This past week saw the BBC jihad against Richard Keyes and Andy Gray. The outrage at their (stupid but off-air) comments was visceral and god help anyone who dared suggest that it was all a bit over the top. So, you might find the in-print comments of the BBC’s Perry Grove’s interesting;
In an article published in The Sun newspaper last year, Groves wrote: “I know a lot of women and they’re not consistent from hour to hour. Footballers want the rules to be applied consistently and this wouldn’t happen with women refs. “It’s hard enough for male refs to earn respect from players. With a woman in charge, players will be thinking: ‘You know nothing about football’. “Also, let’s face it, women have periods and we all know how hormones affect them. Would women refs be banned during their ‘time of the month’ because they might be more emotional, depressed or aggressive?
Perry appears regularly on BBC 5 Live.
The BBC response?
A BBC spokesman said: “If you know Perry, yes he does give an analysis of the game but he is also a light-hearted foil to Colin Murray and that’s the kind of attitude and style that they have. “I don’t think Perry would stand by that as a serious analysis of women’s refereeing standards. As a regular on Fighting Talk he has a stock in trade of banter and fun and this is indicative of the kind of place he goes.”
Offside!!!!
No doubt Andy Gray’s lawyers will bring this up if he decides to contest his sacking.
A lot of the media, including the BBC simply wanted to pile on to ‘Murdoch’ what with the phone tapping nonsense. No one in the media outside of Newscorp wants him to own all of Sky, so the BBC and Guardian in particular have been stoking up this story.
I suspect some at Sky also wanted rid of Gray at least, to freshen up the network.
Whatever the truth, the BBC operates on a different level, unless it’s one of the few Tories at the BBC that says something. I suspect Groves is one of the hive mind at the BBC.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have recordings of the “banter” at Today when they decide which “non-approved thoughts holder they are going to stitch up and how or promote approved thouights
You must wonder just how “Red Jim” refers to the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport off air.
Come on someone lets have some sneakily recorded tit-bits!
Wikileaks at the BBC….we can but dream.
For what it is worth, I have heard plenty of BBC off-air banter over the past 15 years. I don’t repeat it but all I will say is the stench of hypocrisy over Gray/Keyes is overpowering. I was brought up to respect a confidence and to appreciate the difference between public and private comment. Would the BBC hypocrites did.
BTW, I am in a meeting with the Head of the BBC in Northern Ireland on Tuesday on political matters.
Wish you well with that.
Make sure you record it. Just in case.
I think we all know that Jeremy C**t is a common way of referring to Hunt.
Given the level of “banter”, when is Lose Women being kicked off TV?
I’d be interested to know how off-air footage was leaked onto You Tube and why. Surely this would also be a sackable offence for a Sky employee.
What really got me though was that this story has been so prominent in the news. With all the shit that’s going on in the world, both BBC and ITN chose to make this non-story the second most important item in their broadcasts for 2 days running. I also find it sickening that everybody trots out the same response when asked about the situation even when you can’t believe they really think that. An example of this was Harry Rednapp on the TV last night – when asked what he thinks of women officials, his reaction clearly indicated that he is not in favour of them although his weasle words said otherwise and he regurgitated the standard guff ‘they were badly judged comments, shouldn’t have been made and were wrong!’. For once it would be refreshing for somebody to say ‘I don’t think we should have women officials in football and this is why ….’. Of course, the mock outrage which would follow such a comment is enough to put anybody off telling us what they really think.
Again Ron a lot of it has to do with much of the media opposing the Murdoch empire, Sky is a huge worldwide success, ITV is failing, the BBC propped up by a state tax and most newspapers in serious sales decline.
When can we expect that man-hating android Jo Brand to be taken off the air for her homophobic rants?
She’s not homophobic but fundamentally misanderist. And her misanderist comments are intended for public consumption which makes them far worse in my mind. The differences are that she is a woman and sexist remarks are allowed from women, and like Groves she is a BBC regular so sexist remarks are OK then.
I have had to laugh over the last few weeks at how we evil men only want cute young blonde babes on TV, when in most cases now it’s women behind the scenes who pick who works on TV and most terrestrial TV is aimed at women.
But then as I looked at the magazines in my local Tesco I noticed all the so called ‘womens’ magazines had young often blonde women on the front cover. Why don’t they have 60 year old women on the cover? I guess we men get the blame for that as well.
Can we have a new general thread please?
Guess what Richard Bacon is talking about today? Why evil Rupert Murdoch of course, with his ‘guest’ leftie wanker Mark Steele.
The BBC’s obsession with Rupert Murdoch is getting beyond a joke.
Actually according to the fivelive blog Richard Bacon’s programme has its own problems.
“Says it all about Bacon’s dire Thursday feature ‘Help’ that they have to get friends of the production staff to ring in with planted questions, see Twitter:
@OurMateDave tweeted:
Right this week just gets stranger – Just got a call and was recorded talking s**te for Radio 5 Live. Not so Live then… 12:41 PM Jan 27th via web
@OurMateDave tweeted
@lorraine_hagan My friend works for Richard Bacon’s show and they needed someone to ask their culinary dilemma, so put me on the spot. about 24 hours ago via Twitter for iPhone in reply to lorraine_hagan ”
So not only is the BBC up to its old trick of planted questions It also questions all the numbers we got about the huge number of listeners that Richard Bacon is supposed to have.