I noticed that the “You and Yours” programme on Radio 4 at noon is running a trailer which asks “Are you ashamed to be British?” It asks if Brits deserve their bad reputation when travelling abroad. Wonder if this includes BBC journalists convicted of possessing illegal drugs? Great to see the BBC doing their best to put the great into Britain.
ASHAMED TO BE BRITISH?
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Why don’t you listen to the programme before criticising it?
Why not swallow poison before considering taking it?
Perfectly valid idea for a program in my opinion. There are lots of things that make me ashamed to be British not least the rather pathetic way football ‘supporters’ boo the national anthems of opposing teams. Not sure how this translates into a biased BBC? You can find plenty of examples of anti British sentiment at The Telegraph and The Times in the last few days when they have been imaging what the 2012 Olympic opening ceremony will be like, distinct lack of patriotism there. Oh, and whilst we’re on the subject of the Olympics, what FANTASTIC coverage from the BBC, congratulations all round I say.
David Vance:
“Why not swallow poison before considering taking it?”
So you never listen to BBC radio?
Simon Leonard at 10:04: “Perfectly valid idea for a program in my opinion.”
Fine. But something along the lines of “Are you proud to be British?” from time to time would be nice.
Fat chance.
Iain makes the telling point. The BBC’s enthusiasm to run down the image of Britain is what I seek to discuss.
Of COURSE no one feels anything but contempt for those who behave so badly abroad but then again when was the last time the BBC ran a programme detailing the erosion of any moral standards in the face of the multiculti anything goes fest that it stands for? Yobbishness is not the point that is relevant here, self-loathing is.
Iain,
Indeed, there are two chances you’ll hear anything pro-British from that quarter – slim and fat.
Simon Leonard writes: “Oh, and whilst we’re on the subject of the Olympics, what FANTASTIC coverage from the BBC, congratulations all round I say.”
Posted from the BBC Village, Beijing, by any chance?
Haloscan seems to be broken, won`t load at all in Firefox or IE,takes a couple of minutes in Opera.
If you`re lucky.
Any chance of using Blogger for comments?
What the BBC doesn’t ask is WHY our Country is going down the pan.
Here’s a few ideas
1. Politicians create excuses for people to misbehave and accept no blame for their actions. Poverty is NOT an excuse to steal or carry out violence (Polly Toynbee take note)
2. The lies that crime is falling, when it’s going up (as spouted by the BBC)
3. Our education system that is more concerned with ticking boxes than educating children. Kids don’t need lectures on being a good citizen at school, they should get that from theri parents and peers. What kids need is a good education that gives them a chance in life. Not all kids need to go to University. If someone has a good general education any decent employer can train them and gives them new skills in the workplace.
4. Arse licking minority groups. Everyone should be treated the same. Just because you pray to some idiot who hid in a cave and had sex with an 8 year old girl should NOT give you special treatment in society.
5. Perhaps the BBC might stop slagging off traditional British values as being out of place (such as the idea that a man and woman being married and raising children together) in ‘modern Britain’
6. Pandering to left wing liberals (like Polly Toynbee, Yasmin Alabi Brown) who get far too much airtime on the BBC.
7. Stop promoting those who continually spout on about the “uman rites” of scum who murder, rape and assault ordinary people. You know who you are Chami.
I could go on. The point DV makes in the BBC doesn’t point the finger at 40 years of failed liberalism.
Posted from the BBC Village, Beijing, by any chance?
GCooper | 12.08.08 – 10:38 am | #
No, posted from sunny Shropshire I’m afraid. A completely unbiased, non-aligned opinion, just calling it as I see it. Would have replied earlier put the comments weren’t working. Still a bit bemused about the original post making this a BBC issue, did he not see the lead story on ITV last week about drunken British holiday makers.
Simon, do you know how the English supporters worked out which national anthem to boo when we played Liechtenstein?
The bias is in the wording,”Does this make you ashamed to be British”? It could have been “Does this make you ashamed thse people are British”.
I’m not ashamed to be British,I’m just pissed they are.
I’m also ashamed that the British Broadcasting Corporation promotes a worthless,guttersnipe,junky celebrity culture.
Have a read of this comment piece from the Telegraph –
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2008/08/11/do1102.xml&CMP=ILC-mostviewedbox
It highlights the worst aspects of Britain when there was plenty of scope to highlight the best. Why don’t you complain about anti-British bias there.
Peter:
I’m also ashamed that the British Broadcasting Corporation promotes a worthless,guttersnipe,junky celebrity culture.
