The front page of BBC Leicester has two articles on Christmas – Will it snow? (really just a headline for a hyperlink to the weather page) and Leicester’s White Christmas (photos 6 and 7 are about as close to Christianity as you get – cf the Eid photoessay, which features Islam heavily, as well as smiling people and cute kids – at least there are two smiling Christmas people in Leicester, since the rest of the Christmas photo essay would lead you to believe the place is a deserted, if picturesque, snowfield).
Click to the Faith page, and hardly a word on Christmas:
Ghetto Gospel – a plug for a gangsta rapper that mentions “God” but fails to mention Jesus or Christianity
Dealing with Death (which actually involves a Christian, but one who is coping with something awful of course, rather than “dancing” or “celebrating”, unlike Leicester’s Muslims and Hindus it would seem)
A “multi-faith calendar” – “PLEASE NOTE: The below calendar will be removed at the end of 2005 and replaced early in 2006 with an improved multifaith calendar.”
More pop rubbish – “What have Coldplay, U2, Athlete, Tupac and Good Charlotte got to do with faith? Al Rogers from Loughborough looks at religious messages in pop songs.”
In case you hadn’t read enough from the faith page, there is a whole sub-site on Asian Life, as well.
Now just where did that grinch go?
America (take notes bbc) has got it right in religion. It’s illegal in the public sphere. No tax money for any creed. But, and here’s the genius of our overseas cousins, PRIVATELY you can bow down to whatever form of silliness you like as long as you are peaceful and non-intrusive about it. The bbc doesn’t seem to understand that concept at all. They just ignorantly waffle on about “fundamentalist” Bush et al. And they have hardly mentioned, if at all, a Pennsylvania court throwing out this idea of “intelligent design” in schools. The judge said in effect that it would be just another way to get taxpayers to foot the bill for wacky , unscientific, religious crackpotism.
Celebrating Christian holidays on public property also violates the constitutional separation between church and state! First they’ll be putting “C” trees in front of the courthouse and before you know it they will throw out the law books and use Jesus law instead. In the end, we’ll all be forced to pay tithes to the Pope and atheists will be burnt at the stake. So you see, we have to stop the pernicious merger of church and state right where it starts- on decorated pine trees and in cheap plastic light-up nativity scenes in the local town centre.
OT
The main news headline on the International side of the BBC website is
Saddam decries White House ‘lies’
…and the sub-headline…
Saddam Hussein repeats allegations he was tortured in US custody, calling American denials “lies”.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4551656.stm
It’s only when you actually read the article that it helpfully observes “Saddam Hussein is on trial over the killing of 148 people in Dujail in 1982. He denies responsibility.”
OT
Did anyone pick up on the Today analysis of the Prescott revival of the class war. Lords Carey and Stevens whining on about not being selected for grammar school in the 40s and 50s because of the 11-plus and how no children must feel the “failure” they felt. Their view, that selection by academic ability is an unmitigated evil, was, of course, unchallenged.
Yes John, Saddam’s predictable outburst has successfully buried coverage of the vile acts of which he is accused.
Further O/T
readers may be interested in a Times leader today on the blogosphere, newspapers & google.
They include
Visitors to the BBC website, for instance, can read stories about New York, Indonesia and Shropshire. One could be forgiven for believing that it was dispatched by BBC correspondents on the streets of Manhattan, Jakarta and Shrewsbury. It appears under Auntie’s banner, after all. But this is rarely the case. The stories are often unamended agency copy without any attribution given to Reuters, Agence France-Presse or the Associated Press. Such a muddled and muddied provenance merely encourages cynicism about large news organisations.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,173-1952774,00.html
This displays both (1)the common agenda of the BBC & the news agencies, and (2) the bad value we get from the BBC for the vast news staff that they employ.
(Whilst foreign reporters, other than in the US, seem rarely to get themselves into news bulletins, at the PM’s press conference yesterday we had massed ranks of BBC reporters, including 2 from Newsnight alone.)
Further to my comment about the “Newsnight” reporters at the PM’s press conference. One of them thought it worthwhile to go along to ask this pressing question
Prime Minister, in the past 12 months you have won an historic third term, and yet for you personally the political weather has never been choppier. Are you glad that 2005 is now drawing to a close?
http://www.pm.gov.uk/output/Page8834.asp
I’m glad that we are paying for such penetrating journalistic inquiry!!
O/T
Ghetto Gospel – a plug for a gangsta rapper that mentions “God” but fails to mention Jesus or Christianity
Have you also noticed how many programmes (not just on the Beeb, mind you) have an inappropriate ‘street beat’/rap style overdub ?
Then there’s BBC Radio 1 Xtra – a waste of licencepayers’ money to promote monoracial ‘music’.
Mark,
I’ve never been able to get my head around 1Xtra “The Black Music Channel”.
Would they allow a “white” DJ to play a “black” record? Or a “black” DJ to play a “white” record?
Surely “Urban Music Channel” would make more sense and not alienate/discriminate against 92% of the population?
But I’m forgetting, only “black” people can feel alientated or discriminated against.
_________________
I’ve just remembered a radio edition of “Knowing Me, Knowing You. With Alan Partridge”. He is doing a spoof interview with the head of BBC TV. Alan Partridge is sucking up to the guest in an attempt to get a TV series.
Alan keeps mentioning the BBC’s slogan – ‘Quality, Excellence and Originality’. When pressed by the guest on which programmes he likes, Alan cites Noel’s House Party as an example: “I come home on a Saturday evening, switch on the TV in the hope of seeing some quality, excellent and original TV. I watch Noel’s House Party and I think “Thank God for the BBC”.
I’m not sure if things have improved or deteriorated.
I’m wondering… Who’s watching what on the Beeb?
For me it’s Friday Night with Jonathan Ross and Match of the day. That’s that. Maybe the odd documentary but definetely no longer the BBC News programmes and I can’t stomach to watch Question Time for more than five minutes.
Hello
I cited you on my Blog, along with the other similar content under the caption: Multifaith Calendars – Visualize the Festivals, Feasts, Fasts, Festoons, etc.
Please leave your visual signature on my blog, so that the cycle is complete (in other words as they say: what comes round, goes round).
Best, Mohamed