The BBC once again fails to pay due respect to the men and women who sacrificed themselves to ensure that the freedoms, values and beliefs that are the bedrock of civilisation live on.
However extended coverage of the Notting Hill Carnival, the Muslim Eid or Glastonbury are guaranteed.
BBC criticised over Bomber Command live coverage failure
The BBC has come in for further criticism of its national events coverage after it refused to broadcast the unveiling of the RAF Bomber Command Memorial on its main channels.
Instead of the showing the event attended by the Queen, eight members of the 7,000 veterans and families the BBC will be showing repeats or live tennis.
The move has been condemned by campaigners who have worked tirelessly to raise the £6 million for a fitting tribute to the 55,000 airmen killed during the Second World War.
The BBC says in a statement it was “aware of the significance of this story, both for the veterans and for our audiences” and that a special programme on Bomber Command will be shown later that day.
If I was a veteran of Bomber Command I wouldn’t watch it….the BBC will certainly praise those young men for their bravery ‘forced’ to do terrible things by ‘Bomber Harris’ who ‘wrongly’ assumed he was doing them for the best.
The programme will slowly morph from respect and gratitude, honouring the bravery and sacrifice into a saga of guilt about the raids on Hamburg and Dresden…there may even be a ‘talkinghead’ making comparison with the guards of concentration camps.
These men in the BBC’s eyes, are ‘tainted’ by what they had to do….and so get only a ‘qualified’ Hurrah and Thankyou and are shunted into the backwaters of 24 hour news..
How different of course to the BBC’s treatment of Al Qaeda terrorists and wannabe terrorists like Mozzam Begg. No ‘qualified’ welcome for them…the red carpet was rolled out and the airwaves practically turned over to them to state their cases….as was it for the IRA who could always rely on a ready platform at the BBC and a good Press.
I will restrain myself and not put into writing my total contempt for the BBC types who are so ready to dishonour brave men, the 55,000 who died for the freedoms and human rights so ‘valued’ by the BBC, whilst always being ready to excuse murderers and fanatics.
‘BBC calling…. BBC calling….’
I totally agree with the above post. The BBC have not spoken for the British people for many years. It is a major issue that they are allowed to peddle their unrepresentative brand of ‘Britishness’ at the tax payers expense when we have no ability to influence what they do. Their monopoly makes Murdoch’s look puny but no one ever mentions this when they rabbit on about plurality of the media.
They are speaking for the British people of the future – you know, the ones who are being brainwashed by the BBC and the education system.
As the war fades slowly from memory the revisionists will start to rewrite history. The Bomber Command offensive was necessary. It relieved the pressure on the Russians who bore the brunt of the land war throughout by diverting German resources to the home front.
It has been necessary for the European project to depict the German people as really victims of Nazism. This, I submit , is very far from the truth. It is the same revisionist attitude beginning to appear towards the Holocaust. Only a minority of fanatical Nazis were involved. I do not believe this.
Bomber Command is an embarrassment and the men best forgotten. This is sadly how it will be spun. The sufferings of the Russians and the Jews will be ignored as the revisionists castigate the so called terror bombing of Germany.
Another of the revisionists’ attempts at distortion is the focus on the fact that much of the heaviest bombing was done ‘towards the end of the war’, suggesting that it was an unnecessary act motivated by vengeance rather than a desperate struggle for national survival. Of course, we know the sequence of dates and the eventual outcome now, but they had no idea at the time.
After years of perfecting it, our bombing became much more efficient which led to it becoming more destructive. It also helped that their mainly wooden cities burned well and that there was little risk from the Luftwaffe. At times I think that the bombing of Dresden and Pforzheim was unnecessary but then I’m reminded of Bomber Harris’ statement, ‘those who sow the wind will reap the whirlwind.’ Every raid over Germany was for Coventry or London, Belfast or Liverpool, for every Baroque jewel like Wurzburg or Dresden there was Canterbury, Exeter or Bath. It was a war, a total war, and both sides were going to do everything possible to win.
The BBC will continue to re-write the history of WW2 because they don’t like the idea of any nation – in their twisted, self-loathing eyes – to be considered to have a worse reputation throughout history than the one they have re-written for Britain. Yep, they see us as the only example of a murderous, colonising, torturing, exploiting, racist, jingoistic bunch of bastards*.
Their ‘Horrible History’ version of The Crusades was a case in point and an absolute travesty.
*With the possible exception of Israel and America, of course.
Any chance of a “horrible history” about the seventh century moslem crusades against the Christian middle east? Didn’t think so.
Hey, I’m all for it. There’s a huge chunk of the population whose eyes roll at the merest hint of politics. You can talk all you want about Fatty Mardell covering for the Obamessiah or Dame Niki sliming Michael Gove, but all they hear is white noise. Who cares?
You can’t reason these people out of supporting the BBC becuase they were never reasoned into it. The idea that the BBC is the envy of the world is just something they picked up in the cultural air.
