The BBC stands indicted concerning precisely who knew what and why some did NOTHING during the decades of alleged sex abuse carried out by BBC star and national treasure Jimmy Savile. I don’t know about you but I think this response is utterly inadequate…
“The BBC is to launch two inquiries surrounding sex abuse claims made against Sir Jimmy Savile, director general George Entwistle has announced. The first into why a BBC Newsnight investigation into Savile was shelved last year will start straight away. The other into whether culture and practice at the BBC at the time enabled Savile to carry out the sexual abuse of children will wait for police go-ahead.”
BBC investigating the BBC? No. Not good enough. We need a Judicial led independent enquiry that can challenge evert detail of this horrendous case. There was an interview on Today this morning at 8.29am with Sir Christopher Bland, the former Chairman of BBC Board of Governors. If ever there was a man well named, it is he. His arrogance and scorn for those “conspiracists” – as he calls those who challenge just what went on at the BBC and who knew about it – shone through! Think Justin Webb actually did a good job on him.
Here is an interview with the former Health Minister who blew the whistle on the Jersey Child Abuse Culture. It was recorded pre “Savile-Gate” and highlights the vital document(s) being kept buried by the BBC. http://voiceforchildren.blogspot.com/2012/08/stuart-syvret-rule-of-law-and-bbc.html
Highly, but highly interesting.
I’m sure DV will take a good look at it to decide what prominence to give it.
Frankly, the extent to which it seems people in high places view children as objects of gratification and others seek to cover up shows just how much our country is literally going to the Devil.
I think the worst allegations coming out are from Stoke Mandeville and other NHS institutions and the children’s homes, and as the Daily Mail points out, no sorry coming from them.
According to the allegations it was generally known he’d abuse his trust to molest children, yet was still allowed access because he ‘brought in the bucks’. Eew.
Of particular and immediate interest at the BBC is how the Newsnight report got shelved; reportedly to avoid tarnishing the name of one of the BBC’s biggest ever stars.
One really doesn’t want to use what these children have suffered as a pretext to attack the BBC – sliming is a practice best left to the BBC’s agitprop merchants like Humphrys and Naughtie et al – but there do seem to be excellent grounds emerging for a truly independent inquiry to report on how allegedly rife child abuse went on for decades with the pervasive complicity of BBC staff.
Think you`re being a bit relaxed here, Mr Pooter.
You`re right of course-I promise you the idea is not to belittle the victims of Savile, nor to use them as hobby horses to settle up with the BBC.
My rage is their sheer cant and hypocrisy in all this, their arrogance, double standards and sheer insouciance to the evil that they condoned…and continue to tolerate at our expense.
Compare their venom against the Catholic Church, against Rupert Murdoch, against the police in S. Yorkshire ; with their ” now`s not the time to worry overmuch-leave it to us, nothing much to see round here” continual “sliming” of every possible orifice of their output…24/7 as well.
Like the tax dodging cant, the refusal to publish Balen, their arrogance over Ross and Brand, their phoneline fiddles, their Climate Change slops, their fixed competitions and photoshopping of the Queen to slag her off….basically, Mr Pooter they are finally in the frame for all of this.
It has taken time, and come about an odd kind of way….but if Savile leads them to the trapdoor, then who among us would not pull the lever for these evil LibLeft Liars.
My next hope is that “Newsnight” will be shut down with immediate effect…with the loss of the 500 or so jobs tied up with this tie dyed batik crap of a news show!
Dead hacks Warking…Paxo Stuffing,…does Rupert want a snappy headline for the coming great day!
Shop soiled agitpop students on perpetual gap year at our expense in need of pension top ups and upgrade to Hampstead…apply to Mason and Flanders Inc( contracted to the Twilght Tax Vehicular Company, for anonymity!)
The last thing I want to see is hysteria whipped up that will cloud the issues and let the guilty go free.
Look at the utterly ludicrous amount of resources being spent on Operation Weeting. And who whipped up that hysteria to produce such a grossly disproportionate response?
I wonder if some can be diverted to investigate the alleged Savile child abuse ring?
Personally, children getting nonce is somewhat more serious than phones getting hacked and information getting leaked.
