Today is the day when the World Cup in South Africa kicks off. The BBC has gone into hype overdrive – and in that regard is no different from any other TV broadcaster. But I am already sick of the worship of Mandela and Tutu that has gone on before a ball has been kicked. I appreciate that these two figures are totemic for the political left and the opportunity was not going to be missed to praise them even more but not everyone holds them in high esteem. I think the BBC is deliberately embroiling politics into the sporting event (If you can call football “sport”) and advancing it’s own Nelson-worship. I also caught a BBC item yesterday with Hugh Maskela in which he claimed that blacks in South Africa was still being denied. By whom? By the ANC? No. Maskela was hinting at the race card and the BBC let him away with it.
SAINT NELSON…
Bookmark the permalink.
Mr Mandela was terrorist; just like Gerry Adams. But it seems that wrong-doers are lionised by socialists, communists and racists, when it suits them.
I believe he is a terrorist (once one…always one), you believe he is, and remember…so did Margaret Thatcher.
Like Obama, a fraud.
A terrorist just like Gerry Adams. You mean just as Adams had the right to win support democratically so did Mandela?
I’ve disagreed with David Vance strongly on Nelson Mandela before and I’ll disagree again: Nelson Mandela is recognised across the political spectrum as a Great Man, and deservedly so in my view. Mrs Thatcher (as she was then) invited him to tea at No 10. Clearly she saw some distinguishing features between him and Adams.
Too many people are too frightened to tell the truth about Mandela. History will view him differently one day…once the fear has subsided.
It’s yet another example of the BBC’s “everyone else is like us” mentality.
‘blacks in South Africa was still being denied’ Stand by for the BBC’s support for land-grabs from white farmers in coming years. Investigate the likes of JuliusMalema – http://notasheepmaybeagoat.blogspot.com/search/label/Julius%20Malema
What annoys me, as a big football fan, is the obsession with the politics of the World Cup. The phrase ‘most important moment in South Africa’s history since the release of Nelson Mandela’ is all over the BBC right now!
I saw a clip where there was plenty of ‘but life for poor Black South Africans is still dreadful’, and the BBC reporter didn’t even attempt to go down the obvious route of “well whose fault is that? The ANC have been in power for 15 years or so, why have they failed so badly?”. Obvious questions like that go missing at times like this on the BBC.
The entire broadacast media is afflicted by the same illness. Of course, we expect the BBC to constantly repeat the blacks-as-victims line, but it was also painfully evident in the ITV coverage of the opening game. Regular reports from a tin shack in the middle of Soweto with a huge flat screen showing the game – a shack that didn’t even have a electricity until last week as they never tired of telling us. Wonderful – how rich is that country? How long does it take to provide electricity supply. How long has the ANC been in charge of the country?
I don’t think I was the only one tired of seeing them beating on and on about all this.
Let’s be honest, the scum at the BBC would be lining up for miles for the chance to ‘lube up’ Mandela’s arse with Vaseline, probably why so many of these camp prats have gone out there.
Martin,
The Beeboids should be careful. Black Africans are not so tolerant of
“gays” as we are in the West !
No problem regarding climate change these next few weeks as the BBC lardarses get a jolly out in the veldt…bit imperialist is it not lads?No comment of couse
Bloody toxic false God that is sport-and,more specifically,football….where else can blokes screw and abuse women and not get Jenni Murray trailing her colostomy bag (a microphone even?)behind them?
Isn`t sport a little …well ..elitist and non-inclusive…or is that Blunketts dog cocking a leg on the corner flag?
Where else do the Bradshaws and Burnhams get the chance not to preen as metrosexual men but be “lads”?
Where else do nations get to bankrupt themselves with Olympics and World Cups using kit now made made in Chinese sweatshops without some charity tool whingeing about “the injustice”?
Only the great god Sport gets away with it because there is safety in herdthink and the Beeb,the sponsors and the quangos that run these drug fuelled orgies of homoeroticism have money,glamour and power -and the freebies for the sad fantasists that run the carnival that is this country.
About time we mocked this toxic God and refused that part of the licence fee that taxis a Hansen or bankrolls a Lineker. Let them play with themselves in their showers but not use us to pay for the soap!
Terrible news that Mandelas young relative was killed in a car accident.
Still Toady this morning was able to cheer the Great Man up with the news that the pop concert involving Shakira,Fergie(no ,not the rednose at Old Trafford) and Masakela was a great success…so the poor girl clearly did not die in vain!
Trust the Beeb to conflate these two stories…saved a bit of time and ensured that we all ought to bid the show go on…it`s what she would have wanted surely!
