Rod Liddle may say BBC bias is not a conspiracy, and John Humphrys on Friday claimed in the BBC’s blunderbuss response on Today to Peter Oborne’s Guilty Men paper that the corporation is not “monolithic”. But it’s hard to avoid such a conclusion when – as part of their vast tapestry of newspeak and bias on major issues – someone, somewhere in the corridors of BH and White City has decided that the terms “AD” and “BC” are to be abolished because “modern practice” now means that everyone uses instead “CE”. In other words, chaps, we have decided to airbrush out – to appease the Muslims, no doubt led by multicultural BBC trustee (and all-round complaints quango queen) Mehmuda Mian, doyenne of the Lokahi Foundation – another major component of our proud heritage. James Delingpole has a brilliant analysis here.
CONSPIRACY?
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I dont think Oborne and Weaver were saying it was a ‘conspiracy’ (or ‘plot’ is the word Liddle used), rather, its just part and parcel of the institutional left wing bias of the BBC. They have contempt for patriotism and so a supranational body founded on the neo Marxist secular faith of political correctness that does away with Christian Europe is like a dream to them. Little matters such as ‘will its currency work or not’ weren’t a principal concern. The BBC endeavoured to skew the debate and stop people asking themselves the questions that matter.
Fortunately, they failed.
Paul Mason standing in for Paddy O’Connell on Broadcasting House this morning. Communist in the house. Look forward to Craig’s take.
Only half listening to Paul Mason – thought he was doing OK until I heard him liken Gordon to Putin – out of office for one term and then resume at the helm…I hope he was joking but didn’t really hear the context.
This has been going on for years in Academia, just read any history book from the last 20 years. The first person to use BCE and CE was Fabian Socilaist H G Wells. He hated Christianity and left Christ out of his History of the World.
Some people think that H G Wells was some kind of futurist prophet. However he was the person who described WWI as “The war to end all wars.”
Hippiepooter,
Well, as Deborah says, Paul Mason was not as bad as might have been expected. Paddy O’Connell is far worse!
Still, his opening discussion of the future of Europe was as biased as hell. It featured three guests, all introduced merely by their job titles. (I’ve added a bit more background information that Mason missed out!) –
1. Dr Henning Meyer, LSE. He’s the editor of the ‘progressive’ Social Europe Journal, a Guardian regular and an early supporter of a Tobin Tax.
2. Ha-Joon Chang, Cambridge University. He’s a prominent ‘heterodox economist’ (i.e.anti-capitalist) and an influence on Ecuador’s far-left president Correa. (Mason also used him as a talking head on one of last week’s edtions of Newsnight.)
3. Vanessa Therrode, partner at SJ Berwin LLP.
A panel strongly tilted to the Left then, with a lawyer chucked in for balance! So, more fiscal consolidation is needed, Greece should default but stay in the euro, fiscal union is the way forward, austerity is misguided. (Vanessa Therrode didn’t provide counter-balance to any of this; indeed, she sometimes seemed on the same wavelength.)
During a later feature on untidy gardens in the London borough of Newham, Mason (inevitably) talked to a ‘guerrilla gardener‘.
The paper review was different from a Paddy O’Connell paper review, but not necessarily better. Usually it moves quickly, from story to story, from guest to guest. Here the first 3 minutes (and more) were given over to Allegra Stratton of the Guardian to talk with Mason about the Labour Party conference. Things changed when Andy McNab entered to throw cold water on the value of some modern degrees. He was promptly pounced on by historian Kate Williams and Allegra Stratton. Kate Williams went on to mock the Mail.
The Gordon Brown thing came about after a discussion of Putin swapping power with Medveyev. Mason said, “Allegra, there’s no sense this is catching on there at the Labour Party conference there because, you know, there is the king across the water, Gordon Brown, if he..one term out of office, he could come back and make a success of it, couldn’t he, a la Putin?” Yes, I really hope that was a joke – because the idea of Brown coming back and making a success of anything surely can’t be anything but a joke, can it?
🙂
Viz ‘CE’, I think this is more driven by the correctnicks rather than their Muslim allies. The Muslims and other minorities just provide a cloak for the real reason they wish to do away with ‘BC’ – hatred of Christ.
It shows what contempt the BBC has for Parliament and People when there is absolutely no call for this in the country as a whole.
If this naked contempt for our nation and its democracy doesn’t prompt Cameron to purge the BBC of the anti-democratic evil that festers within it, nothing will.
Unfortunately, Cameron is on the side of the BBC. He has praised it and appointed that wealthy, EU apparatchik Patten to run the thing. How much evidence does it take to see Camerloons allegiance, and it is not to this Country!