I think that you should lead the inquiry. You’ll have the twats banged to rights in no time.
My next hope is that “Newsnight” will be shut down with immediate effect…with the loss of the 500 or so jobs tied up with this tie dyed batik crap of a news show!
Agreed.
I hope that Murdoch’s press and media give the BBC a taste of its own medicine. Though frankly, the sins of Murdoch- phone tapping, are trivial compared to decades of BBC suppression of truth. This “Savile” affair is just the tip of the iceberg. I would like to see the report on “hate” campaugn that the BBC has conducted against Israel.
“yet was still allowed access because he ‘brought in the bucks’”
And there was I thinking that it was just wicked capitalists who would do anything for money.
Some great BBC posters here from their early days of “promoting family values” ,by way of annuals, publications etc.
Any chance of me buying that Savile poster of him waving his medallion around(oo er!) sitting in a chair, thumbs up(oo er 2!) , rose-tinted specs and before his “Jim`ll fix it” posters c/o the BBC.
You know-blue shell suit and evil , oldie grin!
It`s just that I need to keep the kids away from the fridge, and this poster would do a fine job of that?
Do you think that the BBC still have it in stock for me?
The political left’s line on ‘Have I Got Deflected News For You’:
-it wasn’t the BBC’s fault. Blame lies elsewhere: especially with ‘Daily Mail’ and ex-PM Mrs Thatcher; so concur Balding, Hislop, Merton, Linehan, and not forgetting Livingstone, of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s ‘Press TV’.
For those with access, suggest see from 10:00min-16:20 min esp. of ‘HIGNFY’
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01nd9dc/Have_I_Got_News_for_You_Series_44_Episode_1/
There does seem to be a concerted effort to get everyone’s attention away by shouting… ‘Look… over there…!’
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/12/sexual-harrassment-media-anne-robinson
But judging by the comments, even the Graun is finding that’s not really flying with folk outside the media echo chamber.
I am sure next week they will balance things out by getting a right wing comedy writer to sit on Ian’s panel and a right wing MP or ex-MP to sit on Paul’s side, topped off by having a right wing host, Jeremy Clarkson perhaps.
They could then lay into the Guardian for falsely claiming that the NOTW hacks had deleted Milly Downer’s messages or bring up the Guardian’s hypocrisy over tax avoidance stories. Maybe they could also blame Gordon Brown or Tony Blair because they must have met Guardian editors at some point in the past.
Over to you, BBC, I am sure you can demonstrate your renown balance and fairness. You might have a problem finding a right wing comedy writer though, you can’t have that many on your ‘books’.
I live in eternal hope, that one day HIGNFY will have Jim Davidson & Roy “Chubby” Brown at the 2 guest panelists.
Think I may be more decomposed than Savile & his reputation when that day comes.
Excellent point Llew, and one you will never find contested by the Beeb-loving trolls we get on here from time to time.
‘A comprehensive guide to right-wing views expressed on HIGNFY’ by Dez.
Won’t happen, will it?
“It’s a great and important institution, but the BBC can’t be allowed to investigate its own ‘cesspit'”
By Simon Heffer.
[Excerpt]:
“The Savile scandal has lifted a very big stone at the BBC, and what is underneath is deeply disturbing. The threat to the Corporation’s credibility and reputation is too great for it to be dealt with in-house.
“What is happening at the state broadcaster is ultimately the State’s responsibility. That is why the Culture Secretary must intervene urgently.”
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2217066/Its-great-important-institution-BBC-allowed-investigate-cesspit.html#ixzz29AeJpc5c
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook
‘I must also declare a personal interest: I make programmes for it and am proud of my association with it.’
Speaking of wallowing in the turd-bobbing jacuzzi they all share, pity Mr. Hislop has not pondered his mixed allegiances in such a way before opting to take the path he has, especially as editor of a publication once noted for holding the powerful to account and asking questions.
Seems the only one he has asked of the BBC is when the cheque clears.
I’ve always wondered why the “Eye” never had a “biased BBC ” collumn.
Undeclared interests at work here?
