Monthly Archives: April 2012

…(with apologies to Poly Styrene)

Did you read that BBC presenters and other senior figures in the public sector could be forced to publicly publish their tax returns under Government plans to increase transparency?

Dozens of BBC stars and executives are thought to be paid via private companies which has sparked speculation over their tax affairs. Several BBC presenters are currently embroiled in an HM Revenue and Customs investigation

My own view is that what a person earns is their own business and so I don’t really go with this jihad against income but on the other hand, some within the BBC have been to the fore in damning “the wealthy” “the bankers” etc  so a certain hypocrisy is in play and needs exposed.

Biased BBC contributor Alan suggests that we commence with a consideration the Pope’s words for Easter….

‘The darkness that poses a real threat to mankind, after all, is the fact that he can see and investigate tangible material things, but cannot see where the world is going or whence it comes, where our own life is going, what is good and what is evil.’ ‘The darkness enshrouding God and obscuring values is the real threat to our existence and to the world in general.’ ‘Today we can illuminate our cities so brightly that the stars in the sky are no longer visible,’ he said. ‘Is this not an image of the problems caused by our version of enlightenment?’ ‘With regard to material things, our knowledge and our technical accomplishments are legion, but what reaches beyond, the things of God and the question of good, we can no longer identify,’ Benedict added, saying that faith was the ‘true enlightenment.’

Timely and relevant words that neatly illustrate what two books reviewed in the Sunday Times expound.

You may or may not agree with religion or Faith and whatever that may entail but whether you take an entirely secular view of the world, or one viewed through the filter of a religious scripture or are hedging your bets and offer up a quiet prayer to God like the atheist in a foxhole you may well have come to the conclusion that society has possibly lost its way. It still rumbles on in a recognisable form but is somehow indecipherably changing for the worse.

Kipling’s ‘God’s of the Copybook Headings’ prophetically (or not …perhaps society was really always thus?) describes a society in free fall as it ignores the lessons of the past and denounces the attacks on authority, deference and the virtues that once held a Nation and culture together.

F. Scott Fitzgerald sums it up even more succinctly….

‘My generation of radicals and breakers-down never found anything to take the place of the old virtues of work and courage and the old graces of courtesy and politeness.’

Now however we have two books that have been published and delve into this arena dragging out into the light things many on the Left, and BBC in particular, wouldn’t want on show.

The BBC are famously Leftie, no question, the senior staff were 60’s radicals, Marxists and Trots wanting to overthrow everything. Even Joan Bakewell , the thinking man’s crumpet, admits she was suspected of wanting to overthrow the government.

Their inheritance lives on and who can deny that attempts are being made to discredit the Cameron government right now.

But what other influences did such people and their avant garde attitudes have?…on society, on culture, on the very fabric of society?

Biologist E.O. Wilson has brought out a book, The Social Conquest of Earth, in which he reminds us that everybody belongs, and needs to belong, to a ‘tribe’…the need to form groups and to defend those groups not just physically but for their values and culture is innate and instinctive and is an important part of what makes us human.

This book illustrates the fallacy of multi-culturalism. It can never work. You can suppress conflict but eventually it will always break out. ‘Them and Us’ is Nature and natural. We’re all in effect ‘racist’….or ‘tribalist’ to be polite.

What it tells us is that the only way for a multi-cultural society to rub along is to have a great deal of suppression that could verge on oppression.

No? Well try wearing a crucifix to work these days. A small example but very telling. You can’t wear a crucifix in case it ‘offends’ another’s religious sensibilities. In a supposedly modern, enlightened, liberal and predominantly ‘Christian’ society you cannot wear a small crucifix on your person.

The second book is more revealing and devastating for the Left…but illustrates what we already know…Liberal, Left values destroyed the foundations of society and have brought us to the verge of collapse….where the unresolvable tension in our species between selfishness and altruism developed into a vast social experiment by the Liberals who took power and decided selfishness, masquerading as ‘Individualism’, was the road to happiness and self fulfilment only now to be dashed against the rocks of reality and inner city rioting, arson and looting for ‘bling’ trainers.

