London, reprimanded by the Royal Society, hounded in the press, and subjected to a hate campaign on social media. Eventually he and his wife, a scientist of the same rank as himself, left the country to work in Japan.

This deplorable episode is one of many in which a person's character, career and livelihood have been attacked in punishment for a thought crime. Social media make matters worse, of course, but it would be wrong to put the blame wholly on the ease with which malice and ignorance can now extend their reach across the internet. We must also take account of political correctness, which both promotes hatred and also excuses it. 

On the surface political correctness seems like a way of standing up for victims, be they women, minorities, gays, transsexuals or whatever. In reality, however, it is about creating victims. It sets out to repudiate the hierarchies and distinctions embedded in our traditional way of life. People in the grip of political correctness are in search of the one who has sown hatred and rejection that they sense all around. They are experts in taking offence, regardless of whether offence has been given. They refrain from addressing the arguments of the one whom they accuse, and when they are offended by a remark they do not hesitate to take it entirely out of context so to dress it up as a crime. As judge, prosecutor and jury they are the voice of an unquestionable righteousness. Their goal is to intimidate their opponents by exposing them to public humiliation.

This is what we see when students deny a platform to people whose arguments they don't want to listen to. It is what we encounter in the name-calling labels 'racism', 'sexism', 'homophobia', 'Islamophobia', 'transphobia', which are designed to silence any who might wish to defend some old and questionable practice - as Sir Tim seemed to be defending the view of the laboratory as a male preserve. 

It is in this way that the disease of 'Islamophobia' was invented in order to preclude all discussion of the most important issue facing European societies today. Ordinary people wonder whether the God of Islam permits the crimes that are committed in his name but they dare not pursue the matter for fear of attracting the charge of 'Islamophobia'. The question that cannot be asked is like a festering wound filling the mind with suspicions. And, in this way, political correctness stirs up fear in the place of reconciliation by turning doubt about Islam into a thought crime. It recasts legitimate anxieties as acts of aggression and lays at the door of Islam's critics the crimes that are committed in Islam's name.

Similar things have happened with the 'homophobia' and 'transphobia' labels. The -isms and -phobias have been used in order to put some complex matter beyond discussion, so that only one perspective can be publicly confessed to - namely the perspective that is politically correct.

Moreover, because political correctness deals in thought crimes, it closes the gap between accusation and guilt. In the world of political correctness there is no presumption of innocence but only a hunger for targets.

But I don't put the blame only on political correctness. There is a far deeper and more durable feature of the human condition that comes to the surface in the witch-hunt. and that is the feature known as 'scapegoating'. The French philosopher René Girard has argued that natural societies are subject to powerful rivalries as people strive to match each other's powers and possessions and to triumph in the fight for ascendancy. Such societies risk being torn apart by what Girard calls "mimetic desire", that is the desire of one person to enjoy the rewards received by another. The solution is to find the enemy within, the one who does not really belong in the social order and who is, therefore, not entitled to vengeance against it. Such people can be quickly stripped of protection by the mob. They might be accused of necromancy, incest or parricide, of having no family to protect them, of pretending to be king. They are a source of pollution, like Oedipus, to be cast out from the city. They can be killed with impunity or left to die. By combining against them we take revenge for the offences we have suffered, for they, in a mysterious way, were the cause. They become sacrificial victims whose death at our hands will rid us of the pollution that radiates from their malign presence. 

The story has been repeated down the centuries. It is the story of Oedipus, and also of Christ. It is the story of the millenarian panics of the Middle Ages, of the witch-hunts of 17th century Massachusetts, of the centuries-old persecution of the Jews. In every period when the bonds of society weaken and social trust gives way to mutual suspicion the scapegoat mechanism returns to restore a threatened sense of unity. 

An example is before our eyes in the case of Asia Bibi, the Christian Pakistani woman accused of blaspheming against the holy Koran, and although now acquitted still living in fear for her life. Television images of her hysterical accusers show a unity of purpose that surpasses anything that could survive in day-to-day life. They scream for her blood since it is the food of their togetherness.

Girard believed that Christ showed the way out of the scapegoat mechanism when he prayed for those who nailed him to the cross,saying "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do". But there is little evidence that Christ's example brought scapegoating to an end. We too have recourse to it when besieged by social resentment. The sense of being excluded, of wandering outside society in search of an ideal community of belonging; this is a familiar modern experience. And political correctness is one form that it takes, for it provides a short cut to blame, a way to direct one's frustration at an enemy and to group together in destroying him. A society in the grip of political correctness is on the lookout for the scapegoat who will heal its divisions by showing that it is he not they who is the cause of them. 