I remember a few years ago Hislop and Merton getting rather embarrassed when a guest on the quiz spoke of “the very generous wages of some here” – it was obvious that they felt rather awkward about how much they earned for appearing on the the show. Subject changed asap.
Recently I re-read the details of the Angus Deaton affair – the disgraced former host of HIGNFY. He was paid £75,000 per episode, reduced to £25,000 after the prostitute/cocaine scandal, and sacked shortly after.
Merton and Hislop as regulars will likely be on a similar amount and have probably made themselves very wealthy from their BBC jobs, so Hislops attack on the Mail and defence of the BBC is little more than self interest disguised as moral oneupmanship. He was doing no more than defending his very cushy lifestyle.
I doubt Private Eye pays him anywhere near as much – so his true loyalties are bound to lie with the BBC.
The poor old Private Eye is a sad shadow of its former self and I hate to think how low its circulation must be. For me it jumped the shark with its support for the entire MMR conspiracy rubbish. It then proceeded not to mention Climategate and wouldn’t touch the touch the Mo cartoons with a barge pole.
I suspect the vast majority of Hislops earnings come from the Beeb and for that reason he isn’t going to upset the establishment.
The French satirical Magazine Charlie Hebdo published mo-type cartoons and its offices got firebombed by muzzies in consequence. .
Private Eye (nor craven-BBC) seems never to have suffered any consequences of anything. Its almost as though they were … cowardly appeasers, some might say.
looking forward to the police charging beeboids with perverting the cause of justice over this matter
Ha!
That’s a great point; yet another contravention of the Gregory Protocols. No wonder David doesn’t come on here any more. He’s absolutely BUSTED as the utter fraud that he is.
Is the McQuarrie inquiry into Newsnight no longer going ahead or is that a fourth after the internal one on groping and harassment and the other two?
Entwhistle seems out of his depth and not worth £500,000 a year.
Damaged goods and plainly panicking. I could do better.
Have you noticed that Fatty Pang appears to have disappeared? His last encounter with an ITV hackette blew him out of the water. She actually had the nerve to challenge is pathetic platitudes! The bloody cheek of some people.
Oh no, let that nice bloke Entwhistle take the shit that’s flying around, some of it may actually stick to me!.
I’m sure he is still laying down in a darkened room recovering. That’ll teach him to give impromptu interviews in the street to lowlife hackettes.
Mr Vance, did you see Have I Got News For You, last night? You might want to check it out on the BBC iPlayer as I think you’ll agree that it contained one of the most atrocious bits of left-wing propaganda ever – on what is meant to be a COMEDY programme! It was blatant brainwashing of the young populace.
The comedy stopped for about 5 minutes whilst Clare Balding and the guests attacked the tabloid press, the Tories (Red Ken the communist extremist said some disgusting things about Cameron and the Conservatives), the DM website and tried to deflect the heat from the Jimmy Savile scandal onto everyone else in the media. Disgraceful!
It was a ridiculous attempt to deflect the blame away from the BBC and onto the Daily Mail. Predictably for the Left they even blamed Thatcher! Clare Balding bleated on about how the Mail makes remarks about women’s appearance and then without missing a beat went on to mock Eric Pickles for being fat!
A.A Gill got her number and riled the BBC token it’s why I like the guy !
An inquiry on just the Savile affair is not enough. For decades, the BBC has become the mouthpiece of Leftists. This bias is most certainly not a reflection of the views of the majority. While preaching to the hard pressed BBC license payers on the benefits of socialism, the BBC have awarded themselves with salaries quite out of keeping with their worth. Not content with that, they have engaged in tax avoidance.
The BBC has sneered at Western civilisation and lauded and defended totalitarian and Islamic despots of every sort. It has now come to this, that compared to the BBC, alJazeera or RT are sources of unbiased news and commentary.
The government has an opportunity now to restore the once good name of the BBC. It should not shirk its duty, no matter how loud the squeals from the BBC.
“Savile: ‘Victims’ Prepare To Sue NHS And BBC.
“The Department of Health launches its own investigation into Jimmy Savile as alleged victims prepare to take legal action.”