Delingpole nails it as usual:-
“[….] it’s happening because a tiny minority of politically correct busybodies have wormed their way into institutions such as the BBC and taken control.
Their goal is to create a world where Left-wing thinking – on ‘fairness’, on race, on sexual equality, on the role of government – becomes the norm. So far, they are doing brilliantly.”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2041518/JAMES-DELINGPOLE-How-BBC-fell-Marxist-plot-destroy-civilisation-within.html?ito=feeds-newsxml
turn it back on the buffoons
BCE-before Christ on Earth
CE-Christian Era
Meanwhile…
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/8786542/Maternity-units-refuse-to-tell-parents-the-sex-of-unborn-babies.html
The reasons given seem not always to be the actual reasons.
But one is sure that the BBC will always address the facts objectively.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/tobyharnden/100106968/american-way-the-shallow-anti-americanism-of-the-“i-am-troy-davis”-crowd/
‘The sheer emotionalism and partisanship of much of the coverage of the case in Britain was an embarrassment. On virtually no other subject could you find facts presented so selectively, conclusions so sweeping and reasoning so simplistic.’
Yes, one is sure.
If this does not warrant a mass boycott of the licence fee, nothing does.
@ ltwf1964
Or even:
BCE – Before Conservative Era
CE – Conservative Era
I can see the Beeb going for that….
oh yeah….big time! 🙂
I wonder whether the BBC will report on the ‘anger’ in Britain caused by their CE initiative?
Last night I was watching a programme on BBC 2 about the Festival of Britain. Rather than bias I would say it was the indoctrination that fed through what should have been an apolitical programme – for example it was stated that the country was ‘broke’ – (like now?) but that it was important for people for the money to be spent on such projects (jobs, raising spirits etc). Now for someone living a long way from the capital what difference would the Festival have made? I suspect very little. But it was the likening to the present day but with the ‘Left’s’ view of how the economy should be treated that was so subversive.
CE and BCE an appeasal to Muslims?? As a non-religious person I’ve been using these terms for years – they make much more sense to me. For one theologians aren’t agreed when the Christian prophet was born – although I think we can agree that he existed, even if some of the claims attributed to him sound a bit fanciful – and secondly, perhaps we should also be recognising the concessions of the Pagans in appeasing the recent insistinces of the Christians newcomers.
he wasn’t a prophet
he was God incarnate
Or Just a very naughty naughty boy…
You may have been using the terms BCE and CE for years – but you have to admit you are in an utter minority. Why should usage by the rest of use – long-established usage, no intent to force a religious point – be dumped for such an extreme minority. I am almost 70 and I have never heard of BCE and CE until just now.
It is just all part of the ridiculous BBC PC behaviour. Stuff thelicence-paying audience, we need to “educate” them. Bloody arrogance.
Jews use it. That’s where I’ve come across it, mainly.
Hi John.
Absolutely I’m in a minority. I also have no problem which convention anyone wishes to adopt. However I do disagree that this is to appease muslims – as if that’s the only other non-christian view in the English speaking world. As a secularist, I’d welcome the popularising of these religiously/historically neutral terms, but I feel no need to enforce them anywhere.
I could understand the need for the change of names if they were refering to a different yardstick, but the numbers they refer to are the same. It just seems a rather pointless but voguish rebranding for the sake of it. I know it’s not a huge deal, but I’ve grown really quite weary and bored of this kind of needless nonsense. I’d guess that pretty much everyone is familiar with the AD/BC convention and that very few are acquainted with this other thing. Stick with what people know.
I blame Kinnock and the EU 🙂
Quite right Reed. As I have said on another thread it is a pointless exercise having CE to replace AD as they both use the year of Christs birth as 0.
Child to teacher “What does CE stand for?”
Teacher “Common Era”
Child “When did CE begin?
Teacher “When Jesus was born”
Leastwise there is no other significant event to describe the beginning of CE.
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=8394
Lucky Mr. Clarkson is a money-spinner.
I’d like to see BC dropped from BBC – no longer is it a British Corporation, although it is rammed-full of BIAS. Paying the licence fee is akin to paying jizyah, the muslim tariff on the Kuffar.
Like this!
BBC=Bull and Blather Conspiracy!
Number of pages on bbc.co.uk using BCE wrt dates: a touch over 3,000, according to Google.
Number of pages on bbc.co.uk using BC: 103,000.
Clearly a definite conspiracy at work.
