Compare and contrast. It’s the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Christmas sermon. According to the Telegraph he will use it to hold up the Royal Wedding as a symbol of hope even in austere times. But for the BBC, it’s about class war. “The Archbishop of Canterbury will use his Christmas sermon to question whether the richest people are bearing their share of the economic downturn.” Even on Christmas Day, the comrades in Broadcasting House never relent. Well, neither should we.
EVEN ON CHRISTMAS DAY
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From the BBC report
Dr Rowan Williams’ comments amount to a rebuke to the most prosperous in society, said BBC religious affairs correspondent Robert Pigott.
He will also suggest Prince William’s wedding in 2011 could help restore the popularity of life-long relationships.
Correct me if I’m mistaken but aren’t Will and Kate among the richest people in Britain (or likely to inherit that position)?
And so also is the Wishy Bishy, if you count the palatial splendour in which he lives and the billions of wealth held by the organisation over which he presides. Not that I object to its palaces and its billions but does he?
Look bish, the poor will get their reward in heaven, whilst it is a well known fact that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Says that in your good book. You work hard, build a succesful career, pay lots of tax, and at the end of it all you get locked out of Heaven for your trouble. Now thats what I call really unfair.
Methinks the bish is meddling too much in temporal matters
Exactly. I was shouting at the radio this morning. What an idiot.
‘The eye of a needle’ I have heard it said was a rather hard entrance to get through into Jerusalem on a camel. Not literally meant, I’m led to believe.
It’s a tough life living in Lambeth Palace with all your earthly needs generously taken care of largely due to a succession of long-dead rich benefactors. Moreover, you have the added benefit of being sure that every time you mouth off another piece of trendy sibillant crapola (which usually resolves into “hate the rich, love the benefit grabbing – preferably non-Christian – immigrants”) the taxpayer-funded BBC will broadcast your words to an uninterested nation.
I happened to turn on Radio 4 this morning and found myself listening to the Christmas Service from St Martin-in-the-Fields, a wonderful church which I have long admired and which is rightly renowned for its music and its charitable work for the poor and homeless. It works closely with the Beeboid Corporation and the Today programme on Radio 4 puts out a Christmas appeal for donations every year.
Not long into the programme, they brought in two of the homeless and I noticed that they both sounded foreign speakers of English. As they lectured about homelessness, one sounded hopeless and depressed, if anything, and the other read out a poem that was delivered like an angry diatribe. I wondered for a moment in passing if there were now no English, Scottish, Welsh or Irish homeless at St. Martin’s and no women either. However, no sooner had these two finished than the vicar announced that the service was now going international (er…what? It isn’t already?) Before we had time to ponder further, he was off, telling us about the S African Embassy across the Square and about apartheid and rainbow nation and the “d” word, followed by…wait for it… slavery! It was slavery that gave rise to spirituals like the one that they were going to sing next, he said. I am not making this up.
Agenda? What agenda? At this point, I switched off and missed the rest of the political and improving thoughts that St. Martin’s and the BBC deemed would be good for us on Christmas Day.
Anyway, I have just had a look at the transcript for the service and it has a whole lot more that I didn’t hear, including the subtitle “For All the World” and the political positioning of London, not as an English city or a UK one, but as belonging to the world. One of the two homeless foreign-sounding gentlemen is listed as Walter…one person is described as “White British” (would that be English, by any chance?) in a list where everyone else mentioned is described as Italian, Mexican, Jamaican or other country of origin, not as a skin colour. It has a South African song, it has references to all sorts of Beeboid cliches and causes including Brixton, single unmarried mothers, rich people who have, it says, ruined the planet and melted the ice cap and so on. I didn’t even read all of it but there was more than enough.
It has everything a Beeboid could wish for. It was quite an eye opener. Here is a link to the Radio 4 schedule which in turn has a link to a read-only transcript of the service for anyone who is interested: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00wqj4x
One of the most grating aspects of BBC programmes these days is the appearance of a PC ‘sucker punch’ somewhere in an otherwise enjoyable programme. These are actually worse than those which you suspect what the agenda will be beforehand and thus can avoid.
I remember watching something on theg greatest choral classics or similar on BBC4 (TV) an enjoyable albeit superficial show for most of its length until we got to the last item. Presented as ‘the ultimate choral classic’ was -wait for it- The South African National Anthem! This was after more sophicated and apolitical music by Bach, Vivaldi, Beethoven etc. Unbelievable.
This was shown with images of black men with their fists in the air!
One just imagines what the discussions were for this. “no but we simply must have the anti-apartheid anthem, it means so much to so many people.”
I enjoy using http://www.wordle.net/ to cut through to what message people are trying to get across. Sometimes you find some clear messages, other times they’re quite shrouded.
Always intrugues me how the BBC always know who’s going to say what, in advance on their news broadcasts. Instead of waiting for the event to happen, and reporting it, we’re regaled with stories about “The Queen will say such-and-such”, and the “Archbishop will say so-and-so”. If I were either of these two personages, I’d say to the BBC “Oi, sod off I’LL give my own speech, without you lot pre-empting it, thank you”, and then say something totally different in the event. That would bugger them up a bit!
Yes, it is what passes for “news” these days. Sometimes it is just PR and suits both parties. Has the Palace made a pact with the devil, by any chance? How times change. In the old days, Marks and Spencer never used to advertise. The very idea! And everyone tuned in to hear The Queen, without prompting. Now, is the Queen relying on the Beeboid corporation to boost interest to get us to tune in?
