The BBC has been using the Olympics as a springboard to attack the big commercial companies that are part of the Olympic deal. The BBC, for all its talk about GDP, growth and jobs seems implacably opposed to the very businesses that provide all those things.
This is what a BBC high flier has to say about his time at the BBC:
‘Sir Antony (Jay) admitted that when he was a BBC staffer, he ‘absorbed and expressed all the accepted BBC attitudes: hostility to, or at least suspicion of, America, monarchy, government, capitalism, empire, banking and the defence establishment; and in favour of the Health Service, state welfare, the social sciences, the environment and state education’.
He said that when he was there, BBC people tended to be anti-industry and saw private profit as distasteful. Many were anti-monarchy, and were suspicious of the Army.
He said: ‘What I have noticed is that it comes down to values, and the hardest thing to change in an organisation is its values.
‘And these values are behind the BBC’s view on global warming, which is everything the BBC didn’t like – it was about industry, profit, big corporations and that sort of thing.’
Panorama’s film, ‘The Truth about Sports Products’ , whilst having some points was intent on destroying the credibility of the companies it ‘investigated’ and their products.
Essentially concentrating on sport’s drinks and training shoes it made some valid criticisms but descended into tabloid vilification and overwrought emotiveness, attacking the products based on extremely tenuous evidence.
It ended up almost saying buying trainers was just throwing money away….you might be better off running bare foot…..try it! You won’t go far.
Sports drinks, it suggests, are the devil’s brew….ineffective and with 2lbs of sugar in every bottle…well they got very excited about sugar.
The drinks certainly have a lot of Carbohydrates in them…but it is not all ‘sugar’. Panorama seemed shocked that children should be drinking this stuff…..as opposed to what ? Coke…or eating a mars bar? At least they were running around playing football working it all off again.
I use energy drinks (‘Go’ usually)….and they work. Panorama claims they are only for the most dedicated, gut busting professionals….and asks why they are sold on supermarket shelves…not true…there are hundreds of thousands of ‘amateur’ sports people who get home from work and spend hours training for every sport under the sun and attain levels of skill and fitness that are almost professional….it is easy and convenient to go to the supermarkets which are open all hours to buy these drinks…supermarkets which after all stock drugs as well…and we’re not all doctors…oh and food ingredients…and we’re not all Gordon Blooming Ramsay.
The BBC does seem to be very upset about companies like Coca Cola and McDonalds having anything to do with sport and the Olympics….the BBC starts off from the premise that their products are inherently bad and unhealthy.
The BBC Great and The Good know this because they have discussed it in detail with their likeminded friends at the local wine bar where they happily indulge themselves munching on quail’s eggs and foie gras.
Victoria Derbyshire set out on the trail of McDonalds today as doctors demand sports stars do not endorse ‘junk food.’
Here is a taste of their food fascism….
Dr Aseem Malhotra, a cardiologist in London, said: ‘The very lucrative financial gain for these athletes is sadly at the expense of our children’s health and we shall not allow this to continue.’
Gary Lineker endorses a brand of crisps…he doesn’t say eat them to the exclusion of all other food…they are a snack…grow up….he is not ‘glamourising junk food.’
Derbyshire dragged on Kris Akabusi to berate him about his endorsement of McDonalds’ burgers…which Victoria knows are unhealthy and dangerous.
Akabusi doesn’t see the problem…he takes a realistic view…burgers are as much ‘food’ as any other sort and just as nourishing….Derbyshire screeches..’But it’s selling (evil deadly )BURGERS!’
She starts getting stroppy and claims he only does it for the money.
Akabusi again says he is struggling to see her point…’it’s food, not junk food….like any food it’s how much of it you eat.’
Derbyshire says burgers are not ‘energetic’…..all that beef, fat and other good ingredients not energetic? What a woman.
Akabusi takes her to task…calling her ‘churlish, arrogant and hoity toity’.
Can’t say he’s wrong…and its not the first time callers have decried her attitude.
Akabusi shook her up a bit, out of her complacency. When a food charity campaigner came on claiming burgers jeopardised lives she jumped on him, shame the attitude change never lasts.
It is pure snobbery and ignorance that belittles the good old burger….if it was on a plate with a knife and fork she wouldn’t look twice.
It is just another example though of the BBC attitude towards these big companies….if you consider that Tescos has been the object of prolonged campaigning against it, the BBC playing a part in that, you realise that the profits fall could justifiably be laid at the BBC’s door in part.
The BBC is setting itself up as the judge of what is acceptable in life…whether it’s the food we eat, where we buy that food, what papers we read, what we think and what we can say out loud.
It is deciding what businesses are ‘acceptable’, whether you can earn a bonus or not, whether you are ethical or moral…never mind that you are entirely ‘legal’ in your operations.
Look at Face The Facts today which laid into out of town shopping centre developers who applied for several changes over several years, approved by the councils, and then applied for a change of use….then going to court where it is often approved.
The BBC decided this was somehow immoral despite being entirely legal and having passed the scrutiny of the Councils and the Court.
How very nice that the BBC sets itself up as some sort of quasi judicial body, not incorporated by Parliament but by, well, God presumably…driven by its own sense of moral outrage and purpose to impose its own values upon the rest of us.
The latest GDP figures were announced and apparently the economy is sinking fast…or as the BBC put it in every news report…