Peter | 12.08.08 – 3:44 pm | #
No more then the other channels and certainly less then The Daily Mail
Speaking of nationalist sentiment, there’s a repeat of a Proms concert on Radio 3 right now, and the piece just finished is an extract popularly known as Die Moldau from Smetana’s Ma Vlast (My Country). The BBC used the proper Czech name for the movement, Vltava. Smetana is considered a “nationalist” composer in that he used folk images and riffs and rhythms from his homeland. This, one of his most famous works, is a case in point.
So the BBC is certainly aware, and in favor of, nationalist sentiment.
The overly eager female presenter was cheerfully praising how wonderful it is to have such “nationalist” music, and how great it was to have nationalist feelings.
Just before the piece began, they had a brief interview the conductor of the evening, Kenneth Montgomery. As an Irishman, he was very enthusiastic about nationalist sentiment as well. He remarked that Smetana had very deep feelings about his homeland. As the region was largely controlled by German-speaking rulers for a very, very long time, most of them didn’t even speak Czech, and Smetena had to learn the language in his mid-thirties. Many Irish people can relate to that, and Montgomery sounded as if there was a lump in his throat as he discussed the beauty of nationalism and the love for one’s homeland.
So again, nationalism is certainly not frowned upon by the BBC. Except….
Simon Leonard, do you imagine that British football fans are the only ones who boo so loudly and act obnoxious? There are more skinhead hooligan clubs on the Continent than in Britain. You may be ashamed of British lager louts on holiday, but surely that’s not the same thing as being ashamed to be British.
I’m embarrassed by fat United Statesian tourists who, when abroad, speak English loudly and slowly, and then make snide remarks as if to an off-camera audience when the poor local doesn’t quite understand them. That’s not the same thing as being ashamed to be a United Statesian.
We know that many at the BBC are ashamed of British history and culture, and look at it as backwards, old-fashioned, racist, non-egalitarian. On the other hand, they are happy to promote the post-modern relativism of their multicultural agenda, which in fact promotes nationalist sentiment amongst everyone else – except indigenous Britons.
Iain has a point. David Vance especially has a point about a Beeboid being busted for bringing pot into whatever country that was. And let’s not forget the last couple of Beeboids who got into a bit of trouble due to their unsavory lifestyles.
Ashamed to be a Beeboid? They’d never ask such a thing, and nor would you, I’d imagine.
The obvious rebuttal to that would be to point out all that is great and good at the BBC, etc. This line of thinking puts any ugliness from private lives into perspective, and then summarily dismisses it. Not so with this “You and Yours” angle.
In any case, “Are you ashamed to be British” is the wrong question when discussing idiotic, drunken behavior by British tourists (or, presumably, football fans).
Actually, by the time I got around to finishing this comment, they did Dvorák’s 8th Symphony, and the nationalist angle was promoted for that as well.
So nationalism is just fine with the BBC. Except….
I haven’t watched any of the ‘fantastic’ BBC Olympics coverage, since, well…it’s the Olympics. But it had bloody well be fantastic. They’ve got a full battalion of people there. I dread to think what the coke bill from this will be.
But yeah, I have had a few things which’ve made me ashamed recently. For one, the allegation that we did a deal with Muqtada al-Sadr, the Iranian thug, so we could get out of Basra and then have the Iraqi Army (with US support) go and clean up our mess was pretty embarrassing.
The national anthem might get booed by football supporters but they don’t represent the majority.
When foreign anthems are played at Rugby games or the Grand Prix they are not booed.
Football supporters tend not to be very bright for the most part (just listen to the average caller on Talksport) and just because they are abusive to foreigners doesn’t mean we all are.
Totally agree with Martin’s post. ’40 years of failed liberalism’ – hard to believe we have been P.C. brainwashed for that long and still no end in sight.
Congratulations to all those who have willfully mis-interpreted my comments. I’m well aware that football fans don’t fully represent the country as a whole and nor do ‘lager louts’ but it is these people who perhaps most often come into contact with other nations and therefore serve as a representation of Britain as a whole, however misleading this may be. Also, the idea that the BBC never does anything patriotic is complete nonsense, correct me if I’m wrong (and I’m not), wasn’t the series to find the greatest British person of the last 2000 years on the BBC?
The BBC likes Scottish, Welsh and Irish nationalism. They don’t like English nationalism. They fear it as do the political elite.
50 million people run by the elite from Scotland for the most part. Every other part of the union continually asked about and offered more freedom except the English.
The BBC won’t even get into the debate, unless it’s about the “racist BNP”.
If you watch the last night of the proms take a look at what flags you see flying in Scotland, Wales, Norther Ireland and Hyde Park.
For the most part you won’t see the Union flag, except in Hyde Park or the Albert Hall.
