Please use this thread for BBC-related comments and analysis. Please keep comments on other threads to the topic at hand. N.B. this is not (and never has been) an invitation for general off-topic comments, rants or use as a chat forum. This post will remain at or near the top of the blog. Please scroll down to find new topic-specific posts.
BBC Radio 2 DJ Jeremy Vine has decided to mark the occasion of the British Army leaving Northern Ireland by playing the racist hate song “Go on home British soldiers”, which not only wallows in the slaughter of the last four decades, but also delivers up these delighful lines to all Unionists still left in Northern Ireland:
“Throughout our history We were born to be free
So get out British bastards leave us be”
Lovely stuff for a nice sunny Tuesday afternoon!
Lightweight, offensive and facile as ever Jeremy… such a shame you’ve got a meal-ticket for life on the BBC gravy train.
There’s more on O’Neills own blog, A Pint of Unionist Lite, in Operation Banner: Thanks for a job well done. While you’re there, scroll down to the next post, The BBC and Britishness, for another take on that dodgy BBC poll from the other day.
Dave T posted this comment from a Canadian commenter on ARRSE (The ARmy Rumour Service):
I was watching the BBC World Service this morning and was dismayed by their coverage marking the end of Op Banner which focused on the account of a Sinn Fein spokesman who essentially portrayed the British Army as cold blooded murderers. In the clip I saw there were no other representatives interviewed nor ordinary NI citizens asked for their opinions.
Keep ’em peeled for more BBC revisionist coverage of this milestone.
a number of longer posts that are in the pipeline, you might very well enjoy the delicious Beeboid satire on offer at the Secret Blog of a TV Controller (aged 33 and 3/4) – it does for Shepherd’s Bush what The Thick of It (post the awful Chris Langham) does for Westminster – very funny, hits the mark and has an air of insider authority about it. For example:
- No sense of humour
- Smells a bit
- Not in touch with Da Kids (unlike me)
- I can’t understand her when she speaks
- Wears too much green
- Does not like to polish off a bottle of Shiraz and do a couple of lines at Soho House on a friday night
- Way too posh to ‘connect’ with my viewers.
I’m not in the office today but watching with glee to see Fincham take it in the neck for his Queen cock-up. I was reliably informed via the GossipBerry that Fincham and Stephen Lambert were seen sitting outside Fifi’s office looking like two chastened schoolboys. Then later storming down the corridor (like Batman and Robin on the way to a crisis in Gotham) and very loudly verbally kicking three streaks of living piss out of the head of promos.
Lambert could be heard shouting things like “share price drop” and “not when I was at f***ing Modern Times we didn’t!” whilst Fincham just stood there scowling and clenching his fists.
Brilliant. Heads are going to f***ing roll on this one!
See, this is the danger with celebrity access docs these days. The subjects are so ‘twitchy’ about how we represent them. Rewind five years ago and you could f*** anyone over without a problem. Even the Queen.
Sounds just like the Beeboids we know and love. I wonder who’s going to commission it…
The Today programme’s love affair with the counterculture continues. Sarah Montague interviews the widow of Neal Cassady (aka “Dean Moriarty”) on the 50th anniversary of Kerouac’s “On The Road“, the hippie handbook written in the Beat Age.
“It must have been quite a life to be part of this amazing gang” she gushed.
Carolyn Cassady seemed less starry-eyed.
“Well, it was hard for Neal to see Jack drinking himself to death, because his own (Cassady’s) father was a wino, and it was hard for Jack to see Neal killing himself with drugs.“
Even Neal Cassady was more in touch with reality.
“Twenty years of fast living–there’s just not much left, and my kids are all screwed up. Don’t do what I have done.”
I’m not sure if the impeccably middle class Ms Montague would have found the gang quite so amazing at close quarters.