I note that on the common era page on h2g2, it spends nearly three times as much space on the criticism of the BCE/CE system as it does on the arguments made in its favour.
Clearly a conspiracy.
But hey, James Delingpole says it is a conspiracy, so it must be…
A fair point – but the difference in those numbers could be down to the possibility that the guideline(if it exists) is a fairly new one.
…and am I the only one who has never heard of ‘CE and BCE’? Perhaps. I had to look these bloody things up! Gettin’ old. 🙁
Same here. It is all bloody ridiculous, makes the BBC look stupid and arrogant. Talking down to us plebs as usual.
Hopefully it will be another nail in the BBC’s coffin.
So what you are saying, Scott, is that in you own experience you would expect the BBC to go through history and amend historical editions of written texts in order to expunge such concepts?
No where have I heard of that before…
the idiot is an al beeb employee
what else do you expect? 😉
Apologies for the appalling spelling and grammar of my 13:48 post. I don’t know what happened there…
Show the date spread of both categories, Scott. If the newer ones are majority CE, then it supports the accusation. Although, I suppose no search result will show what they say on air, so it’s not conclusive either way on that score.
The BBC Learning and GSCE stuff is pretty much all CE/BCE – so when it comes to getting ’em while they’re young, the BBC does appear to have made a decision to re-educate. Delingpole and that other Mail article appear to be correct so far.
Surely the most important section of the Daily Mail article is (once again) the final sentences. The final sentences in which the BBC says that they’re basically not bothered either way on which terms are used. Whilst that could potentially leave viewers confused if they’re not familiar with BCE/CE and an article/discussion could be created on such a column, that isn’t the point of this scaremongering rage creating piece. What those sentence clearly tell us is that the headline “BBC turn its back on year of Our Lord: 2,000 years of Christian it jettisoned for politically correct ‘Common Era’ ” is complete nonsense as is much of the article and the majority of comments on their website.
The tone of the Mail article is written in a way to offer and consider just one position (ie. the clearest example of bias I can think of). Except of course those final sentences where maybe the Mail hopes either its readers don’t get as far as to read or hope that they have read so much bias in the piece already that those last sentences seem far fetched.
I fail to understand why people expect anything more from the Daily Mail. What can’t be denied is that the Mail is simply brilliant at brainwashing readers by bombarding them with bias and spin. Do they employ former party spin-doctors?
I don’t think this article does the biased-bbc argument any favours at all. Why would you want to fight bias with the most obvious possible bias? Isn’t that just hypocrasy?
Sod the Daily Mail article – who cares if it goes over the top. Who cares if the comments seem extreme – that only shows that a lot of people are offended by the whole thing.
The fact remains that the terms BCE and CE appear to be being introduced at the BBC, terms which virtually none of us have heard of.
PC arrogance by the BBC. What roight do they have to mess around with commo9n usage of the English language ? That’s why the BBC needs a good slap from the Mail.
And Delingpole’s opinion piece surely to the point ?
Delingpole suggests that the BBC is introducing it as per the q&a section of bbc.co.uk/religion . Well i’ve looked for that page and can’t find it. I’m sure there may be a possibility that its been shelved but i can’t see it even a cached version on Google.
So at the moment we have Delingpole telling us that the BBC has replaced AD/BC, Delingpole telling us that the BBC have introduced an instruction to not use AD/BC and the BBC saying they’ve basically left the door open for programme makers to do what they wish.
I can’t see why the Mail is in a position here to give a “good slap” to the BBC. Its anti-political correctness gone mad
I agree there may well be no “conspiracy” or editorial instruction.
But there SHOULD have been editorial guidance to think before using such nonsense.
It looks suspiciously like the thin end of a wedge – stupid people at the BBC testing the water.
Nothing hypocritical at all. People can choose whether or not to buy The Mail based on its content, bias, photos of Helen Mirren, or whatever. It can be as biased as it chooses to be; particularly in its ‘opinion pieces’ (geddit?), whereas people are obliged by law to pay for the BBC which is obliged to be neutral.
The regularity with which BBC apologists draw comparisons with private media outlets is illustrative of both the depth of the problem and their own ignorance.
And the ambivalence described in the final paragraph of the report is exactly the problem. It should not even be up for debate.
Who cares about The Mail and whether it’s biased? I can ignore it if I want to. I don’t need to buy it or read it in order to read a newspaper. It doesn’t dominate radio and TV broadcasting from morning to night or enjoy a special privileged position of monopoly and guaranteed forced public funding. It doesn’t spread itself like a virus aiming for world dominance. I am as free as a bird when it comes to The Mail.
