Thanks to the BBC-lite version of the Today programme, I am unable to link you to the direct item on this morning’s programme but it appears at 8.10am and is between Evan Davies and Chris Grayling, the topic being the various government programmes to get the unemployed into some form of work experience. This interview concludes a very successful work for the BBC which has led a jihad against the notion that Job Seekers should be seeking job experience in exchange for their benefits. This, as the BBC and the Socialist Workers Party would tell us, is “slave labour.” I thought Grayling handled himself quite well, correcting several wild claims by Davies but the brutal truth is that several large UK retailers have been put in a difficult position, thanks to the publicity afforded Big Sloth by the BBC, and are rapidly distancing themselves from the work experience concept. I notice that the BBC chooses not to discuss it’s OWN unpaid work positions – a classic example of the churning hypocrisy in play here.
THE RIGHT NOT TO WORK
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I commented the other day when I thought there had been a fair discussion about this topic on the Today programme, but I heard Evan Davis on this segment and thought his sneering was really disgraceful. He kept on asking why employers did not seem to want to take part in the scheme, and I was hoping Grayling would give him the true answer – because of the way people like Davis are denigrating it and causing hysteria about it. Commentators often like to accuse politicians of being out fo touch, but Davis really did show what a snobby and rarefied life he must lead when he asked Grayling what someone can learn stacking shelves in a supermarket.
BBC Work Experience Scheme
to give a practical understanding of what working for the bBC would be like, the intern is paid a pro-rata £90,000 a year salary
Day 1:
Turning up and read free copy of the The Guardian, fly to and fro Salford (taxi between media centre and the airport), followed in the evening by dinner at The Ivy as part of a team building excercise.
Day 2:
Creative writing. Write 500 words on how the nation will celebrating the Death of Mrs Thatcher. Followed by lunch at Nobu. Afternoon, free study period.
Day 3:
Moderating Desk. Practice rejecting any comment that questions scientific consensus of man as the sole cause of global warming. Followed by black-tie dinner at the Media Impartiality Awards.
Day 4:
Islamic sensitivity training, followed by practical jew-baiting class.
Dinner at The Dorchester with other BBC work experience interns to share learning.
Day 5:
Free Time
Day 5 (Evening): Extra-curricular – A&E/Counting holes in face after real street contact with ‘enrichers’. Go into absolute denial, but think about going back to all-white enclave. Cognitive dissonance.
Great course Mr Calling and Jarwill.
Unfortunately, due to Thatch and her hidoeus posh boy Cameron…my EMA is now cut, so I`m afraid your unis loss may yet be Al Shababs gain.
Presuming the Oystercard takes me to Mogadishu…if not, the BBC will take me as far as Mombassas` Hilton…khat is the coming drug and we need to road test the routes, supplies and check its organically sourced!
I actually thought that Grayling handled himself pretty well, although he could have taken some more of the wind out of Davies’ sails by pointing out specifically that several well-known and respected business leaders in the UK and elsewhere started their working lives stacking shelves, sweeping the factory floor, in the post room etc.
Course, in typical Beeb fashion Grayling was immediately followed by Nick Robinson’s unchallenged “assessment” (i.e. “the view through the prism”) of the issue.
Wouldn’t be surprised if the last time Davies was exposed to a retail outlet was when his nanny took him to Harrods to see Santa.
I was heartened by both the panel’s and the audience’s attitude toward this scheme on QT last night. Also the segment on This Week by some famous chef.
Davies went on to later mention the tweets that were being received in relation to the item. I suspect they did not fit BBC ideology. Davies mentioned one in particular that said a shelf stacker contributed more to the economy than he did, conceding that this was “a very fair point.”
But it’s not really a “very fair point”, is it? It is a cold hard reality that doesn’t need to be made explicit to anyone who lives in the real world.
And what will Evan do with this “very fair” point?
But of course…reflect on the gameyness of the oiks out there who DO stack his shelves, slap down the intern that let it through onto his screen and be cuddling up to his partner asking if it was a fair point really?
Typical Beeb revolutionary…notes the complaint, admits it`s true-but will do f666all about it!
Fall on any sword you like Evan…as long as you make way for some Poundland graduate who will actually have some work experience…or ran a business, unlike yourself!
Hoisted by his own Marxist valuation of labor.
I too was impressed with Chris Grayling in a quiet way responding as Evan Davies jumped from possible entrapment to possible entrapment. Mr Grayling knew each topic that Davies highlighting and put the facts which were not quite as Davies was suggesting – so sadly the BBC would not be getting their headline stories that they hoped for (at least I assume not as I haven’t heard them and just know how they love to take anything said by a Conservative out of context).
Here’s a link to the interview:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9699000/9699328.stm
Yep, it’s that old BBC ‘who, me’ thing again.
Britain’s largest media organisation spends days reporting on supposed ‘slave labour’ then when it succeeds in intimidating companies into pulling out, presents this as evidence that there’s something wrong with the scheme.
Absolutely, DJ.
Absolutely, DJ.
Compare and contrast
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7515985.stm
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-17150593
Seen a comment in todays papaer that the BBC think that they are “comfortable” with the thought that their coverage of this issue has been both “impartial” and “fair”.
If nothing else keeps me going for a while-the idea that they`re “comfortable” with the venemous spew that they`ve been projectile vomiting over anything related to their coverage on “Workfare”-tells me that they have to got to be levelled to the ground for harbouring cultural terrorists and informers.
File under Leveson and Gleick…utterly despicable…
‘the BBC think that they are “comfortable” with the thought that their coverage of this issue has been both “impartial” and “fair”. ‘
Any chance of a linky?
I might like to capture and re-serve, cold, to the various producers and complaints bots who seem to be chanting… the exact same mantra.
GIGO.
Yes…Mail On Sunday today. Article cites Davis, Wark amongst others wheeled out this week to sneer and scorn-it`s as if they dreamed of johnny Rotten and only ended up as Billy Idol!