David Vance has blogged before about the BBC’s Horrible History of the British Empire, but after seeing in the comments that it was repeated today (hat tip Peter Parker) I located the Queen Victoria song on the programme’s YouTube account.
Open your mouths, children, while we ram big spoonfuls of guilt down your throats because your country is evil and its achievements non-existent. (*)
(*) Does not apply to children of recent immigrants. See relevant handout for details.
There was I thinking that Britain abolished slavery (the first country in the world to do so) before the time of Victoria. I wonder what sort of rubbish I was taught at school? Obviously not this well informed stuff being paid for by our license fees.
We might have abolished slavery but I don’t think the message got through to the muslim world; particularly the arabs. They love their slaves, especially if they can punch them to death in a hotel bedroom.
Daniel has a point;
Queen Victoria ruled from 24 May 1819 – 22 January 1901.
The first of a number of steps in which to abolish slavery kicked off in 1807 with the Slave Trade Act, of course ways were found round this and this was followed with the abolition of slavery with the Slavery Abolition Act 1833, which is how Slavery was officially abolished in most of the British Empire on 1 August 1834. The Royal navy started its anti slavery drive with the formation of the West Africa Squadron (or Preventative Squadron) in 1808 after Parliament passed the Act. The squadron’s task was to suppress the Atlantic slave trade by patrolling the coast of West Africa.
11 years later Queen victoria took to the throne.
Funny that.
You wonder how the bBC didn’t know of any of the above , but instead present this view that she was a right dictator with millions of slaves at her beck and call. When actually under her watch (and before it) the UK did more to abolish the slave trade than at any other time in history. Something that the UK should be proud of admitting instead our children are fed a diet of left-wing revisionist history
She was born in 1819 but didn’t take the throne until 1837. That reinforces your point, of course.
Thanks, DB if you must know I got my history education from watching bBC school programs.
Heh. Sing along, now…
British things, Britsh things
A licence fee or go to jail,
British things, British things
Marxist history will prevail
Britain relinquished any claims to the United States with the Treaty of Paris some 54 years before Victoria ascended the throne. The implication that Victoria had any control over the American cotton sector or its use of slaves is patently false and misleading.
And what the BBC did not tell you that untill recently the cotton used in the time of Victoria was sourced from Egypt and Mexico. They produce a higher quality of cotton which is used to make shirts and bed linen.
You can say that again (unashamed Yankee here!)
As I recall the British establishment was rather prone to favor the South for reasons that had NOTHING to do with cotton or slavery but lots to do with splitting up an uncomfortably large and powerful possible rival. And British textile workers were stoutly pro-Union – God bless ’em – and anti-slavery. And most of Britain’s cotton came from India anyway which was why the South’s ‘King Cotton’ strategy failed to work.
The beeboids MUST dream this shit up in the toilets of Hampstead Heath, there can’t be any other excuse for such a pile of crap.
BBC-NUJ-Labour censors out all reference to Prof Niall Ferguson’s work, e.g.:
“Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World”
[Extract here (the book can be bought for about £6, p.p.!):-
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Empire-Britain-Made-Modern-World/dp/0141007540#reader_0141007540
And BBC-NUJ-Labour has got licencepayers to finance that lesser known ‘historian’, A. Marr, to present his anti-colonial, pro-mass immigration political propaganda of history in a forthcoming series ‘A History of the World’.
And clumsy Marr happened to do this to Theresa May, and not to Harperson:
Marr splashes out on Theresa May
http://londonersdiary.standard.co.uk/2010/11/marr-splashes-out-on-theresa-may.html
Where shall I begin.
Tea is from China, introduced in to India on a large scale by the British. Actually Indians regard our method of making tea very British, they prefer to make it with boiled milk .
Sugar introduced into into West Indies by the British from India Via the Middle East. And slavery was abolished in 1830 while Victoria started her reign in 1837.
Cotton, well America got it’s independance in 1783 and no one has ever considered cotton British, woolens and linens being our natural fabrics.
Having seen a few episodes of this show they like to make things up as they go along.
Tea – quite right, Indians call it Chai and it is quite undrinkable.
Thanks for posting DB. When I caught this being broadcast today I didn’t realise they were actually repeating it. You’d have thought someone might have complained about this sickening Britain-loathing lie-fest the first time it aired.
Incidentally, the segment immediately before was equally anti-British and choc-full of lies and bias – although it’s not available on YouTube.