I think I was the first to link to the Mail on Sunday front-page article and to Delingpole’s commentary. Not because I read the Mail – I just scanned the Sky’s list of Sunday’s front pages, ‘cos I like to see what the papers are really leading with rather than swallow the BBC’s usual twist on “the papers”.
The good news so far is that the BBC’s budget is kinda being cut back by 20% – and there has been no big public outcry. The Tories should take that as a sign that the BBC is not as loved as it makes out. They could keep increasing the cuts until there is any real political fuss about it. Or better – they should force the BBC to depend largely on subscription revenues.
And instances like this CE/BCE nonsense annoy more and more of us hoi polloi, makes the general public more wiling to see the BBC cut back to size.
FIght! Fight! I posted it last night on the Open Thread, having seen it on the Sky front pages too, and incidentally having previously posted a Peter Hitchens piece about it on an Open Thread a couple of days ago.
I have to give you the Delingpole, though!
“Liked by Scott”
Sort of “Kiss of Death” to a post…second only to “This post is endorsed by DG Mark Thompson”
“BBC books 1,663 rooms for two-day concert”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/bbc/8786546/BBC-books-1663-rooms-for-two-day-concert.html
Conspiracy? Who can say. Bias? Yes, definitely. Radio 4 The World This Weekend was just now telling me that the war on terror in Afghanistan ‘could never be won’ – a perfect fit for the BBC narrative.
The previous item was a preview for the Labour Party conference. In contrast to BBC coverage of the other political parties it had the feel of an in-house debate. Very much a where do we go from here? How can we make Ed Miliband electable?
If you don’t hear the bias you must be on the payroll.
And the man telling us that we couldn’t win the War on Terror was the BBC’s favourite Pakistani politician, Imran Khan – a man whose party peaked at a pitiful 1.7% of the vote in the 1997 general election before sinking to 0.8% in 2002.
BBC-NUJ political correctness, paid for by licencepayer tax, is an extensive, pervasive daily political propaganda. It includes advocacy of multiculturalism, mass immigration, E.U., homosexuality, Hamas, etc.
It includes a daily censorship of negative developments in Islam (where jihadists are labelled ‘insurgent’s/’militants’ by BBC-NUJ).
The BBC-NUJ attempt to relegate the historical recognition of BC and AD is but the latest evidence of the BBC-NUJ re-writing history, by, in this case, reducing the significance of the long Christian tradition in Britain and in the world.
Next, the BBC-NUJ advocacy of ‘Mecca Time’?
“Giant Mecca clock seeks to call time on Greenwich”
(2010)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/saudiarabia/7937123/Giant-Mecca-clock-seeks-to-call-time-on-Greenwich.html
I was reading the linked article just after listening to William Crawley on Radio 4’s Sunday. He was one of the CE/BCE trailblazers mentioned by the Daily Mail. (Indeed, he was using them even before the article the Mail cites – The world’s first strike, Nov 09).
His programme today offered much the usual sort of menu for Sunday, with very few surprises:
(a) ‘Palestine’. We heard from a “Middle East expert” academic supportive of the Palestinian bid, who compared Abbas’s speech to Martin Luther King.
(b) Citizens’ advice bureaux in churches. William worried about whether “some volunteers’ personal faith positions” might “conflict” with CAB guidelines offering help to everyone, regardless of “their sexual orientation, for example”.
(c) A report on the disappearing Jewish community in South Wales. (An interesting but gloomy report).
(d) Pope Benedict’s visit to Germany. Sunday is quite remarkable for how often it mentions the Catholic sex abuse scandal, almost every timer a Catholic-related story comes up, and it didn’t disappoint here either. Similarly, William’s introduction and questions stressed the negative with a vengeance.
This is becoming par for the course.
DV’s ally on this morning’s Sunday Morning, Milo Yiannopoulos, is very conscious of BBC bias on the issue, as these three articles in the Catholic Herald show:
(1) Why Benedict XVI has youth on his side
(2) The BBC’s coverage of World Youth Day has been a disgrace
(3) Why are the media so utterly hostile to the Pope?
The story was discussed with Christa Pongratz-Lippitt of the liberal Catholic weekly The Tablet, not a huge fan of this pope by the sounds of it. William paired ‘abuse victims’ with a ‘gay mayor’ as examples of those who “somewhat embody some of the controversies facing the church.”
(e) Marriage, in the wake of the government’s gay marriage proposals. A discussion on whether marriage is an inherently religious institution that the government should keep its hands off between Peter Smith, Bishop of Southwark, who believes that marriage is a union between a man and a woman, and Andrew Copson of the National Humanist Society, who thinks it can mean more than that.