This book, The Righteous Mind: Why good people are divided by politics and religion, by Jonathan Haidt (a liberal himself), is an indictment of Liberal thinking…although in their defence he claims they can’t help themselves it’s hardwired into their brains…..the Left cannot understand why ‘others’, Rednecks, Neocons or those in 4x4s, just can’t see what is good for themselves…how could they be so dumb as to not see the benefits of immigration, the iniquities of religion or the blessed freedom for women of abortion on demand.

Haidt says it is Liberals not Conservatives who are being blind…deaf to the real concerns of the vast majority of the world’s population. This vast group has the same concerns as the Liberal, defending the vulnerable and preventing suffering, but they weigh that against other issues…the need for authority, loyalty to a group, religion or society….all of which Liberals view as oppressive or irrational obstacles to equality and liberation.

He says it was a terrible mistake for Liberals to casually subvert all the structures that have developed over centuries to give purpose to people’s lives, to restrain their worst excesses and such mistakes risk destroying social order and moral constraints in pursuit of individual liberation….lowering the overall well being of the society and damaging the very victims the Liberals were trying to help.

The constraints are there because in the real world people will often do bad things if given the choice. Co-operation and cohesion depends on trust and knowledge in the others around you.

Liberals need to understand that most people are attracted by ideas of order, group identity and a desire to belong to something bigger than just themselves alone and until that happens they will continue to be baffled as to why most people do not agree with their world view.

It is not just a question of ‘education’ or the lack of. Nor inded are Rightwingers less intelligent.

The BBC needs to understand why people oppose mass immigration, even new immigrants see it is wrong, why dismembering a unified Britain and subsuming the remains into a manufactured, anonymous European identity is abhorrent, why allowing an alien religion to grow and smother our own culture is an utterly offensive.

The BBC needs to realise their views are the ‘extremist’ ones in reality….because they are held by such a small proportion of the population…as Haidt defines such Liberals, they are ‘WEIRD’…Western, educated, industrialised, rich and democratic……but out of touch with the ‘common man’.

(Under the moniker ‘Liberal’ I also include all levels of Socialists who don’t ‘casually subvert’ society but do so with a grim delight and malice aforethought.)

Is this progress? First the headline;

Some 100,000 more people will be without a job before the end of the summer, according to a new report.

And then, a few paras later…

The left-leaning IPPR said it expected 50,000 more men and 50,000 women to become unemployed this year as public sector jobs continued to be cut.

So, a Labour linked think tank spews out pro-Labour propaganda and it is taken and given huge prominence by the BBC. At least there is an acknowledgement that this is a biased source for the headline. But is that good enough? Thoughts?

That old familiar sinking feeling, courtesy of BBC morning headlines concerning Rowan Williams’s forthcoming Easter address.

According to the BBC, he was going to say: ‘Although the persecution of the Jews justifies the existence of Israel,  harassment of the Palestinians at Israeli checkpoints must stop.’

Updated wording reversed the order. Now harassment of the Palestinians headed the announcement, while Israel’s existence trailed at the tail end.
Later still, Israel was wiped off the face of the announcement and the Archbish’s retirement address was to be all about easing the everyday lives of the Palestinians.

Anyone would think he was about to deliver a sermon on behalf of the PSC. But was he? The press releases hardly mention the Middle East. The Telegraph, for example only says: “The religious leader will touch on the conflict in the Middle East.”, and even in the BBC’s own web article any reference to the topic is buried, and the tenor of that is completely different, more a plea fro God to bring peace to the region than a potpourri of anti-Israel innuendo as per those  headlines.

Who, I wonder chose to give such prominence to this segment of an otherwise, if I may say so, somewhat dull-sounding sermon, in the Easter Sunday  headlines?

Rowan Williams is well known for making foot in mouth announcements, which might pass unremarked if it weren’t for the BBC’s mischievous habit of cherry-picking misguided molehills and making them into populist mountains.
I haven’t heard his speech. But if it’s anything like what’s predicted in the written press, i.e. about Christianity and young people, well, why must the BBC gratuitously stir up more anti-Israel feelings?