So how should you respond to this mechanism when it comes your way? The question arose for me some weeks ago when, being appointed to an unpaid government position, I became a news item. At once I found myself accused of every crime in the ledger of political correctness, Islamophobia and antisemitism included. 

As a philosopher I consider propositions in the light of their truth not their political correctness, hence I have not bothered to forestall the cultural vigilantes who sift through our words in search of heresy. People who are not in the habit of thinking can easily take sentences out of context and believe that they're discovering a thought crime. 'So what?', I've always thought. 'That's their problem, not mine'. 'No', said The Guardian, 'it is not our problem but yours'. 

At the worst moment, reading about the dreadful things said about me by people who seem to have no knowledge of what I have actually written or said, I felt myself standing in an electric storm of hatred and was tempted to hate in my turn, but then a concerned friend reminded me of the beautiful verse in the Koran which says that the servants of the All-Compassionate One, when challenged by the ignorant, speak peaceably, qâlou salâman. They reach for dialogue and argument and open the way to respect. 

This is surely the correct response to the emerging witch-hunt culture. We must speak peaceably, even to our accusers. We must avoid the name-calling, shrug off the -isms and -phobias when they are heaped on us, confessed to our true faults and robustly deny the invented ones. Most importantly we should venerate truth and ignore political correctness, which is not the cure to our conflicts but the ultimate source of them.  

To accompany your bacon and eggs...

Some BBC-related reading to accompany your Sunday breakfast...

First Gillian Reynolds in The Sunday Times:

It is not necessarily the best course to replace a male presenter with a female one. Sara Cox is not as good as Clive Anderson at hosting Radio 4’s Loose Ends. Talking to Cliff Richard last Saturday, her anxiety flooded the airwaves and drowned the show. 

Nor is it inevitable that one woman will do as well as another in any job. Lauren Laverne, standing in for Kirsty Young on Desert Island Discs, is a severe disappointment, all marshmallow, no nuts. The BBC, in haste to correct years of discrimination in appointments and remuneration, is doing no one any favours by preferment apparently based more on gender than on ability.

Secondly, Adam Boulton in The Sunday Times:

The BBC is world-famous for a decision-making structure of a complexity matched only by that of the Indian civil service. For a while it looked as though understandable editorial qualms might prevent a counterbid [over the Brexit Deal debate]. But [Robbie] Gibb makes no secret of his admiration for the BBC over all other broadcasters, and has close personal ties to many of his former colleagues in news and current affairs. There is a certain kind of BBC person incapable of talking about anything other than the BBC. The corporation’s eventual proposal was to May’s liking: no live audience and questions from a panel of businesspeople, who, in desperation, are inclining towards her agreement.

Thirdly, The Mail on Sunday: 

• New BBC Sounds app allowing users to listen to the radio and download shows is slammed despite £10million marketing campaign.
• Listeners flooded social media with complaints about the BBC's new service.
• One said the app was worse than the iPlayer Radio that it will replace next year.
• BBC Sounds brings 18 national and 40 local radio stations together in one app.
• A BBC spokesman said: 'BBC Sounds is already superior to the iPlayer Radio app.'

Polls and cheers

This may be of interest (or not):

Andrew Adonis: The loudest cheers I get in my Brexit public meetings, a bit to my surprise, are when I say: ‘it’s time for the BBC to once again become an impartial public broadcaster’. 

Sunder Katwala: This could suggest one of two things: (1) growing pressure/scepticism at BBC; (2) v.narrow self-selection for Brexit rally attendees (not reflective of what most Remainers think of BBC). The evidence is that (1) is unlikely. 13% of remain voters saw BBC as pro-Brexit early this year. (14% saw it as pro-Remain). That niche may have grown to a slightly bigger minority of Remainers.

He was basing that on YouGov polling from February which found that 45% of Leave voters think the BBC is anti-Brexit but only 13% of Remain voters thought the BBC is pro-Brexit (yes, less than the Remain voters who agreed with that 45% of Leave voters about the anti-Brexit direction of the bias). 

BBC 100 Women 2018

Following on from:

The latest 'Viewpoint' to appear on the BBC News website is:

The actress Jameela Jamil, best known for her role in US TV series The Good Place, says airbrushing is a crime against women and should be illegal. "It is anti-feminist. It is ageist. It is fat-phobic".

These viewpoints are coming from women appearing on the BBC 100 Women 2018 list. 

It's a list that tells you something about the BBC's biases.

For example, looking at the nine politicians on the list (and Googling around about them), guess where the balance lies politically? 

Well, there's 1 centre-right politician, 1 left-wing politician and 7 centre-left politicians. 