The BBC have been accused of underplaying the news from Scotland, but that’s because if they play it UP it continually reminds people in England that they (as the majority) don’t have even their own voice.
I’m not a fan of the Union and would happily see England go it’s own way.
We’d have ot make a constitutional change to prevent Scottish politicians (like Broon) coming down to England to be an English MP, but I really don’t see an upside to being in the Union.
Take something as simple as daylight saving. It’s nonsense that England has to put up with the situation simply because the Scots don’t like the dark mornings. Tough.
If Scotland were independent, it could do whatever it liked and so could England.
No more then the other channels and certainly less then The Daily Mail
Simon Leonard | 12.08.08 – 3:47 pm | #
No one will send me to prison if I refuse to buy the Daily Mail or products advertised on other channels. As long as the BBC take money off my under the threat of force and without providing a “service” I want to buy, they have a duty to meet a far higher standard than those whose funding is more ethical.
I for one will stop posting here when the Broadcast Poll Tax is abolished; the BBC can be as biased and/or incompetent as it likes as long as I don’t have to pay for it.
Simon Leonard | 12.08.08 – 4:01 pm |
I didn’t misinterpret your comment. I said very clearly that “Are you ashamed…” is the wrong question to ask, specifically regarding the idea of embarrassing British tourists, while still acknowledging the validity of said embarrassment.
Laughing at ones foibles is not the same thing as shame, but the BBC and the Left usually aren’t laughing.
The BBC does every once in a while do a little patriotism, but the majority of the time the attitude is the same one we get from the Left in the US: Flag-waving is frowned upon, the definition of patriotism gets twisted into “I love my ideal of what this country should be, but not what it is.”
There are people who were ashamed – yes, ashamed – of citizens who put flags in their windows, on their cars, or on their lapels after 9/11. It’s still looked upon as lowbrow, warmongering, etc. The Left speaks out against nationalism and patriotism on the Right, but not against non-white US or non-Briton ethnics. It’s perfectly fine – encouraged even – for immigrants and their descendants to wave flags and celebrate the mother/father lands. But there is far less tolerance for the indigenous Brits or for white United Statesians. Or Joooos, of course, since in their case it’s just nasty “dual loyalty”.
As for your Telegraph article, as always we must remind ourselves of the rule handed down from the BBC: look at the overall coverage, not just one piece. From that perspective, the Telegraph paints a vastly different picture from the BBC when it comes to this issue.
And please don’t bring up the Last Night of the Proms. That is a long-established institution, not initiated by the current crop of BBC bosses. Further, I would submit that a good portion of the flag-wavers read as much meaning into the act as one does a Zen mantra. One transcends the meaning of the word (or flag in this case) and the focus is purely on the activity itself. “Land of Hope and Glory” without vibrato just might suck the life out of that as well, but that’s another story.
Not only that, but Margaret Hodge has already spoken against the Proms as not being “inclusive” enough. Just what do you think that means? Not enough Dido and Robbie Williams?
Martin
There is no need for any constitutional change; if a Scot (or a Swede or a Senegalese for that matter) wants to sit for a seat in an English parliament, and is elected then I see no grounds to object. When a Scot sits in the UK parliament and votes on matters that do not affect their constituents because they are subject to a different legislature, the grounds should be too clear for anyone without a vested interest to miss.
My objection to Blair was that he was dishonest, corrupt, sleazy and not fit to hold any public office anywhere, not that he was Scottish. He had been legally elected to represent an English constituency.
Simon Leonard,
“It highlights the worst aspects of Britain when there was plenty of scope to highlight the best. Why don’t you complain about anti-British bias there.
Peter:
I’m also ashamed that the British Broadcasting Corporation promotes a worthless,guttersnipe,junky celebrity culture.
Peter | 12.08.08 – 3:44 pm | #
No more then the other channels and certainly less then The Daily Mail
BRITISH Broadcasting Corporation,
Please note that the blog is called Biased BBC.The concern is that the BBC has a Charter which it has to observe.We also have to pay under duress of criminal law the money which funds the BBC’s peccadilloes.
After 7/7 did the BBC run a programme – Are you ashamed to be a Muslim? Or is that programme still in its planning stage?