Well it seems without the constant barrage of promotion people instantly forget about the existance of flu jabs
“Sharp rise in serious flu cases prompts jab questions
Shadow health secretary John Healey said the government had made the “wrong judgement” in axing the campaign and suggested the decision had directly led to the fall in people coming forward fo vaccination.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-12075039
Actually no ESP required. Frequently the speech is distributed to the media before the event. It may be embargoed until the speaker delivers it but doesn’t have to be.
They actually were showing a whole chunk of the Queen’s message on Christmas Eve. I actually turned over to avoid more spoilers. Considering it only lasts for 10 minutes in total, the Beboids do not need to show such large chunks (none in fact) beforehand. I think it is just a deliberate, but subtle attck on the Queen, trying to ensure no-one watches the proper event because it’s all been shown before. This of course would allow them to claim that HM is becoming less popular.
Well spotted. Its standard practice in the incestuos relationship between Corporate PR Officers and the Meeja. Twice the coverage. “David Cameron will today anounce..” Twelve hours later: “David Cameron today announced…” Double coverage of audience.
Journalists like nothing better than being spoonfed, retyping press releases. Its so much easier than original writing.
Then there’s the half dozen rentaquotes on speed-dial to give you the contrary view. “Reacting to David Camerons speech today, Greenpeace/ Child Poverty Action Group/ Shami Chakrabati/ Labour opposition leader said <insert quote>
Its laughingly called “journalism”.
And Helen Boaden Head of BBC News gets £300k+ for orchestrating these monkeys.
The CoE leadership, the political parasite class, the in crowd establishment pushing the same old buttons in the same old way. Makes your skin crawl?
They deserve each other in the deepest pits of hell.
I hate to say it, but it looks like Pigott basically copied and pasted his piece from the ArchBeard’s own site. Even there the economic situation and swipe at the rich (he has form as much as the BBC on that score) comes first, and the royal wedding is an “also…”
So I can’t blame the BBC for putting the class war angle before the wedding. The Telegraph has it backwards here.
Having said that, the BBC clearly misrepresents the main message of the sermon, which is not class war but hope and faith. Both the economic crisis and the royal wedding are used to make points about hope and togetherness based on faith in God. The headline actually distracts from the message of the sermon, doing a disservice to both the ArchB and the public. The fact that they put the class war angle as the main topic shows the BBC bias.
Too bad the BBC News Online sub-editor didn’t follow Pigott’s example and copy & paste from the ArchB’s own website.
DP
As usual the AoC rambles. Accordingly, to get at what the AoC seeks to convey requires close reading and even then . . . . . Pigott – yet another graduate of the BBC school of superficial journalism – apparently seeks only to identify how the message can be used to relay the BBC agenda which is not “hope and faith” but rather “soak the rich*” and “fight the cuts”.
*excluding George Soros, Zac Goldsmith, Dale Vince etc
The AoC’s less than clear message and his swipe at the rich glide easily into the BBC narrative. However, although I can see how the underlying message of the AoC’s sermon could be interpreted as “hope and faith”, if the BBC is wrong in its more crude and mundane interpretation I have yet to hear of any complaints from Lambeth Palace.
This summary is right at the top of the page announcing the sermon on the ArchBeard’s website. No close reading required:
In his traditional Christmas sermon, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, focuses on how the birth of Jesus is but one stage of the fulfilment of God’s unchanging promise of support in the struggle for human redemption, how ‘the story of Jesus is the story of a God who keeps promises’.
I think his own staff would know what the main message is. If the biased BBC sub-editor had gone with that instead of forcing the class war Narrative to the top, this thread wouldn’t exist.
But no, Pigott and the BBC have to let their personal political agendas influence things. If anyone at Lambeth even bothered to check the BBC website and saw this, they’d probably shrug their shoulders and approve of the class war message anyway.
Maybe I’m being paranoid, but the bit where it says ‘the story of Jesus is the story of a God who keeps promises’ looks suspiciously like an attack on coalition politicians by His Disgrace; seeing that the BBC/Labour opposition’s main attack is on “broken promises” and “lies” by the coalition. It’s as if he’s implying that politicians who break their promises are against God. It must be remembered how obscure Williams makes his messages.
If you put it with the bit that the BBC did highlight, then the whole speech seems to be an attack on the coalition. I’m surprised that the BBC missed the chance to go with this one, it must have passed them by.
DP
Whoops – missed that one – that’s my possible future career as a journalist down the tubes, unless, of course, I wanted to work for the BBC.
However – and no excuses on my part – it’s the AoC’s opaque style of exposition which admits of more than one interpretation of his sermons. As I wrote, had the AoC’s message been egregiously perverted by the BBC then I would have expected some kind of complaint from Lambeth Palace. As you write, though, the AoC and his mates appear happy enough with the Pigott interpretation
Even on Christmas day… the BBC cannot resist a sly dig at the coalition. Anyone catch the Christmas edition of Royle Family? With references to the coalition, country going to the dogs, cuts, etc liberally interspersed?
If this means there are more real-life Jim Royles out there; lazy, ignorant, sponging sons of bitches to a man, finding it increasingly difficult to maintain their state-funded lifesyles, then yes, the country is indeed going to the dogs!
Today, 12:24:37 – Flag – Like – Reply – Delete – Edit – Moderate
Except Jim’s biggest complaint was that the Coalition made people feel less than proud about “signing on”, and that if they had their way, nobody would be on benefits in a few years, as if that would be a bad thing. Although I realize now that’s probably also reflective of the BBC mindset, sadly.
The only people I would like to see signing on for benefit are BBC News editors and journalists and UK University Climate Scientists, none of which have reasonable job prospects in the real world without unique funding. Why would any one employ someone to lie to you?