Are you surprised at that 8:1 ratio? (Rhetorical question,)

Ever wondered what a non-sarcastic BBC comment about Donald Trump looks like?

(Spoiler: You won't find the answer below.)

Also as per a comment by Peter, here's the BBC's Diplomatic Correspondent James Landale:

Ever wondered what ⁦@realDonaldTrump⁩’s motorcade looks like from above? Here it is keeping the good folk of Buenos Aires awake... pic.twitter.com/GPpRWT5rZc

— James Landale (@BBCJLandale) December 1, 2018

Here are some of my favourite responses (not all of them from Twitter!):

• You new at this covering Presidential motorcades and security thing, James?
• Clearly technology was more advanced in the past when Obama's motorcade could pass noiselessly through residential areas. 
• It's unbelievable how Trump gets criticised for doing things every other President has done. People on Twitter criticised him for his statement on Bush because it was written by a speechwriter. There have been speechwriters for years!
• Now tweet the one of Clinton visiting Belfast. The same cavalcade. I watched it go past. This is the norm not news.

At last, and belatedly perhaps...

As per a comment from Peter, here's Laura K:

That "at last" is a distinct touch of editorialising. 

And it's a firmer version of what she said on the Today programme yesterday morning, where she said, with added 'perhaps' figleaf: 

There is some comfort for Theresa may from Michael Gove who is, belatedly perhaps. urging his Brexiteer colleagues to get on board with the deal.

Where you agree with her or not, these really are bursts of opinion. Or, to put it another way, little bias slips. 

'Grid' (again)

It is interesting looking back at that leaked 'grid' ("a note passed to the BBC") that the Government tried to dismiss ("Downing Street says it's not Theresa May's plan and the childish language in the notes shows it's not an official document"), for I'm seeing more on more of the things on the 'grid' happening, and the BBC duly reporting them. The Japanese PM has popped up today (a few days late admittedly), and the "lots of former foreign secs" spoke out in concert the other day (and got interviewed on Today), "Jeremy Hunt on Marr" happened on the exact day stated, and we learned yesterday (via Buzzfeed) that Downing Street did try to get a 1-on-1 interview for Mrs May with David Dimbleby. And to think I was sceptical about it!

BBC coyness

There's a striking difference in the reporting this evening of the resignation of Labour shadow minister Kate Osamor between Sky's online report and the BBC's online report. 

The BBC says: 

Ms Osamor's resignation follows allegations of misconduct made by a national newspaper.

Sky goes much further: 

The Times also said Ms Osamor told a reporter who approached her for a comment at her home this week that she "should have come down here with a bat and smashed your face in". She allegedly told him to "f*** off" before throwing a bucket of water on him and calling police.

Curious.

'Viewpoint'

The BBC News website's 'Viewpoint' articles from non-BBC people are often revealing. The latest one, newly tweeted about by BBC News, is this:

Comments could be going better. The top one reads, "Taking the texture, joy and beauty out of life one column at a time."

Making an introduction

Spot the use of labels - and the non-use of labels here - from Evan Davis on Wednesday's PM.

Well, no one can speak for the whole population of Leavers, but let's talk to Claire Fox, the director of the Academy of Ideas, who is sympathetic to the Leave cause, and political commentator Steve Richards. Very good evening to you both.

Though he does quite a bit of presenting for BBC Radio 4, Steve Richards is a Remainer who wants Brexit scrapped, but - being the BBC - was he ever likely to have been introduced as such like the likes of Evan? 

(Very interesting discussion though).

The public is of one mind (apparently)

Questions and answers

"I think what has shocked me the most about May’s push for us to accept her rubbish deal is the way the BBC have picked only supporters when asking people’s opinions in the street", someone tweeted earlier today. 

Is that far-fetched? 

Well, please just watch the video report on Monday's Politics Live (beginning 15m 32s in) and see what you think. 

The BBC reporter, Elizabeth Glinka, went to Birmingham and spoke to six members of the public. 

Here's a transcript:

BBC reporter: This weekend the Prime Minister went over the heads of politicians and wrote directly to the British public, asking them to support here plan for Brexit. So we've come here to Birmingham to find out if it is working.  

Vox Pop 1: Oh, no. Not Brexit! Do you know what? I'm actually not paying much attention to it. It's doing my head in. Back her. Sort it out. Let's get it sorted and done. Out of Europe.  

Vox Pop 2: I actually think she's doing fairly well in a really tough environment. If she goes too far one way we don't get the deal, and if she goes too far the other way and she's just appeasing the EU. She's gone straight down the middle. She's got a compromise. I think she's doing pretty well in a really hard situation.  

