Here is a programmethat is on the face of it a harmless trip back in history…but there is anagenda…certainly from the BBC….pro nationalisation, anti-car and pro AGWbelief.
‘Ian Hislop goes off the rails’…first broadcast in 2008 and again this week. The timing surely to coincide with the non-Labour government’s plans to makecuts and improve efficiency in public services. Hislop rounds off the programme with this appeal….
‘How far do you go with cutting a public service in the name of efficiencybefore you lose the whole point of it, not just with the trains but with buses,post offices and the NHS. It’s the same argument.”
(no idea what IH’s politics are….but these words fit the BBC world viewnicely). The BBC blurb for the programme:
‘…was Beeching little more than Ghenghis Khan with a slide rule, ruthlesslyhacking away at Britain’s rail network in a misguided quest for profitability…or the fall guy implementing a short sighted government policy favouring thecar over the train? Knowing what we know now, with trains far more energy efficient andenvironmentally sound than cars(?) perhaps Beeching’s plan was the biggestfolly of the 1960’s.
So there we have the BBC world view in one programme….pro big government,anti-profit, anti-business, anti-car, pro AGW and anti- Tory…..funny how manycuts the corporation is making in its own budget whilst railing againstgovernment cuts.
Did they reveal that most of the Beeching cuts occurred between 1964 and 1970 and that most of the rail jobs (end of steam/unstaffed stations/significant reduction in goods carried) went in that same windows?
All the rail closures were reviewed individually by the various Regional Economic Planning Councils during the late 1960s – under the Wilson govt. As far as I remember, every line was hopelessly uneconomic, there was no sensible case for any of them. I recall for example the beautiful Haltwhistle to Alston line in the north Pennines – great views, glorious viaduct, but only about 10 to 15 passengers per train over a 40 mile journey. It would have been cheaper to give every passenger a car than to keep that pointless line open. In the fierce winter of 1963 it was useful in getting animal feed through to Alston which was snowbound for weeks – but actually cheaper to have a few helicopter runs until the Carlisle road re-opened.
The BBC style is nothing if not predictable.
Thatcher guilty of savage cuts, nothing is said of the mess caused by socialism and union vandalism which left UK industry a wreck by 1980.
Beeching and his savage cuts but no mention of a broken rail system ruled by incompetent fools and crushed by Marxist dominated union bullies and of course an old decrepit pre war rail infrastructure dying on its feet and costing billions to modernise.
With the BBC you get ONE side of the story only, their story cut and edited to suit its own political prejudice.
A broken Britain unable to escape the union barons bullying and vandalism, a nation held hostage with strikes called for no reason other than to sabotage the nation. Union barons in the pay of the USSR KGB taking orders to smash the UK as a viable base for the fight against the soviet socialist empire.
With the BBC you see that they want you to see, you only remember what they want you to remember. A false history, a made up version missing vital elements that would make a story whole.
The BBC is like a Holywood film maker, they create a fake backdrop, a fake facade that looks real untill you look a little closer, the street looks real untill you see its only a plaster board lash up with no substance, they are counting on the fact that the viewer will only see what the BBC special effects artists want them to see and by and large it has worked like a charm. Most people forget the the 60s/70s and the true scale of the wanton socialist/union destruction and that is due in large part to the BBC.
You would (or wouldn’t be!) surprised that this is how the Thatcher Era is portrayed in uni’s. If you study history you are taught that events don’t happen in vacuum; apart from anything that Mrs Thatcher did. One of my young lecturers made the Miners’ Strike sound like William’s Purge of the North. I left my course at Christmas. If they were speaking rubish to me about something I lived through what were they saying to me about subjects I knew little about. Then again at my age I can sort the wheat from the chaff, but still……….
UKIP’s transport policy mentions implementing an “unBeeching Report”, to identify and reopen railways lines where there was a strong need. Wonder if the BBC knew about that?
Ian Hislop (or The Little Hinton, as Auberon Waugh referred to him) is on record telling Christopher Booker that he “… should leave climate change discussion to George Monbiot, who actually knows something about it.”; maybe doesn’t give us his politics, but does tell us where he lies in re. AGW.
Well I hadn’t heard that one about Hislop before but it ties in well with Private Eye’s conspicuous silence concerning all aspects of warmism. Mind you, PE has always had an eccentric view of what it chooses to cover and how it covers what it does cover. For instance, it is a stronghold of the old-fashioned antisemitism of the upper-middle classes. OTOH its crusade against the Commonwealth Development Corporation and the waste involved in “third world aid” is to be applauded.
BTW, the Beeching cuts were economic crap and were solely a desperate tactic by which the enormous subsidy to British Rail could be brought under some control. The cuts worked in the short-term in respect of the subsidy but at the cost of almost destroying the network (by substantially removing the vital “feeder” lines) and making BR even more dependent on the taxpayer in the longer term.
In a strange twist, Private Eye has also been institutionally anti-Turkish for as long as I can remember.
” Knowing what we know now, with trains far more energy efficient and environmentally sound than car”
Actually that is only true when the train is full, and most of the time they run virtually empty.
Does BBC want cuts to illegal immigration (which it doesn’t report)?:
“Female ‘gypsy outreach worker’ masterminded £2.9m illegal immigrant benefits scam for 200 Romanians”
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1297764/Gypsy-rights-campaigner-masterminded-2-9m-illegal-immigrant-benefits-scam.html#ixzz0upYggp8K
I had never thought of Hislop as being particularly left-wing, but I guess he has to tailor his cloth to please his BBC paymasters.
Grant – Hislop appears to be an old school Tory of the “We know whats best for you” Macmillian and Heath styles. That fits in well with the Beebs view of the world hence his frequent appearances.
1327,
Ah, yes, that may well be the case.
This high speed rail link is another English funded project to improve Scotland’s transport links. The same people who want Europe but don’t want us.
What the country needs is fibre broad band. And a few thousand carriages to make trains longer. A pertinent question to ask would be how many people need to travel between Scotland and London each day? Not many!!! Certainly not enough to warrant £20billion in spending. Remembe these lines are passenger only………..
The high speed line is meant to visit some major towns/cities on its way to Scotland, so others should get some benefits from it.
Perhaps what would be better is stopping the line at a large English town/city nearest to the border. So if it goes up the West coast, stop at Carlisle, if the East coast, stop at Newcastle. Let the Scots fund the last bit to Edinburgh/Glasgow if they really want “in”.
Cassandra King
Great comment. I remember those wonderful days of everyone having a great time laying about at the pleasure of union bosses.
The real destruction of manufacturing industry took place because of Marxist doctrinaire policies of the unions and their allies in the Labour party. Since then we have been trying our hand at the service economy and the casino in London. Both are ephemeral, while the City is going to be handed over to Brussels. What then?
The last Labour government decided to do the same with public finance, and the social cohesion of Britain. The results we see all round us.
When the riots begin, I’m certain that the BBC will blame Conservatives (even though Cameron Conservatives seem no better then Labour).
What surprises me is that Cameron has not taken the axe to the BBC, gives the decades of BBC hostility to the Conservatives.