(inc video clip)
http://news.sky.com/story/997166/savile-victims-prepare-to-sue-nhs-and-bbc
High-profile soap star linked to sex abuse claims at BBC as scandal over Jimmy Savile grows – http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/9603136/High-profile-soap-star-linked-to-sex-abuse-claims-at-BBC-as-scandal-over-Jimmy-Savile-grows.html
The plot thickens…
” The BBC has appointed an external investigator to examine the allegations and report back on the extent of any cover-up ”
Will this be another Balen Report then?
With all the furore about Jimmy Savile, can we at last expect pariah status bestowed on paedophile enabler Peter Tatchell?
His letter to the Guardian, June 23, 1997
“Ros Coward (Why Dares to Speak says nothing useful, June 23) thinks it is “shocking” that Gay Men’s Press has published a book, Dares To Speak, which challenges the assumption that all sex involving children and adults is abusive. I think it is courageous.
The distinguished psychologists and anthropologists cited in this book deserve to be heard. Offering a rational, informed perspective on sexual relations between younger and older people, they document examples of societies where consenting inter-generational sex is considered normal, beneficial and enjoyable by old and young alike.
Prof Gilbert Herdt points to the Sambia tribe of Papua New Guinea, where all young boys have sex with older warriors as part of their initiation into manhood. Far from being harmed, Prof Herdt says the boys grow up to be happy, well-adjusted husbands and fathers.
The positive nature of some child-adult sexual relationships is not confined to non-Western cultures. Several of my friends – gay and straight, male and female – had sex with adults from the ages of nine to 13. None feel they were abused. All say it was their conscious choice and gave them great joy.
While it may be impossible to condone paedophilia, it is time society acknowledged the truth that not all sex involving children is unwanted, abusive and harmful.”
http://www.christian.org.uk/news/tatchell-reiterates-call-for-lower-age-of-consent/
(Scroll down the link)
They should deport Tatchell back to Australia. Australia deports British people back to Britain so why shouldn’t we?
Such happy bunnies, the Sambia.
“Because of the constant brutal abuse, all schizoid tribal personalities are so insecurely attached they are extremely uncertain about their genders, and most of their adult lives replay the early gender anxieties produced by their parental incest/rejection experiences. New Guinea boys begin this replaying of embedded alters at seven, when men conduct fellatio on them, forcing their penises into the boys’ mouths and anuses the same way their mothers earlier used them both in incest and forced feeding. This oral rape begins by blaming mothers as “evil defilers” of the boys who have “polluted and weakened their sons” with their poisonous menstrual blood. This supposed pollution is countered by forcing the boys to suck the semen of men daily for years, saying, “It’s the same as your mother’s breast milk” but it will “make you a STRONG man” and will prevent them from growing into females.46 That raping boys orally can “make them hard” and “prevent them from being soft” may seem bizarre, but believed in wholeheartedly nonetheless.”
The Professor is a …….(fill in blank).
These folks are wilfully perverse.
I don’t find Tatchell’s views surprsing, as the ‘progressive’ Left have always been keen to encourage under age sex (witness where we are now with contaceptives being handed out/prescribed, and abortions performed, without parents’ knowledge). However it’s a contradictory stance they take because whilst they refer to 12-year old girls – and I’ve heard it said on the BBC – who want to have sex with other under age kids as ‘young women’, when 13/14 year olds are victims of the likes of Savile they become ‘vulnerable children’.
In other words, yet another example of how Socialists have screwed up our society with their muddled, immoral dogma.
Will have to listen to the hilarious “News Quiz” again!
Was I right or was I right then?
Note how they avoid speaking of Savile…aren`t they brave, boys and girls?
The EU Peace Prize?…hardly any scope for humour there eh?
Not when we can talk of beheading Cameron or Boris as Ken Livingston did…and this is funny?
Let all Beeboids go the way of scoutmasters, vicars etc…all are guilty predatory perverts, tax fidding monsters unless they get a CRB check(RRP £145.50) from kind gentle safe Uncle Rupert…now THERE`S A real family man, you could trust your kids with.
No wonder the BBC loath him so much!
After the police enquiry there must be an independent inquiry – independent of the BBC.