Looks to me like the whole ‘light-hearted look at history’ format is just a handy cover for this sickening attempt to brainwash our children into hating their country. This is psychological child molestation. Even if you were to point out the factual errors the lefties would just say it was all a joke – not meant to be factually accurate – just trying to make history fun with some exaggeration – nothing sinister – honest.
This makes it the perfect vehicle for taxpayer funded left-wing propaganda. Brainwashing our children to produce an army of Britain-hating, EU-loving, labour voters.
Imported sugar cane has been displaced by sugar beet, This has been grown in the U.K. on an industrial scale since the 1920s. The sugar in the tea in the BBC film will have most likely come from Lincolnshire .
Oh if only whitey could be beaten like a slave, it’d help to alleviate this unbearable sense of guilt.
Prior to the docking of the Windrush we were cultural ghosts who had achieved nothing.
Who is responsible for this series? i.e. who wrote it, edited and produced it and who is responsible for allowing it to be broadcast? It is serious: these are lies being broadcast as truth, to claim bias isn’t enough, this is propaganda and should be reported.
An Mak’em Chap called Terry Deary.
“I’ve no interest in schools. They have no relevance in the 21st century. They were a Victorian idea to get kids off the street.”
Says it all really …
Surely there must be some guidelines as to what can be broadcast to children expecially under the banner of ‘history’? Surely broadcasting blatant lies cannot be justified even using the filmsy excuse of entertainment?
By the time Victoria was born, sugar had long since been sourced from cheap, reliable, home-grown sugar beet. The rising population of 19th century Britain sourced its sweetner from the fields of East Anglia.
The sugar reference in the video is nonsense for the 19th Century.
What an utter obscenity. Blatant Marxist indoctrination of schoolchildren on the BBC. And Her Majesty’s Government lets them get away with it.
There was a time not that long ago when one would expect at least one or two Tory MPs to call for the producers of this self-hating unpatriotic filth to be horse-whipped. While one might not admire the sentiment one might certainly admire the spirit of these Tories of not so yesteryear.
Who will defend Britannia now?
Well europrat Cameron wont that is for sure. I get so angry when these privileged liberal elite on one hand hate Britain on the one hand; then when say the Olympics are on, or world cup etc they are suddenly patriotic again. But of course, only because it is the trend of the day.
Of course, INBBC omits the Islamic slavery inflicted on white British people, e.g.:
“Britain’s 200-year jihad”(Melanie Phillips)[Extract]:
“From the early seventeenth to nineteenth centuries, thousands of British men women and children were kidnapped by Arab corsairs and sold into slavery in Morocco where they were kept in conditions of unspeakable barbarism. The astounding thing is that these British victims were not merely seized at sea where they ran the gauntlet of such pirates in places such as the Straits of Gibraltar. They were actually abducted from Britain itself. ”
http://www.melaniephillips.com/diary/archives/001423.html
Giles Milton: ‘White Gold’
http://www.amazon.co.uk/White-Gold-Extraordinary-Africas-European/dp/0340794690
White Gold by Giles Milton is a great book, it would make a fine blockbuster movie in the style of Gladiator. One of the most amazing facts is that Captain Pellew of Hornblower fame ( he was a real person) put an end to the Barbary White Slave Trade in 1816 and freed the Christian Slaves from Algiers.
I’m so offended by the idea of this white slavery. When will we get an apology from Morocco? And more importantly – where can I claim my reparation money?
Is this a comedy programme or an educational programme? Is it specifically for children as part of schools broadcasting? Does it appear on a children’s channel?
This repeats are being shown on the children’s channel CBBC (today at 11.20am, for example). The new series is also being broadcast on BBC 2 on Sunday mornings and on BBC 1 on Wednesday-Friday afternoons.
It’s production site says, “You’ll laugh at the sketches, then laugh again when you find out – it’s all true! Created by some of Britain’s finest comedy talents, Horrible Histories tells you about all the best bits of history and lets you laugh yourself smart!” (They go on to quote the Radio Times saying “Three cheers for the return of this factual but funny series. History hasn’t been this much fun since the last series finished’”.)
Its things like this that once led me to (I believe) coin a phrase ‘The bratocracy’ – overgrown spoilt brats between 18-80, an excellent argument maybe, not just for re-introducing the cane to schools, but introducing it to universities too!
Sadly all this is being mirrored in dumbed-down textbooks in our schools.
I checked the history workbook of one of my grandkids when she was studying the Victorian era. Nothing but bad things – I had to teach her some of the good stuff like Victorian engineering, advances in education, health, sanitation, social welfare, the beginnings of leisure time for workers etc.
It seems the aim of the BBC is to inculcate nothing but shame in our national history.
