has written an article, How the BBC disgraced my mother, published in the Daily Mail, beginning:
When it comes to separating fact from fiction, the dear old Beeb seems to have been making a bit of a hash of things recently.
There have been a whole string of exposures about faked competition winners, dubious reporting and manipulatively edited documentaries.
Before moving on to her main point:
So serious is the issue that BBC bosses are now sending their staff on training courses to teach them how to be more honest. That’s a sorry sign of the times. I hope members of the BBC drama department and some of its large army of commissioning editors will also be receiving this kind of instruction.
For here, too, the Corporation has been twisting the truth to suit an agenda. A new film about my mother’s early life has just been commissioned by the BBC. Produced by a company called Great Meadow, this drama – entitled The Long Walk To Finchley – has one crucial passage.
Set in the early 1950s, when she was looking for a Conservative seat in Parliament, my mother is shown in a foul-mouthed tirade against the party’s top brass.
“F**king Establishment!” she rails, after being turned down as a candidate in one constituency.
This fictionalised incident would be laughable were it not so offensive. I have never been against satire directed at my mother. I enjoyed, for instance, the musical Billy Elliot, which contained a diatribe against her.
But this BBC screenplay shows a warped view of history. Neither the writer nor the production company seems to have the slightest understanding of my mother’s character and of the moral climate of the early Fifties.
Carol concludes with this, which applies in so many ways to so many of the attitudes and priorities on display in the BBC’s news and current affairs output:
This world has always dripped with unthinking snobbery and scorn towards her because she dared to challenge their knee-jerk ideology and their addiction to taxpayers’ subsidies. Their endless mocking was their attempt at revenge. And this snide film is just the latest example.
Do read the rest.
Update: According to Andrew Pierce in the Telegraph: BBC orders F-word cut from Thatcher drama. Jane Tranter, the controller of fiction at the BBC, told The Daily Telegraph:
The film is a positive portrait, not negative. It makes clear right from the start that Margaret Thatcher, a trained barrister, chemist and mother of twins, is a phenomenon.
Believe it when you see it!
Thank you to Biased BBC reader Sara for the Daily Mail link.
I’ve come across this old BBC piece when searching for something relating to the previous post by Ed. Seems appropiate to link it here though.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/2263690.stm
So let me get this right – in the article more people killed themselves under Wilson and Callaghan and in only two years of Labour (Blair) than under 4 years of Heath yet it is only Tory governments that are bad for your health…err right………. nothing to do with the despair felt by people feeling betrayed by champagne socialists then!
Wonder how many people whose lives have been ruined by Labour failures with the NHS, schools and rampant crime have killed themselves lately? Do we expect the BBC to update their figures? I doubt it very much – it might be really bad overall for Labour governments then.
So, the BBC says
“Australian scientists found the suicide rate in the country increased significantly when a Conservative government was in power”
Yet The second Thatcher period has the same number of suicides as the Wilson period. Also over 9 years of Thatcher (spit, spit) rule there were 239 deaths (26.6 deaths per year) and in the first 2 years of Blair (Hip, hip , Hooray) 103 (34.3 deaths per year).
Seems Blair was far more dangerous to the suicidal than Mrs T!
Besides which the dates don’t match. Bliar was elected in 1997 not 1996 and they’ve conflated Callahan and Wilson.
Usual BBC sloppiness or ulterior motive. Vote know, just don’t ring in as your vote won’t be counted …
MacDonald (National Coalition) was the first LABOUR PM…… and has the second highest rate of them all! More to do with the times and the lack of proper mental health care rather than the government methinks.
WTF | 18.08.07 – 4:55 pm | Dammit
That’s 51.5 deaths per year for Bliar of course. Damn Microsoft calculator …
There’s a simple explanation for the figures;
Under a Labour government people always have the hope that, no matter how bad things are, eventually the Tories will regain power.
Under a conservative government, people are faced with the uncomfortable truth that, sadly, this is probably about as good as things get.
bobo
LOL….I dread to think about a Liberal govt.
“People daren’t get depressed in case their friendly Liberal Govt sponsored assisted suicide official arrives at their door after a call from the neighbours?”
Back to the original topic – the Thatcher prog. The Beeb say; “it shows her frustration at finding it impossible to be put forward for a decent seat”
So its a dig at the Conservative party then? Quell surprise!
It’s also nonsense – Thatcher was put up for an unwinnable Labour stronghold followed by a Conservative safe seat. This is what all parties do to filter out the uncommited candidates, the candidates who are bad at campaigning, Etc. No one gets in at the top with a safe seat from the very start, selected automatically by the first selection committee they come across, launched straight into 30 years of guaranteed parliamentary salary and expenses. If they did, the quality of those selected would be completely random and, thus, probably dire.
The BBC’s attempt to portray it as Thatcher having to struggle against an uncommonly strong wall of resistance simply isn’t supported by the evidence. Although some of those committees might have been biased against her (who really knows?) her journey to a safe seat was entirely typical of a successful Tory politician, and much better than the majority of people who were there at the start wanting to be candidates. Obviously. How else do the BBC think she got to become Prime Minister?
“Believe it when you see it”
One might even venture, draw conclusions when you see it…
I presume David that, as with investment advertisements, you’re suggesting that “Past performance is not necessarily an indicator of future performance” then… 🙂
>One might even venture, draw conclusions when you see it…
Even if they do an okay job with this, somehow managing not to have a go at both Thatcher and the Conservatives, which I doubt will happen, that’s just one data point that has to be fitted in with all the others.
When Glenn McGrath scored his first Test fifty, no-one thought that overnight he had become a good batsman.
Having Thatcher say “F***ing Establishment” is wrong on two counts. She would not have sworn. She would not have railed against “the Establishment” either. Left wingers did that.
Lol. Fair point, Andrew