I am sure that my notion of “Britishness” bears absolutely no relationship to a Beebiod view. Indeed the BBC has spent so much time effort (and my money) on proselytizing for the multi-culturalist relativist world view that they often ask “what does being British mean?” Beyond a lecture on how evil and worthless traditional majority values and British history are, they have no idea. As previous bloggers have noted the BBC has an unlimited store of sympathy for virtually every other national view other than British (and I am meaning Britain as a United Kingdom, not some balkanised entity made up of glorified County Councils)
Frankly would be ashamed to be British if that meant that I was a fully paid up adherent of BBC ‘liberal’ orthodoxy – a hypocritical bullying and oppressive new puritanism brimming with the arrogance of the partially educated and the ideological certainty of zealotry. BBC “nationalism” or rather “internationalism” admits of no contrary views and is, in my terms, illiberal to the core.
Britain deserves better than the BBC and always has
No, they ran a programme called “Don’t panic, I’m Islamic” – the idea, of course, being to highlight ‘islamophobia’ and British inbuilt racism
Remember when the BBC tried to denigrate people who had England flags mounted on their cars ? They spoofed it as the more flags the stupider the driver.
Actually it`s an intelligent thing to put flags on top of your cars. It means that a driver of a high vehicle such as a lorry will see it in his blind spot.
It’s all too much writes: “…a hypocritical bullying and oppressive new puritanism brimming with the arrogance of the partially educated and the ideological certainty of zealotry.”
Brilliantly put! That gets to the very heart of the New Left and its propaganda service.
Simon Leonard ..
And there was I thinking you were neutral and then came….’No more than the other channels and certainly less then The Daily Mail’………….
You can’t help it can you? Twat!
David Preiser
David Vance especially has a point about a Beeboid being busted for bringing pot into whatever country that was.
But what point?
Surely you’re not suggesting that the BBC should change its editorial policies because one of its staff has committed an offence?
MarkE: The problem is the ‘big Scottish beassts’ in Nu Liebour wouldn’t be happy running a little Country like Scotland.
So yes I would object to them getting elected to an English Parliament.
Like I’ve mentioned before, Nu Liebour it is understood have already looked into the likes of Gordon Broon and the other Scottish mafia getting English Labour MP’s in safe northern seats to fall on their swords if Scotland went independent (this I understand happened as soon as the SNP took power in Scotland) so that the Scottish mafia would still be in control of the Labour party.
Actually I think that an MP to an English Parliament should be English by birth or by residence.
There are plenty of Scots who live in England, but as far as I’m concerned they’d have to have lived in England for several years before being allowed to stand for an English Parliament.
We have to do something to simply prevent the mafia moving south of the border or we will be no better off in England than we are now.
David’s point is spot on. I think over the last few years there have been one or two instances of terrorists blowing people to bits and attempting to blow people to bits on British soil in the name of Islam. But I haven’t seen a BBC radio or TV programme discussing the subject ‘Are you ashamed to be a Muslim or Islamic?’ Maybe I missed it.
when england gets its independence from the UK, what will Al Beeb call itself?
i suspect beeboid drones will commit suicide rather than call themselves the English Broadcasting Company
cant wait
MrLouKnee:I suspect that most of them will be calling themselves “between jobs”
Simon Leonard wrote: “Oh, and whilst we’re on the subject of the Olympics, what FANTASTIC coverage from the BBC, congratulations all round I say.”
And the Nazis made the trains run on time.
There are four hundred Beeboids in Beijing
That’s a fact
It’s a thing we can’t deny
Like the fact that they will hound you till you die.
Apologies to Katie Melua.
Seriously though, what is the Beeb’s carbon footprint for this extravaganza. All those air conditioned hotel rooms, taxis, business class flights etc. Then they have the neck to lecture us about our energy use!
Okay, I’ll use low energy lightbulbs while you fly off for a no expenses spared jolly in Beijing. That should stop the Artic ice melting! Brilliant.
Perhaps the BBC could put up on one of its websites the faces, names and addresses of those thugs that shame us all by their behaviour when abroad.
Now that`s worth giving £140 a year for.
Simon Leonard:
“BBC never does anything patriotic is complete nonsense, correct me if I’m wrong (and I’m not), wasn’t the series to find the greatest British person of the last 2000 years on the BBC?”
Oh come off it Simon, did you actually follow any of that series? Since when did the Beeb do anything to promote Britishness without it being a vehicle for another slice of ‘multi-culturalism is great’ force feeding.
I certainly didn’t watch it, but as David Vance points out, you don’t need to drink the poison to find out what’s in the bottle; It would have been yet another excuse for Al Beeb to push as many black faces to the fore as possible, with their own lefty ideals on what constitutes as ‘Great.’
Soccer hooligans are predominantly white working classes – the most despicable slime on the planet to your average Beeboid and any chance they have of drumming up a hate campaign against them they will take. It’s their own intellectual form of ethnic cleansing.
Funny isn’t it, how Al Beeb invites us to be ashamed of British soccer hooligans exploding at a footie match, but never invites us to be ashamed of British muslims exploding on a tube train.