Well you might be thankful that your grand children may be spared university due to costs. Some of the rubbish the faculty “teaches” at my local instution are beyond laughable it is shameful. And as for the teenage they know nothing. I remember one conversation with one who told me that Islam had been the relegion of the Middle East since Roman times……..
Thanks Craig.
Good heavens! It’s on three channels, just in case anyone might happen to miss it. You couldn’t get more “down wiv the kids”.
“Laugh yourself smart.” How crass and stupid and patronising. Is there anyone at all left at the Beeboid Corporation who is grown up and halfway serious, with some respect for knowledge and quality?
It’s amusing that so much criticism of Britain’s recent history comes from an organisation which is one of the few surviving relics of that era.
Presumably, in the name of ‘due impartiality’, the BBC will be making a programme highlighting these historical facts:
The most tragic thing is, what do immigrants arriving in our country make of the national broadcasters blatant desire to rubbish its own country and the quiescence of our political class, left, right and centre, in this overt sedition?
Exactly. It’s hardly a great incentive to integrate is it, when they see the culture that they should be adapting to being ridiculed by the (sadly) influential morons in the MSM.
I’ve been lucky enough to travel to many countries in my life time and nowhere else have I witnessed the hatred of patriotism/national identity such as that which we witness in Great Britain.
Something really good on the BBC tonight – Cairo Nest of Spies, BBC 4, 9pm. French version of James Bond, politically incorrect, very funny film (the muezzin scene is hilarious).
That is all.
INBBC’s casual plan to reverse history; take the case of SOMALIA.
INBBC (along with the main UK political parties) has barely murmured about the negative impact of an estimated 250,000 SOMALI immigrants coming to live in Britain in the past few years, in terms of the financial cost, the cultural cost and the physical threat of Islamic jihad from Somalis in Britain.
‘Times’ (2009):
“Somali radicals ‘importing terror to UK’ say intelligence analysts”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article5741300.ece
The following INBBC article seems to indicate much in this matter of Somalia. This article is written from a Somali point of view by an INBBC Somali, HASHI MOHAMED.* (*I assume he’s a Somali: INBBC is coy about this.)
Now, while INBBC’s Mr. Mohamed wrote this article very recently, and apparently he is a Somali, he doesn’t know about, or decides to censor this:
“Somali pirate gang who held Chandlers have families in Britain…. and one kidnapper’s wife is an asylum seeker”
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1333193/Two-Somali-pirate-gang-held-Chandlers-hostage-families-Britain.html#ixzz16VldKgF9
INBBC’s Mr Mohamed the goes on with his sob story about the estimated 250,000 Somalis in Britain, stating that the British people should give them more money and resources! He passes lightly over the Islamic jihadists in Britain who are active in their plots to kill British people. Mr Mohamed censors all references to words: ‘Muslim’, ‘Islam’, ‘Islamic jihad’, and ‘Sharia law’
So, to summarise, as a way of reversing history, we British people are paying INBBC to employ such Somalis to lecture us on the need to be more considerate to all Somalis here, and presumably all the millions in Somalia who intend to come here, despite the enormous costs and Islamic jihad threats!
“Viewpoint: Chandler case offers UK Somalis a new start”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article5741300.ece
Presmably, next week, a similar case will be inflicted on us by some PaKistani INBBC special pleader, then an Afghani, then a Bangladeshi, etc.
My local council has handed out money to Somali criminals and anti-social elements. I think this is done with some dubious notion of getting them to stop creating mayhem. Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?
I put this on the open thread, but it seems more appropriate here..
Anyone watching American Dream? Typical Frankfurt School Critical theory. Trying to make out America is the worst country on the Planet the most racist and bigoted country.
They interview a Japanese American who was interned, saying how racist America was. However they never mentioned the Germans and Italians who were also interned, because that would blow their theory of racism.
And it is a bit rich for the BBC to mention this for the BBC still intern poor people who can’t afford to pay the TV Licence.
Funny how the BBC are never as critical of other countries, eg their documentry on Eastern European Marxist regimes were heavily sanitised.
And yet what country has ever been freer than America? For all it’s problems people have always wanted to emigrate there. I mean how many people ever wanted to emigrate to the BBC’s favorite country Castos’ Cuba? Last time I looked everyone has to be imprisoned to stop them leaving. And Cuba is a country with a large black population, yet even after 50 yrs all the Leaders are white, at least Batista was an indigenous Indian.
My father, a refugee from Germany, was interned by the British and shipped off to Australia on HMS Dunera. The 70th anniversary of that event was commemorated this year AND the BBC reported on it.