I do not trust them to get at the whole truth of what went on within their dressing rooms, studios or the corridors of power.
This is more than simply a BBC story; who knows where an investigation will end or what it will reveal. A Leveson style inquiry is needed. What went on seems be far worse than phone hacking. The victims and the rest of us deserve. to know the truth.
David Cameron should act. However, I expect the establishment, not least the BBC, have plenty to hide. They will pull strings. A BBC internal inquiry will serve them well. A few names, an apology and a cover up.
Move on now please. Nothing to see here.
I think one of the reasons they got away with it is because like the Pakistani rape gangs they tageted white working class girls. Few at the BBC would risk their job for them.
If they had targeted the daughters of the liberal elite or ethnic minorities the bbc bosses would have had the police in decades ago.
This x 10.
I’ve liked your comment, Ron, but actually I’m not so sure. The BBC and left-in-general shilling for Islam is not rational; as an alliance it involves a confection of utterly incoherent and dissonant views on so many things, as is instantly apparent to anyone with a basic knowledge of history and understanding of current affairs. It is therefore similar to a mental illness akin to that which created the european fascist movements of the last century; do not expect these people to behave in a comprehensible manner, even if/when it involves their own children.
Any inquiry commissioned or in any way influenced by the BBC will be a whitewash.
Or would the BBC have been happy with, say, South Yorkshire police setting up an inquiry into Hillsbrough, or the Met setting up an inquiry into the assault on Tomlinson. Of course they bloody wouldn’t. They be using their enormous media power – across TV, radio, internet, baying for a public inquiry and giving it saturation coverage.
So no thanks, BBC. You can keep your Climategate-style whitewashes. We. Don’t. Trust. You.
Re Jimmy Savile,
Police have 340 lines of inquiry into sex abuse claims while the BBC is holding two inquiries.
The BBC will have a massive enquiry on their hands, in fact I would have thought it impossible?
The BBC obituary reports that :
“He was on BBC television for nearly two decades from 1974 in his guise as a perennial Santa Claus, granting viewers’ wishes from his magic chair on Jim’ll Fix It.
The programme received 20,000 letters a week. A handful of correspondents went on to see their dream come true, and with it they received a hallowed Jim’ll Fix It badge.”
I would have thought that it will be a very tough call to examine this correspondence. Over 20 years to the BBC, looking for all those correspondents who promised him
favours if he “fixed it” for them, those who appeared on the show, those who didn’t but were contacted, those Jimmy Savile took a special interest in, those that he contacted but didn’t appear on the show; those letters written in a begging style that would have naturally aroused him, the “I will-do-anything-to-appear-on-the-BBC” style? Those from young mothers who wanted their children to appear? Who would do anything for little Johnny? Then again a thorough enquiry couldn’t just wait around for those who are still alive to come forward! I read the police are looking at cases that go back to 1959. What about those who wrote to tyhe BBC and Jimmy Savile and are now dead? How many BBC staffers are still alive who worked on Jim’ll Fix It? Where are they now in the BBC? Why are they not talking? “I remember the time at the BBC when we got this amazing letter, etc., etc.” How will the BBC investigate these millions of potential abuse cases, and all names and addresses and telephone numbers provided in confidence to Jimmy Savile of the BBC? How can they be sure that they would ever come to the bottom of it?
I just watched ‘When Louis Theroux met Jimmy Savile’, rather aptly, he reffered to Theroux as “The Piranha fish of all interviewers” and questioned why in his questioning “he kept lifting the toilet-lid of life”. He had a point.
Me, I remember all his unrelenting charity work and innumerable marathons, and to be honest, I didn’t know he had died until this most recent story. How strange is Wikipedia, and how strange that alongside awards for charity and other bongs, already inserted notes that it may be removed.
Yes trust is the issue is it not.
I had a hollow laugh when I read the DT’s lead story:
“Jimmy Savile sex scandal: inquiries necessary to allay suspicions over BBC’s role says former chairman”.
Christopher Bland was quoted:
“It is a legitimate expectation for people to take what the BBC is saying on trust, given the BBC’s record.
Quote of the year.
