A Biased BBC reader writes with regard to the episode of Desert Island Discs broadcast on Saturday 11th June between 9 and 10.30am. This was the edition where listeners got the chance to have THEIR selections played;
“I listened for lessthan half of its length but switched off because of the implicit anti-white,anti-UK sentiments selected for broadcast.
One apparently English listener (about 10 minutes in) related how the Windrushimmigrants had been told the streets of London were paved with gold and hadended up doing menial jobs while living in rubbish conditions (the same astheir East End neighbours, of which she was one!). But their music and partieswere marvellous, she said…
Another – with an apparently English name and accent (38 minutes in) – told howhe could not survive on the desert island (Kirsty Young’s words) without theSouth African national anthem. He had had to pull over at hearing it whiledriving because of his tears at realising that the illegal ANC anthem had nowbecome the official one of South Africa.
Cut back to the studio and one of the resident “experts” informed usthat the SA one was “the best national anthem” particularly as”we all feel disappointed in our own national anthem which is mournfulrather than uplifting”.
HE NEVER ASKED MY OPINION SO HE DOESN’T SPEAK FOR ME.
Impartial Scottish lass Kirsty then chimed in to remind us how much better alsowas Flower Of Scotland as an anthem. Unable to listen to any more of this biased Beeboid bilge I switched off and sothere may be futher instances in a programme lasting 90 minutes. I’m afraid mystomach just isn’t strong enough to research it.”
Mine neither. The only thing I like about the programme is the theme music so I think that would be my choice if invited on it. In the meantime, it’s lefty politics to a sound track or two.
On a passing two minutes of it, I thought it was a special black Jamaican edition of anti-British ‘DID’. In one breath the guest, Andrea Levy, was on about the terrible white slavery and her wonderful Bob Marley. Can whites say anything critical of blacks on ‘DID’? Or ist just one-way racial traffic, as usual?
You can’t beat this for passion.
(Warning for BBC types: England is mentioned in the lyrics)
Slightly better than Flower of Scotland and the SA anthem I would say .
I must agree however that the National Anthem can be rather dull,but it does not have to be.
The Desert Island Discs theme was written by an Englishman, Eric Coates, who also had the nerve (on top of being English) to write the film score for The Dam Busters, which I expect will be banned soon by the EU for being anti-German.
I wouldn’t be in the least surprised if it were, Ian. After all Guy Gibson’s dog “Nigger” is always renamed on the few occasions that the film is screened these days.
Lord, save us from the hysterical half-wits of the PC brigade.
Anyway, I thought that the Dam Busters was about a well-hung bunch of stallions…
please yerselves…
Yes, “Sleepy Lagoon”.
Why “Sleepy”, though ? Colonial repression of vibrant native culture, that’s why !
The top choices – including Elgar’s ‘Nimrod’ and Vaughan Williams’s ‘The Lark Ascending’ – showed a conservative, patriotic, overwhelmingly English spirit lurking nicely in the Radio 4 audience, somewhat to the chagrin of the assembled metropolitans in the studio! They weren’t happy there was no black music in there!
A characteristic BBC moment came after the great climax of ‘Nimrod’ faded away and Kirsty Young read out (at some length) her “favourite comment from you on ‘Nimrod'”. It was from Prem Beggs from Leeds:
“When I hear it I forget all about the colonial stuff, bankers, closing libraries, the crisis of obesity, alcohol abuse and instead am in a world of remembrance Day, PG Wodehouse, Ian Hislop, the BBC, Comic Relief, David Mitchell, decency, compassion, kindness, Wilberforce and Shaftesbury, the Welfare State and lots, lots more.”
What an almost entirely BBCish list, endorsed by the BBC’s Kirsty Young!!
Oh, and in the second half of the programme we heard from “a peace worker”. Guess where he worked for peace? It just had to be…”Palestine”!!
So much of the BBC mindset was on display in this programme.
Whenever I hear Nimrod I always think of a Britain that existed before the socialists f****d it up. And David Mitchell ????? That tosser is the last person I would think of.
I doubt if Elgar thought of the BBC, or the Welfare State when he composed the masterpiece.
1 Ralph Vaughan Williams – The Lark Ascending
2 Sir Edward Elgar – Enigma Variations
3 Ludwig van Beethoven – Symphony No 9 in D minor ‘Choral’
4 Queen – Bohemian Rhapsody
5 Pink Floyd – Comfortably Numb
6 Sir Edward Elgar – Cello Concerto in E Minor
7 George Frideric Handel – Messiah
8 Gustav Holst – The Planets
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2002777/Vaughan-Williams-The-Lark-Ascending-tops-Desert-Island-Disc-poll.html#ixzz1P6HYlgyg
I see two German-born composers, one with German ancestry, and a Zoroastrian (Mr F Mercury).
So that’s 50% diversity !
Surely nobody who fantasises about Comic Relief, David Mitchell, Gladstone and the Welfare Bloody State is likely to be a fan of Wodehouse whose work (pace Roy Hattersley) “is dependent on the accident of birth.”
Reading Kirsty Young’s favourite Nimrod quote (reproduced above by Craig) reminds me – somewhat vaguely, I admit – of hearing her tell Richard Bacon (I think) that because she was no longer a news reporter she felt somewhat free from her obligation to be impartial.
It was when she was promoting her series “The British at Work”. Can’t recall the exact details. I may have remembered it wrongly but I know something she about impartiality struck me as highly ironic at the time.
What struck me was how few people sent in their DID lists. The BBC is always claiming great loyalty from its listeners – many millions of them.
I heard them asking umpteen times for lists to be submitted. Lists based on a programme that has been running for decades, a Radio 4 icon.
In the event – only 25,000 lists were sent. Less than half of one per cent of listeners ?
I am fairly sure she said 250, 000. Still doesn’t negate your main point, though.
No – they said 250,000 requests – 8 per list
The preponderance of classical choices must really stick in the Beeboids’ throats.
DID generally is an arty-farty luvvie event. You can count the number of scientists or business people appearing on the fingers of one hand. Maybe, they are too busy doing something useful.
In a way, I can see what Andrea Levy meant when she said “not enough black people” on thie list. Demographics have changed. This country will no doubt change. I don’t know how future English/British people will see themselves, and how it will compare to the patriotism that I associate in my head with the music of Vaughan-Williams or Elgar.
I oft-times wonder if the BBC/radio 4 bosses are uncomfortably aware of who their listeners are and want to ‘cure’ us of any quaint old-fashioned patriotic notions (which causes them to automatically think “Imperialist”).
There’s been an odd line of thought around in recent years, an overreaction to the race issues this country has faced. From the comments above, I guess others also feel (as I do) not quite right about the way the BBC handles it.
Bit of a rant. It must be Monday… 🙂