My father was philosophical about it because bad things happen in war. Pity the BBC doesn’t take a similar position.
The US didn’t round up Germans and Italians like we did to the Japanese.
The difference is American Citizens of Italian and German descent were not rounded up – enemy aliens most certainly were. Worse Germans, including Jewish refugees, were sent back to Hitler and death.
What they don’t tell you is that not all Japanese-Americans were loyal to this country. It is tragic that more effort was not given to separating the sheep from the goats but while innocent Japanese Americans suffered humiliation and financial loss they came out of those camps (usually long before the war was over) ALIVE – which was more than could be said for German and Japanese internees!
The first 20 seconds, how ironic!
They could also rehash the song to include themselves.
The clip itself is unnecessarily negative, IMHO, to get over a point most children would understand without having to be spoon fed the fact. Far better to have sang about how some of the characters mentioned could have been based on real life individuals.
Good grief. A policeman coming into the classroom to undermine the teacher- shades of Maoist China. One almost expected her to don a dunce’s hat and for the kids to laugh at her.
and for the hell of it;
“Why did you start writing Horrible Histories?
I started writing Horrible Histories in 1992 because a publisher asked me to write a funny history book. I know nothing about history myself – researchers dig up all the facts. My job as a children’s author is to present those facts in a way that will entertain them and not send them to sleep the way school history lessons do. I believe the books are a success because I am not an historian.”
http://www.terry-deary.com/pg/contact-terry-deary
“Obnoxious people like Niall Ferguson write a book to prove that the British Empire was a good thing,” Deary said. “He’s a deeply offensive right-wing man who uses history to get across a political point.”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article7140660.ece
This person really is right for the BBC.
Yes, indeed; and for anti-British BBC ‘historians’, Niall Ferguson’s website:
http://www.niallferguson.com/site/FERG/Templates/Home.aspx?pageid=1
“I believe the books are a success because I am not an historian.”
Only an arrogant and deluded moron from the BBC could believe that a history book written by a non-historian could be a success. Deary’s arrogance is breathtaking – how on earth is he qualified to question the integrity of a Harvard history professor?
“Only an arrogant and deluded moron from the BBC could believe that a history book written by a non-historian could be a success.”
He’s not “from the BBC”. Do you even know what that means?
He doesn’t claim to write “history books”; they are books written to get children interested in history. You see the difference?
He’s sold 25 million copies; you don’t think that’s a success?
“Deary’s arrogance is breathtaking – how on earth is he qualified to question the integrity of a Harvard history professor?
Aww, it’s just not fair is it…
He’s sold 25 million copies; you don’t think that’s a success?
That’s something like calling the head of a drug cartel a successful businessman. Don’t you think? I doubt even the BBC would openly define success in terms of product moved.
they are books written to get children interested in history. If, the basic facts that the comedy is based on, as pointed out several times in this thread, are false, misleading and encourage children to be contemptuous of the country they live in, then the success you claim is valueless. Unless of course that’s what you, Terry Deary and the BBC are aiming for.
Thinking might mean the steam of conciousness coming to a screeching halt as the sheer idiocy of argument and logical fallacies attempted finally sink in in some quarters. Can not a higher standard of contrarian at least make a stab at something worthy of debate as opposed to being good only for distain?
Invoking Godwin, guess which book ‘successfully’ got some folk ‘interested’, to the tune of 10M by the end of WW2?
To some, in thrall of state media, it was inspiration, but history (well, until the BBC and its approved contractors get hold of it) would rather suggest it was a warning to those more capable of independent thought free of ‘guidance’ imposed from on high.
http://www.foxnews.com/slideshow/politics/2009/09/24/propoganda-aimed-children
Oddly broad in its scope for one (we don’t have to pay for) that has been accused of its own slant, but the more current examples are interesting.
“…they are books written to get children interested in history. You see the difference?”
What a weasel-worded load of bullcrap. The title “Horrible Histories” says it all and clearly exposes Deary’s anti-British agenda. Or are you denying that?
“Aww, it’s just not fair is it…”
No – what’s “not fair” is that an alternative view is never ever presented on the BBC to counterbalance the rabid anti-British, ant-establishment bias of Deary – as in so many other BBC programmes with their overt left-wing bias.
Desmond, you’re saying its not a history book and John W is saying it can’t be a successful ‘history’ book because the author isn’t a historian. What on earth are you arguing about?!
Fair enough the BBC believed Gordon Brown was the ideal person to run the eocnomy although he wasn’t an economist.