Stuff like this matters because it rams home to people just how utterly detached the BBC is to anything approaching normal British life. We had 24/7 coverage of the Raoul Moat Show but this Memorial? Screw you!
Beeboids react to heroism, patriotism and self-sacrifice in a noble cause like a vampire reacts to a crucifix. A really foul-mouthed, perverted vampire (mind you, Beeboids don’t like crucifixes either). Let these freaks unleash their inner Tarantino – every time they show their backside in public like this they manage to alienate another chunk of Middle Britain.
I’d rather unlease a ‘Taranto’ on the feckless, treacherous bastards.
The BBC had to be shamed into covering the celebrations – particularly the Plymouth firework display – of the 200th anniversary of Trafalgar. Even then the coverage was lacklustre and scrappy.
In the interests “impartiality” BBC-style, I suppose that rather than glorifying a highpoint in our history we should have remembered those effectively unarmed Frenchmen and Spaniards massacred in the Mediterranean by triumphant British sailors. And don’t forget, those British thugs were serving under and encouraged in their brutality by the militarist and aristocrat, Lord Nelson, whose cruel exploits are memorialised to this day by the Column of Shame in Trafalgar Square. Worse still, the squalid “victory” at Trafalgar was repeated 10 years later when gangs of British military criminals under the reactionary aristo and grinder of the faces of the poor, Wellington, defeated the French freedom fighters under their gallant leader Napoleon. Consider: if Napoleon had won we would have been welcomed into the paradise of the EU 160 years earlier.
Yes, I can’t wait until 2015 for the 200th anniversary of Waterloo (or Trafalgar if you are a Beeboid airhead).
It’ll be the one and only time the BBC will make common cause with all those Dutch Nationalists who are busy on the web re-writing history.
Did you know there were no British soldiers at Waterloo ‘cos they all ran away? You will soon. 🙁
The BBC is a cancer on Great Britain that needs to be removed
I assume you are being ironic. However the Dutch were particularly assiduous in cleansing Holland of Jews. But they don’t like to talk about this . Another of those inconvenient truths that the European project would rather not mention.
That’s harsh. Holland was/is a small country with a small population, making it difficult for people to hide Jews from the Nazis in the large numbers that could be done in rural France.
And if Germany had invaded there would’ve been no shortage of traitors here.
I would have thought so too until i looked at the facts. 140,000 Jews lived in Holland in 1939. 102,000 were murdered. Eichmann praised the deportation effort
“The transports run so smoothly that it is a pleasure to see” .
Nearly all the rounding up and transport of the Jews was done by the Dutch police and railwaymen. It is a story nobody wants to talk about. There is much more being researched in relation to the confiscation of Jewish assets and the fight to regain them that is still ongoing. It is a terrible story and I too had difficulty in believing it.
They should reform bomber command and do another Dresden on the BBC, Guardian and the all white british areas all these self-loathing freaks live in.
A couple of postcodes in North London should just about cover it with any luck.
The left love to use the bombing of Dresden in which to play the victim card for Nazi Germany. But the thing is as is typical leftwing only half the story is ever used in which to push their case.
For a start, nobody bothered their arse until a known Nazis (Irvine) wrote a book proclaiming that the RAF bombed the Nazis.
The figures quoted by the left are disputed by..the German government.
The bBC have no problem defending Nazis Germany as;
1) They killed Jews
2) They fought the British Empire.
To the bBC that can only be good.
The bBC the traitors in our midst.
This comment is brilliantly beyond parody. They’re pro-Nazi, now, are they?
They certainly don’t report on the popularity of Hitler, Mein Kampf and the Nazis in the Middle East and the anti-semitic cartoons using motifs straight from ‘Der Sturmer’ in the Arab press.
I wrote a long reply about Irving, Churchill, Goebbels, Harris and Dresden but when I tried to post it the whole thing disappeared. I’m not going to write it all again but I’ll finish by recommending Frederick Taylor’s Dresden to those interested in the period.
P.S
The above poster and the statement actually refers to the Battle of Britain, Fighter command and not Bomber command.
However, it could be said that the accidental bombing of German cities by BC during the B of B saved the Uk, by getting the Luftwaffe to change tack from attacking RAF bases and instead target British cities. Thus giving FC the space to get their breath back and kick Nazis butt.
Of course to the bBC that was unfair and just another example of the racism that only the British can show.
55,000 airmen, that is a horrendous casualty rate. there cannot have been that many aircraft. Put that in perspective that is more than the civilians who were killed in the Blitz. And according to Wiki a Bomber Command crew member had a worse chance of survival than an infantry officer in World War I. Yet the BBC chooses to ignore this, but then again they are dead white males.
An update from Wiki
‘Bomber Command crews also suffered an extremely high casualty rate: 55,573 killed out of a total of 125,000 aircrew (a 44.4% death rate)’
I’m surprised how little we hear about the bombing of Guernica by the Condor Legion of the Luftwaffe as early as 1937. It serves as a reminder of what we were up against at the time and how little we, and the BBC in particular, currently understand about the ruthless concept of total war.