William Crawley’s questions to the bishop were posed from just one side of the argument (the side opposed to the bishop), whereas his questions to Mr Copson combined both sides of the argument, strongly suggesting where his sympathies lie – as did his interruption to state that that “there’s nothing definitional” in the word ‘marriage’ that requires it to mean that divorces cannot re-marry and that gay marriage cannot marry and that these are just “readings into” that word – which drew an approving ‘Yes’ from Mr Copson. He later back up Andrew Copson’s criticism of the bishop’s reply (“Polygamy?”). This is biased interviewing.
plus he kept letting Copson interrupt the churchman, never shut him up.
Wih their constant harping on about the child abuse scandals in the Catholic church, it’s clear BBC news staff have a particular interest in such subjects. Perhaps they should look into what goes on in those Pakistani madrassas that turn out so much cannon fodder for use by the Taliban. Since, along with wife-beating, pederasty would appear to be one of the the national sports of the Pashtuns, I’m sure it wouldn’t take too much snooping around to open up a whole can of worms there.
Don’t forget the Afghani “Love Thursdays”, and the Dancing Boys of the Pashtuns.
(f) The second of three analyses of the August riots. Last week’s was by a Labour MP (Frank Field), this week’s is by the liberal peer Rabbi Julia Neuberger. She took issue with David Cameron and thinks the riots are a one-off. Poor care for the elderly, youth unemployment, the need for a halt to cuts in certain parts of the voluntary sector and the need to make the world a better place – that’s her analysis of the problem.
After two analyses from people from the political Left, presumably next week’s final talk will be by someone from the political Right. This being Radio 4 on a Sunday morning, I’m not holding my breath though.
(g) Islamic good guys. A report on a peace conference of Muslims at Wembley Stadium, where a leading Islamic scholar denounced terrorism and got rapturous applause. People have the wrong message about Islam, they say. 99% of true, peace-loving Muslims drowned out by extremists, they also say. The religion of Islam is a religion of peace, they say. The Koran preaches nothing but peace, they say. There’s also a critic of the rally from the MPAC.
Reporter Trevor Barnes reinforced the message: “Outside the arena here, I’m wondering why everybody present is committed to peace and co-existence while a tiny minority of their fellow Muslims is not.”
(h) “Why is Northern Ireland the only part of the United Kingdom where gay and bi-sexual men cannot donate blood?”
That was the way the final debate was framed. Despite that, William Crawley handled this debate, at least, between a supporter of N Ireland’s exemption and an opponent fairly enough.
A classic edition of Sunday.
Re-Islamic meeting at Wembley, INBBC allows no dissenting voice, such as this:
Our troubles are over: thousands of Muslims rally against “extremism” in London
Sunday really is a terrible programme. Time past, it would have been a Cjhristian-oriented magazine programme for a country rooted in Judao-Christian and European culture – with its own strong history.
Now it is largely an anti-Christian magazine, never attacking any other religion but weekly attacking Christianity. A strong left agenda on show every week if William Crawley is the presenter. Still pretty left when Stourton presents.
So I usually switch to LBC on Sunday morning. For the whole morning.
What I find interesting with the BBC is that they like to be ‘concerned’ about the feelings of religious people when it suits them.
However, when it comes to say homosexuality which as we know really does upset MUSLIMS the BBC don’t feel the need to ‘adjust’ their output to protect their feelings.
See the Radio 3 schedule for this evening for a case in point!
To be honest, I don’t have an issue with either usage (BC/AD versus BCE/CE). I can see the sense of the latter as there are a many places in the world that are not christian oriented and yet adhere to the same calendar that informally establishes the birth of christ as its starting point.
As someone who believes all religion is bad, even christianity (to quote George Carlin, “between the Inquisition, The Crusades, Northern Ireland and 9/11 there have been more people killed in the name of [a] god than for any other reason”) I am quite happy to see one more thing removed of its religious tendencies.
Given that no evidence exists of the existence of jesus christ, and that I by no means accept that such a person should be “my lord” I am more than happy to see Anno Domini (year of our lord) replaced with Common Era.
For me this isn’t a PC thing, or even a case of bias. I see it as a perfectly logical step in the progress of humanity. When the BBC starts giving dates according to the muslim calendar, then I’ll shout bias.
— Richard
“Our language is being hijacked by the Left to muzzle rational debate”
By Melanie Phillips
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2041765/BBC-BC-AD-debate-Our-language-hijacked-Left.html#ixzz1Z4GJo4Vc