25 million copies is a commercial success, no question. It’s not a real history book, in that its tone and approach are not in the academic mode. I don’t know what the marketers call it these days.
But surely the dreary Deary means that he believes he was able to write a light-hearted, approachable book precisely because he’s not a dry academic type.
This does not mean his “researchers” got the “facts” right, and it’s a shame this kind of slanted garbage is passed off as gospel truth on which people should base their sense of self-worth.
The anti-British BBC, paid for by the British people, does not even allow unrigged free public debate (as its ‘QT’ devious format illustrates).
Max Hastings, ‘Daily Mail’:
[Extract]:-
“The BBC, with its overwhelming power to set the agenda and influence values, bears a significant responsibility for driving our politicians into an iron cage of political correctness.
“Not merely its news coverage but the entire ethos of the BBC’s output reflects the values of the liberal establishment – the Rowan Williams view of life, if you like.
“The knowledge that BBC correspondents will treat any minister’s deviation from the PC path not as an error but a career-threatening gaffe goes far to explain why traditional rights of free speech are now so rarely exercised at Westminster.”
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1333542/Whatever-happened-freedom-speech.html#ixzz16X1YeEZa
Sir Max Hugh Macdonald Hastings of Charterhouse School and University College Oxford; editor-in-chief of The Daily Telegraph and Evening Standard; fellow of the Royal Society of Literature; author of documentaries for the BBC; and weekly columnist for the Daily Mail.
Poor little Max battling against “the establishment”.
Pass the sick bucket.
Try answering Max Hastings’ argument.
Oh I forgot. His point is incontrovertible.
JA, I love this guy Dez posting here. He never has any points of substance to make, all he knows how to do is sneer and jeer .. now what great British Institution hijacked by subversives does that remind me of ? … If the best the BBC can put up to try to convince us that it isn’t biased is a busted left-wing flush like Dez, I think it may be possible we might get somewhere!
That’s “liberal establishment”, not just “the establishment”. Different.
INBBC propagandises British history in terms of its negative effects on other peoples of the world.
But INBBC does not apply that political yardstick to nations other than Britain (except USA, pre-Obama).
Take the example of EGYPT, and the MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD (MB).
INBBC does not explain what sort of an Islamic organisation MB has become, since its founding in 1928, and how it threatens people over the world, including British people.
INBBC does not analyse the following negativity of the MB, unlike this piece:
“The Muslim Brotherhood’s Conquest of Europe”
http://www.meforum.org/687/the-muslim-brotherhoods-conquest-of-europe
INBBC neglects to indicate the negative impact which the MB has in Europe, including Britain.
Concluding extract from above article.
“What most European politicians fail to understand is that by meeting with radical organizations, they empower them and grant the Muslim Brotherhood legitimacy. There is an implied endorsement to any meeting, especially when the same politicians ignore moderate voices that do not have access to generous Saudi funding. This creates a self-perpetuating cycle of radicalization because the greater the political legitimacy of the Muslim Brotherhood, the more opportunity it and its proxy groups will have to influence and radicalize various European Muslim communities. The ultimate irony is that Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna dreamed of spreading Islamism throughout Egypt and the Muslim world. He would have never dreamed that his vision might also become a reality in Europe.”
In contrast, INBBC’s Egypt and Muslim Brotherhood correspondent, Y.Knell has this piece sympathetic to the MB:
“Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood campaigns through clampdown”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-11832643
When is the “impartial in its genes” BBC going to commission a balanced history programme? All we get is the author’s (leftwing) viewpoint ie Schalma, Marr, Mark Steel (The Mark Steel Lectures), Terry Jones (The Crusades among other things), Rageh Omar (Muslim history of Europe), horrible histories etc. The only decent stab I’ve seen recently is Dan Snow’s programme on the Navy which surprised me by actually mentioning Muslim slavery.
It says a lot for the BBC that you could not conceive them commissioning Nial Fergusson or David Starkey to make something but prefer to have know-nothings (with the right opinions) to do these programmes. At least channel 4 honours its charter sometimes.
I was recently watching a BBC show, I think it was Coast (which I think is generally excellent). However they mentioned a Muslim slave raiding incident on a village on the coast of Ireland. However they blamed a local for this, for he collaborated with the Barbary Slavers. Now how many times does the BBC mention that the African Slave trade was organised and run by Black Africans, and the slaves sold to Europeans and Arabs?
Infact slavery still exists in many parts of Africa. I remember watching a documentary with a PC African American professor who met a real life slave in Africa, he looked embarrassed and did nothing. Which is very much the attitude of the BBC.