Next week on the Today programme : “Why are levels of drug abuse and sexually transmitted infections rising ?“
, an article by John Simpson, as part of their ‘From our own correspondent’ series, reflecting on his feelings about the incidents he reports on in light of the recent birth of his son, Rafe. Simpson writes:
And to see the miracle of other people’s lives snuffed out wantonly on the streets of Baghdad or Kabul, or London for that matter, for some scarcely understood political or religious motive, seems to me nothing short of blasphemy.
I do not just loathe the stench of high explosive, I have come to loathe the attitudes of people who use high explosive for their own purposes: insurgents, terrorists, the intelligence services of a dozen countries, governments which target towns and cities and always have a ready apology when they kill the wrong people.
A laudable observation of what most decent and humane people just know innately, without requiring a revelatory experience – although I suppose we must remember that people at the BBC these days do seem to have issues when it comes to telling right from wrong. Curiously though, Simpson lumps together all users of high explosives as if they are equally loathesome, without stopping to note that there is a big difference between terrorists and insurgents, who tend to seek to maximise civilian casualties to further their cause, and responsible governments who go to great lengths to minimise civilian casualties to further their cause – even if on some occasions some of their representatives could try harder and be less glib when apologies are sadly necessary.
I hope I never did think that attacks on civilians – any civilians – were justified but now I know for certain they are not.
Again, this isn’t a sentiment that most people would have any doubt about, ever. Perhaps Simpson’s lack of certainty reflects the offensive BBC-think that insists that ‘terrorists’ are ‘militants’, because terrorist as a word has negative connotations, without of course stopping to remember that the reason why the word terrorist has negative connotations is precisely because of what terrorists do!
The fact is, my time reporting on violence and bombings in places like Baghdad and Kabul has shown me one essential thing: that the lives of the poor, the stupid, the old, the ugly, are no less precious to them and to the people around them, than the life of my little son Rafe is precious to me.
Another statement so obvious that it is remarkable solely because Mr. Simpson thinks it needs to be said. Still, we can but hope that Simpson’s revelations might better inform the BBC when it comes to distinguishing between right and wrong,
between terrorist and militant, when reporting and recording events around the world.
Please use this thread for BBC-related comments and analysis. Please keep comments on other threads to the topic at hand. N.B. this is not (and never has been) an invitation for general off-topic comments, rants or use as a chat forum. This post will remain at or near the top of the blog. Please scroll down to find new topic-specific posts.
has written BBC Warning Service – Round-up for Pregnant Women on her blog, drawing attention to a laundry-list of BBC warnings (also known as scare stories) for pregnant women – the usual stuff: watch out for this, do this, don’t do that, etc. etc. Pregnant women aren’t the only people who need to beware of the incessant scaremongering and social engineering promulgated by the many idle hands at BBC Views Online – we all need to beware – stress is bad for you after all!
, with tonight’s episode, Guns, Gangsters, and Getaways: The Story of the British Crime Thriller, described in Radio Times as follows:
There are some tremendous thrillers here – Brighton Rock, Mona Lisa, Get Carter – but I hope you’ve seen them all, because if you haven’t, there’s little point in hiring the DVDs. Crucial plot details and endings are all given away. Even actual closing scenes (Get Carter) are fully aired, which will probably come as a disappointment to anyone whose taste for some British cinema classics is tweaked by otherwise great clips. Spoiled surprises aside, this is a handy compilation (part of BBC2’s Summer of British Film season), with some good contributors, not the usual bunch of who-on-earth-is-that? talking heads. (emphasis added)
Well, that’s not quite true. There were some interesting ‘talking heads’, but a lot of the usual vacuous ‘writer and broadcaster’ (i.e. haven’t got a real job) types so beloved of the BBC too. One of them was one Richard Bacon, well known for being fired from children’s programme Blue Peter for cocaine abuse.
Speaking about the well known London gangster film, The Long Good Friday, Bacon opined that the film was, among other things, a reflection of Thatcherism. Whilst a hired z-list BBC lackey might well malign Thatcher and Thatcherism in this way, it would be a lot more credible if the lackey in question at least had his facts right (even if his opinions based on the facts are hogwash).