I’ll get worked up about this only if anybody can tell me when any broadcaster, ever, has devoted live coverage to the unveiling of a monument. I’m all in favour of this memorial, but live coverage? Numerous other major memorials to fallen servicemen have been unveiled in the last decade without such coverage and without such synthetic fury from newspaper editors.
I guess you have a point, and they did cover it on their news channel. I think this highlights a wider point about media coverage in general, that has dumbed down to such a degree in recent decades, with an increasing obsession with trivial celebrity culture. I think this is what was behind their lack of interest in this particular event – it simply wasn’t glitzy enough to hold their gaze for very long.
That there was more media/public interest in the unveiling of the memorial to Princess Diana is a sad indictment of our nation’s increasingly shallow set of priorities.
Amen to that. Couldn’t agree more.
Have you ever thought, if Germany had not been defeated before Japan, the first atom bomb would have been dropped on Berlin, not Hiroshima.
Possible but I doubt it. It was very important to the Russians to actually take Berlin by force of arms so Stalin would have had to be told in advance and I doubt he would have allowed it.
Agree with you Dave, the bomb wouldn’t have been dropped on Berlin but it’s worth considering that the Germans had a deterrent for atomic attack – chemical weapons, nerve agents, bacteria etc.
It is probably for the best that the BBC does not cover such events, the staff there now are far removed from the type that ran the corporation during the war. There are few people in the BBC that could comment in a reverent or suitable tone, imagine the Gimp, [Evan Davis] attempting such a task? Moving aside, let’s not forget the thousands of USAAF crews killed bombing by day, visit the cemetary at Madingley Hall, Cambridge. Full of young airman who were killed or died of wounds in accidents or the result of flak and cannon shells, in pain, bumping along in their crippled Fortresses and Liberators etc….Like the Omaha cemetary, it is beautifully laid out and well tended.
I think you’re probably right. The general culture that pervades the modern BBC simply doesn’t have the stomach or the mentality to know what to do with events such as these – ones that involve a degree of national pride or (God forbid) patriotism. They can’t be overtly critial or snide for fear of stirring the silent majority to protest, but nor can they seem to bring themselves to be respectfully neutral. Their resulting attempts at finding a ‘different’ way to cover national events have been less than successful recently. If they can’t do them justice, perhaps it’s best that they leave the coverage to those that can and will.
The BBC says in a statement it was “aware of the significance of this story, both for the veterans and for our audiences” and that a special programme on Bomber Command will be shown later that day.
NOT at all good enough, NOT at all what should’ve so rightly been expected of the broadcaster WE (with a bit of dodgily biased funding from the equally undemocratic (like licence fee) EU) pay for the existance of. Utter disgrace and complete cop out. BRITISH Broadcasting Corporation? – MY ARSE!
HAVING TO pay the Al-Beeb licence fee truly makes my fuckin stomach churn!
Churchill and 55,000 of our mind blowingly heroic airmen will more than understandably be turning in their graves!
COP OUT! Sickening!!
(sorry, not Pat)
The BBC says in a statement it was “aware of the significance of this story, both for the veterans and for our audiences” and that a special programme on Bomber Command will be shown later that day.
NOT at all good enough, NOT at all what should’ve so rightly been expected of the broadcaster WE (with a bit of dodgily biased funding from the equally undemocratic (like licence fee) EU) pay for the existance of. Utter disgrace and complete cop out. BRITISH Broadcasting Corporation? – MY ARSE!
HAVING TO pay the Al-Beeb licence fee truly makes my fuckin stomach churn!
Churchill and 55,000 of our mind blowingly heroic airmen will more than understandably be turning in their graves!
COP OUT! Sickening!!
As it happens I do think that the RAF night bombing offensive was misconceived. The USAAF day bombing offensive did succeed in 1944, but only when the Mustang was available to protect the bombers. The Mustangs destroyed the Luftwaffe in the air, whilst the bombers destroyed their synthetic fuel plants. But that is not the point here. The aim is to honour the 55,000 men of Bomber Command who were lost. Theirs was the most difficult and dangerous mission of the war. I do think that this ceremony is important enough that it should be covered live, just so long as Ferne Cotton is not allowed within a million miles of it.
Weed out these lefty lunatics and throw them out of the back of a Lancaster Bomber….Tally ho!
The war graves in Benghazi have been vandalised again, for the second time in four months (no detentions for that desecration have taken place) and the BBC fails to report it again – the story is already two days old and there may not be any vids posted online this time creating pressure on them to cover it eventually. They really hate reporting his kind of behaviour when indulged in by the peace loving believers.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/libya/9337367/Commonwealth-War-Cemetery-vandalised-in-Benghazi.html
Dresden? Serves the Germans right. The fact that our European “partners” still gripe about it reveals a shocking lack of war guilt. Erecting a statue of Harris there would indicate repentance.
“What a curious vanity it is of the present to expect the past to suck up to it.”
(by literary critic, Julian Barnes.)
Many presentday Beeboids would possibly have found a close moral equivalence between Nazi Germany and Britain.