How many minutes silence is this little girl worth today I wonder? Poor old Nelson probably didn`t need such an awful excuse to preserve his energy and stay away from the 0-0 yawnfest that FIFA would have had him propped up for today!
More importantly, what about the 3 Brits who have died in a road crash? It seems that the bbc don’t regard them as being as important. And they are our fellow citizens.
cjhartnett:
Couldn’t have put it better myself about herdthink!
Mind you, I enjoy a day watching Yorkshire play cricket at a pleasant ground with congenial company and decent beer. Though that’s not the sort of sport that the Beeb would ever be interested in.
Rueful,
Well cricket is too difficult and elitist for Beeboids to understand and beer ? Well they only drink champagne !
Most TV football fans don’t care that much about where the World Cup is taking place so I don’t know why the BBC is telling us so much about South Africa. I expect the kind and clever people at the corporation are taking the opportunity to mix in a little education with their information and entertainment so the feckeless masses don’t simply spend the tournament mindlessly gawping at TV while swilling beer.
It’s patronising and almost racist the way the all the rainbow nation euphoria is heaped on remorselessly.
And let’s ignore all the white farmers who are being systematically killed in South Africa. courtesy of the racist ANC.
Imagine when St Nelson dies? How long will the beeb-grief last? Weeks of it. Wall to wall. The endless wailing and eulogies.
The best I saw on the ‘great man’ was by Peter Hitchens who wrote and fronted a truly honest programme. Well, as honest as you could be without a zillion death threats.
The grief-fest? The TV will be unbearable for at least a month.
Will it be waaaacist if the newsreaders wear black ties?
Worse – can you just imagine what it will be like if Saint Obama ever meets up with Saint Mandela? I’ll leave it to Martin to describe the scene……
As I was having a bad night I was up watching newws 24 in the early hours.
The world cup was the only big story, apparently it is more important because it is in South Africa which the BBC kept reminding me is part of Africa and where Nelson Mandela comes from which makes it doubly important.
No mention of the crime and rape statistics or white farmers.
The BBC seem obsessed with a new musical instrument that the Africans have invented. It can play one note. The level of musical sophistication the rest of the world reached thousands of years ago.
The BBC and the buses which British licencepayers provide for it: from the BBC bus for its Democrat Party tour at the USA election, to the South Africa bus to propagandise for the ANC and the BBC’s wet ‘rainbow nation’.
“Step inside the BBC’s World Cup bus”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/world_cup_2010/8736566.stm
Have people noticed the empty spaces in the stadia, including the opening ceremony? The BBC stays silent. Be prepared for ‘what a success the first African world cup has been’
The SA cricket team has to have a quota of non-whites at all times. Why doesn’t their football team have a quota of non-blacks?
The BBC and ITV presenters and Lineker AND Chiles are practically orgasmic about all things ‘Africa’.
‘I’ve never seen a World Cup like it,’ intones Jonathan Pierce. Really? Obviously, he never saw Argentina 1978.
What’s the BBC going to be like if some African nation actually wins the thing? Unlikely, I know, but it’ll be like a Coke advert. Cue the New Seekers; Ready Hansen. Manu? ‘I’d like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony…’
And, BTW, WHY do they insist on having the barely understandable Adebayor as a pundit? ITV is just as bad with Desailly. Surely there are some Dougans, or Alisons, or Crerands still around? They knew how to give an opinion and you could still understand the Glasweigan, Crerand.
Mandela’s record is mixed – part terrorist, part statesman.
FIFA is busy proving that when it comes to black Africa, strict rules and regulations suddenly don’t apply. So when it was proposed that a crew of zulu warriors kill a bull with their bare hands on the field before the games, FIFA would not stand in the way of this cultural tradition. (I still don’t know if this happened or not; the media has been silent about it.)
And as those awful pipes are being blown by the thousands, providing a continual buzzing distraction from kick-off to the final whistle, FIFA coudn’t care less that the enjoyment of the non-traditional components of the crowds and the TV audience is being seriously compromised.
And I doubt it is helping the non-traditional players much. Mexico would be justified in claiming undue interference from the crowd, especially since the ear-splitting racket often reached a crescendo as they went on the attack. The South Afican players, on the other hand, were probably more culturally “attuned” to the disturbance and therefore at a distinct advantage.
Blatter has no balls whatsoever when it comes to South Africa. If he had, he would have banned the bloody things. But nothing must be allowed to stand in the way of South Africa’s moment of glory.
BBC’s Somali ‘militants’ and World Cup:
Somali jihadists: People should not watch World Cup soccer, lest it “distract them from pursuing holy jihad”