‘“It is a legitimate expectation for people to take what the BBC is saying on trust, given the BBC’s record.’
The ‘trust us, we’re the BBC’ meme might have worked the first few times, but as a mantra, given past history, it’s looking a bit thin by now.
I’d love to see the BBC swallow that one from any they have decided to pin down.
If he really believes we he said still applies now, much is explained but none of it excused. The BBC record is broken, and has been playing the same track over and over too often to be credible.
Don’t accept sweeties from ex-BBC chairmen, children, no matter how nice a suit they wear.
” The ‘trust us, we’re the BBC’ meme ”
They must have learned that one from a certain Anthony Bliar, who said ” Hey! I’m a pretty straight guy” to one John Humphries, who of course accepted it without question.
Humphries probably thought Blair was talking about his sexuality and being “straight” doesn’t provide a propaganda opening to fit the BBC’s sexuality agenda.
Julie Birchill penned a characteristically caustic piece in the Sun this morning. ( can’t find a link anywhere!) Her stuff is not really my cup of tea usually, but the BBC rightly come in for some quite scathing criticism.
Here’s the link…
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/4587785/Dirty-Uncle-Beeb.html
‘who tells you that it’s just your little secret between the two of you.
Trust them, they’re the BBC after all.
As a reminder, any communication to you from them has this tacked on…
This e-mail (and any attachments) is confidential and may contain personal views which are not the views of the BBC unless specifically stated.
If you have received it in error, please delete it from your system.
Do not use, copy or disclose the information in any way nor act in reliance on it and notify the sender immediately.
Please note that the BBC monitors e-mails sent or received.
Further communication will signify your consent to this.
Everyone of mine to them back tells ’em where they can stick that little ‘just between us girls’ bit of Orwellian BS.
George Entwistle has said…
‘I have made clear my revulsion at the thought that these criminal assaults were carried out by someone employed by the BBC and that some may have happened on BBC premises as well as, we now discover, in hospitals and other institutions.’
Apparantly Jimmy Savile had a camper van and used to sleep outside Broadcasting House. No problem with the BBC authorities providing parking facilities for him then. But was Entwistle aware of this when he spoke of BBC premises? There are also rumours on the internet of acts of necrophilia in hospital mortuaries, what does Entwistle think of that?
Oh Lord, don`t give them THAT get-out!
The BBC will now be claiming that this is now a problem for the “travelling community”; that he didn`t therefore technically use “BBC premises” for his assaults…and that any further antiSavile stuff might yet implicate our Roma friends…and we`d not want that now, would we?
Excellent bit of investigative journalism by Channel 4 on the BBC.
Powerful piece of reporting.
I guess to those happening cats at HIGNFY it now means that Ch4 is right wing like the Daily Mail.
More and more it seems there does need to be an indendent inquiry into the BBC.
We can’t have the man ultimately responsible for shelving the Newsnight report into Jimmy Savile deciding who investigates.
‘I have made clear my revulsion at the thought that these criminal assaults were carried out by someone employed by the BBC and that some may have happened on BBC premises as well as, we now discover, in hospitals and other institutions.’
See what he did there?….left it lingering that it had happened in hospitals…the last quote stays in the viewers mind….a trick they have been using for over 50 years at the Beeb.
I bought young Bupa one of these little clicker things last winter so he could keep track of the number icicles forming on the inside of his bedroom window.
I have now put it to further use by clicking every time someone who has taken, is taking, and or hopes to take at some time in the future the BBC’s shilling (ie our shilling): every time one of them comes on and says,
‘the idea that the Savile report on the BBC was quashed from above is ludicrous. That is not how the BBC works’.
I’m up at 217 clicks now, and before my GP having my RSI treated. That’s the RSI to my thumb and the RSI to my stomach muscles from all the laughing at just how gullible they think we are.
A recent gaurdian comment has the following:
“What with Savile, King, Peel, Freeman and Denning, the BBC of the 70s is starting to look like the nonces wing at Wandsworth Prison.”