Margaret Thatcher was elected in May 1979. The Long Good Friday was released in November 1980. Anyone who knows how long it takes to make and produce a film can see that The Long Good Friday can therefore not be a reflection of Thatcherism. Moreover, Richard Bacon was born in November 1975, so he was three years old when Thatcher came to power, four years old when the film was released and fifteen years old when Thatcher was deposed.
Clearly he doesn’t and can’t know what he’s talking about, yet the BBC sees fit to spend our tellytax paying this z-list celeb to peddle their usual revisionist tripe at us. I’ve often wondered how these talking heads style programmes are put together – do they watch the films in question and then come up with their own impressions (as is implied), or are their ‘impressions’ scripted in advance, with the talking heads merely delivering lines? I’ve always suspected the latter. Now I’m sure. Yet more fakery. The BBC, it’s what we do!
P.S. Have you noticed recently that, not content with stuffing the gaps between programmes with multiple lengthy trails to promote selected BBC programmes (i.e. advertising for the BBC, paid for by viewers, designed to benefit the BBC), they are now frequently talking across programme end-credits and displaying yet more BBC adverts while the credits roll minimised to one corner or side? I woudn’t mind the BBC doing so much advertising if it was paid advertising rather than just more expensive BBC propaganda – paid advertising would be much better value for tellytaxpayers and would be a lot less tedious and repetitive than the BBC’s own propaganda.
, former BBC Business Editor in today’s Daily Telegraph. Here are some highlights, first, Randall on the culture of the BBC:
In a commercial organisation, these undesirables would be driven out by market forces. The yardstick of success and failure provided by profit and loss is a visible reminder of whether you are winning or losing. When results are poor, or mistakes are made, heads roll. A line is drawn and the business moves on.
This rarely happens at the BBC. Instead of the boil being lanced, the poison stays in the system. And so a drama is turned into a crisis, made worse by an unusual capacity for self-flagellation.
A reporter, feeling sorry for himself, once told me, “the trouble with the BBC is that it’s run by fear”. As you have no doubt guessed, he had never worked anywhere else.
The BBC’s real problem is a lack of fear. It’s almost impossible to sack anyone. Indeed, any manager brave enough to give an errant colleague a rollicking runs the risk of being reprimanded for “bullying”.
Next, Randall on the tellytax and value for our dragooned money:
Every January, come rain or shine, a large truck with £3 billion of licence-fee money turns up at Television Centre. Too much of it is spent on administration, too little on output. A senior BBC executive, someone with real affection for the place, admitted to me: “Yes, the management’s too soft. It’s just how we are.”
And finally, Randall on the lack of rolling heads following recent scandalous BBC revelations, in contrast with commercial broadcasters:
Meanwhile, at the BBC, where flagrant breaches of editorial standards occurred at six of its best-known shows, including Comic Relief and Children in Need, who has gone? Nobody.
So far, a handful of executives have been suspended on full pay, pending an internal investigation – a bit of summer gardening leave. Nice work if you can get it.
Randall also mentions the death of Sky News reporter James Furlong, 44, who was driven to suicide after it was revealed that a report of his from on board a Royal Navy submarine firing missiles during the Iraq invasion was actually a test firing demonstration, presented as the real thing. And who was it that revealed and revelled in the embarrassment of Sky News and James Furlong? Why yes, it was good old feather-bedded unaccountable BBC News.
Do read the rest.
Thank you to commenter It’s all too much for the link.
This BBC article: “Obesity ‘contagious’, experts say”
Imagine what the kids in the playground might make of it, if they knew (and some certainly would) the meaning of the word “contagious”? Looking at this definition, only meanings one, two and three could be relevant in a medical context. The BBC’s report about fatties and whether they have the lurgy is totally irresponsible.
Bonus points for anyone who can find the word contagious in the scientific article to which the BBC refer.