Vox Pop 3: She's still pushing through with the Brexit deal and trying to get the best for us out of it. BBC reporter to Vox Pop 3: It sounds like you admire her then?  Vox Pop 3: Yes, I do. I do. She's a fighter. She's a fighter. Even though they are coming against her, she's still pushing. 

Vox Pop 4: There's too much infighting. I think they should just let her get on with it. I don't think even if we got another Prime Minister in, I don't think they would do any better. BBC reporter to Vox Pop 4: And she's got a lot of opposition, both from Leavers and Remainers for the plan she's come up with. Do you think she's right to plough on regardless even though lots of people don't like it? Vox Pop 4: But I think, even if she stopped at this stage, I think any deal she puts through there's going to be people who going to complain about it.  

BBC reporter to Vox Pop 5: And what do you think of the MPs on both sides, Leave and Remain, who are fighting her on this, opposing her and saying they're not voting for this? Vox Pop 5: I think they just need to come together at this point. We're one country at the end of the day and we need to do this as one country, effectively.  

BBC reporter to Vox Pop 6: Are you a BOB? You are 'bored of Brexit'? Vox Pop 6: Yes, yeah I am. I am. I've got a new name. I'm a BOB. I like that!  

BBC reporter: Well, the Prime Minister's withdrawal deal may be deeply unpopular with both Leaves and Remainers at Westminster but here on the streets of Birmingham we found a good deal of sympathy for Theresa May and, dare I say it, even some sympathy for her plan.

Not only did Elizabeth find "a good deal of sympathy for Theresa May and, dare I say it, even some sympathy for her plan" on the streets of Birmingham, she failed to find even one person who was critical of Mrs May or her plan. This must have been music of the sweetest kind to No.10's ears: 0% public opposition to her plan, and huge amounts of sympathy and support. Even the 'bored of Brexit' sentiments will have pleased the PM's team.

Quite breathtaking, don't you think?

Debates about debates

Buzzfeed's Mark Di Stefano and Alex Wickham have a very interesting account of the various shenanigans surrounding the intended Brexit deal debate between Mrs May and Mr Corbyn, and Alex has also handily provided a Twitter summary of its  contents:

• BBC accused of acting on behalf of Downing Street with debate pitch that favours May’s deal over any of the alternatives.
• Original BBC pitch was for May and Corbyn to appear with a 20-strong panel (!) made up of members of the public, figures from public life and politicians. 10 pro-deal, 10 anti with various different views. No10 loved the idea. Others less so.
• SNP have written to Tony Hall complaining. Corbyn’s office also unimpressed with BBC twitter antics yesterday.
• Under original BBC proposal, once you account for moderator’s comments, May/Corbyn opening statements, and interventions from the panel, there would be an estimated 12 minutes left for head to head debate. ITV’s plan allows for half an hour even with ads.

At least someone still likes them

Meanwhile, the feminist activist who got such extensive and sympathetic coverage from the BBC for her campaign to have a woman on the new £10 note, is sticking up for the BBC against the Lordly One:

Which is nice.

Incidentally, I think this is the right post for the following joke: 

Turns out the Canary Islands do not have canaries. Same thing with the Virgin Islands. No canaries.

All Gas and Gaiters

Elsewhere, of course, #VicarGate is still raging. 

For newcomers to this latest Newsnight 'scandal', here's a summary of what happened:

Earlier this week Newsnight staged a discussion about Mrs May's Brexit deal involving "members of the public", one of whom, 'Reverend Lynn', urged us to “have faith in the government”.

Some viewers, however, smelled a unholy rat and claimed that 'Reverend Lynn' is actually a professional actress called Marina Hayter, who has been an extra in Eastenders and a Star Wars film, as well as playing "Bar Worker, Chemo Patient, Wedding Guest and Fun Fair Attendee" in various other things.

Many started accusing the BBC of deliberately hiring an actress to pretend to be a Brexit-Deal-backing pro-Government pastor on Newsnight.

The BBC, of course, denies this:

Some familiar faces appeared among the conspiracy theorists. Hear the word of the Lord, for example!:

Enter Emily, stage left:

And a little bird tells me that Newsnight editor Esme Wren started twittering too:

Cue Paul Mason, ex-Newsnight master of impartiality, entering stage far-left:

And on it goes...

THE clear and present danger

Andrew speaks (or tweets rather):

Vladimir Putin and the Saudi Crown Prince shared an enthusiastic handshake as they sat down for a meeting at the G20 in Argentina.

For more, head here: https://t.co/Q9yahEuyXz pic.twitter.com/lOI6QbNcFd

— Sky News (@SkyNews) November 30, 2018

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