Here’s Chapter 8 of Prof. Roger Scruton’s “England and the need for Nations”, which has passing references to typical BBC attitudes:
Extract]:
“It will not have escaped the reader’s notice that this
historic identity, both in its English and in its British
manifestation, has entered a state of crisis. This crisis has
come about because the loyalty that people need in their
daily lives, and which they affirm in their unconsidered and
spontaneous social actions, is constantly ridiculed or even
demonised by the dominant media and the education
system. National history is taught (if it is taught at all) as
a tale of shame and degradation. The art, literature and
music of our nation have been more or less excised from the
curriculum, and folkways, local traditions and national
ceremonies are routinely rubbished. We see the effect of this
when the British take their holidays in foreign parts.
Needing to affirm their national identity, and deprived of
the culture that would enable them to feel proud of it, they
have recourse to loutish belligerence, slouching from village
to village with drunken howls, swinging bottles and beer
cans in their prehensile arms.
Those disinherited savages owe their condition to the fact
that their mentors and guardians have repudiated the
national idea. This repudiation is the result of a peculiar
frame of mind that has arisen throughout the Western
world since the second world war, and which is particularly
prevalent among the intellectual and political élites. No
adequate word exists for this attitude, though its symptoms
are instantly recognised: namely, the disposition, in any
conflict, to side with ‘them’ against ‘us’, and the felt need to
denigrate the customs, culture and institutions that are
identifiably ‘ours’. Being the opposite of xenophobia I
propose to call this state of mind oikophobia, by which I
mean (stretching the Greek a little) the repudiation of
inheritance and home. Oikophobia is a stage through which
the adolescent mind normally passes. But it is a stage in
which some people—intellectuals especially—tend to
become arrested. As George Orwell pointed out, intellectuals
on the Left are especially prone to it, and this has often
made them willing agents of foreign powers. The Cambridge
spies offer a telling illustration of what oikophobia
has meant for our country. And it is interesting to note that
a recent BBC ‘docudrama’ constructed around that deplorable
episode neither examined the realities of their treason
nor addressed the suffering of the millions of their East
European victims, but merely endorsed the oikophobia that
had caused the spies to act as they did.”
Click to access cs49-8.pdf
The Brits Abroad
Just more of the usual anti-British stuff that the anti-British Broadcasting Corporation comes out with on a regular basis. Just as long as they don’t report on the Brits that are victims of racist abuse in Ireland:
http://www.independent.ie/national-news/courts/english-pipefitter-awarded-836420000-for-abuse-1452319.html
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2008/0812/breaking100.htm
On planet BBC, British people are evil, just like in all those cheesy Hollywood movies where the baddies always speak with British accents, so they will just stick to doing bare minimum, fact-lite reporting on it:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7555589.stm
No need to ask “Have you ever faced anti-British racism whilst abroad?” or for any investigations uncovering racism in Ireland.
Of course, you don’t need to go to abroad to be bombarded with anti-British racism, just tune into the BBC.
I’m ashamed of the BBC because it makes loads of junk TV that I have to pay for just because I want to watch premiership football on Sky.
I don’t have to buy other people burgers, chips, sugary drinks, pornography, violent video games, cigarettes or super strength lager so why does the government force me to participate in the junk TV trade that supplies people with trash like Eastenders and the Jonathan Ross show? I’m ashamed to be involved in that trade even though I have to be to avoid a fine and a criminal record.
i suppose like Germany was denazified after WWII, England will have to be debeeboidifed after the BBC is defeated
I wonder if someone from the BBC could explain why they have dragged a large cardboard cutout of an American swimmer all the way to Beijing and nightly decorate it with replica ‘gold medals’ that he is winning. The relevance of this to a (paying) British viewing audience escapes me.
Because Pat, they are fuckwits.
They probably wouldn’t want to take a life size cardboard cutout of a British Olympian because they would regard that as too “nationalist”.
ever time a brit wins something, Beeboids must have panic attacks when the Union Flag is flown and the national anthem is played
no wonder they sent so many ppl, half of them must be on suicide watch having seen the butchers apron flying high and god save who the what !!
According to a recent report in the Telegraph about 55% of murders committed in London are committed by foreigners.
This is around 100/110 a year in London only. I don’t think it is absurd to say that as many as 2000 murders have been committed by foreigners in the UK over the 20 years.
However, I don’t think the BBC will highlighting this statistic with a programme called, ‘They come here to kill’.
I am ashamed to be living in a country where there is a state broadcaster screeching antisemitic propaganda every day, and forcing me to pay for it.