Apparantly Alan Yentob knew about Jimmy Savile, scroll down….
http://aangirfan.blogspot.de/2012/02/bbcs-jimmy-savile-and-child-abuse-cover.html
I’m waiting to read of someone catching a sexually transmitted disease off one of the abusers. I’ll be surprised if it didn’t happen,wasn’t suppressed, threats and bribes weren’t used to protect the guilty.
Is the BBC’s apparent covering up or blind eye turning to Savile’s activities evidence of bias? There is a prima facie case that the BBC has behaved disgracefully and it deserves everything that will be thrown at it if proven.But allowing a right wing catholic to abuse children for decades when it has a duty of care is not evidence of left wing bias. Evidence of a malign institution perhaps. But not left wing bias.
Jim, I would make two points:
1. The actual wrong doing and the complicity of employed individuals.
2. The past and continuing institutional refusal to admit of any wrong doing and the power to enforce complicity and silence on employees and potential employees.
Item 2 is very much active in cases of left wing bias, it is still apparent (despite the present cries re Savile of it couldn’t happen now) and it is sadly most likely to be untouched by this scandal – if the BBC can manage to weather the current storm that is.
Jim, this is related to the corrupt, elitist bubble culture at the BBC which influences newsgathering and news production, as well as the lighter weight talking heads on the radio who play at covering serious topics. But my favorite aspect of all of this is that the period during which this man (and not only him) was allowed to do all this was the exact same period which ex-DG Thompson has described as leaning massively to the Left.
I can think of no greater indictment of BBC culture.
It’s the contemporary version of the bubble culture, incidentally, which allowed Jude Machin to have a picture of the leader of a foreign country as her Twitter profile avatar and openly tweet her partisanship. The BBC mandarins created the environment in which she felt it was okay to do this, only to crack down on her when someone noticed. Perspectives are twisted all over the place, and it doesn’t help that far too many of them have the same superior view of themselves because they hold all the approved thoughts.
An examination of how this came to be, how it’s been perpetuated, and how to end it is in order. You want to be proud of the BBC? You want to feel that it’s worthy of its legacy of generations of trust? End the internal culture.
I’ll take the ‘evidence of a malign institution’ and add ‘that people should be no longer legally obliged to fund just because they own a telly’.
Jim:
Maybe not strictly a left/right issue, but certainly indicative of the BBC’s arrogance.
And it is their arrogance that lies at the heart of so much that is wrong with the organisation, whether it’s political bias, secrecy, ludicrous salaries paid to self-important managers or its dismissal of complaints and refusal to the subject itself to independent scrutiny e.g. OFCOM.
Oops, this bit didn’t post when I sent the above.
The standard excuse by BBC producers (as seen on Channel 4 News last night – see clip above) seems to be simply “that’s the way things were” when trying to explain their lack of action over the Savile allegations – as if that is a valid excuse. As C4 news said; it’s the way things were in the BBC, that cosy little metropolitan elite media bubble. It’s not the way things were in the rest of society.
Many of us would say that nothing has changed. If, say, in a few years time an investigation finds the BBC to be riddled with left-wing bias, no doubt many of the current incumbents will excuse themselves by saying that that is simply “the way things were”.
And tolerated by a left wing catholic in the form of Mark Thompson.
And I`d watch that Catholic smearing if I were you-Catholics know that hell awaits them for child abuse(Mk 9:42-4 etc, etc)-all the BBC seem to get for it is to be promoted and out of the firing line!
Typical muddying of the waters from someone who wants everybody implicated…except the BBC.
Time for the odious hypocrites at the BBC to be slung out of work and beg Rupert for a job.
Time too to stop the camp following for the Beeb…they`re a busted flush, and not before time.
The Catholic Church will survive it too!
Jim that is so wrong. The BBC acted in a terrible way for well established reasons. The NoW behaved badly, but not nearly as badly as the BBC have done here and the BBC went after them all guns blazing because they saw them as a right wing paper. As to Saville’s politics, irrelevant totally – whether he was right-wing as you say or whether he was not.
And you mentioning the fact he was a Catholic is appalling on your part! His religion is again irrelevant. All you were clumsily trying to do was remind everybody of the small number of Priests whose Saville-like behaviour encouraged the BBC to carry out a vendetta against the whole church. Your clumsy attempts to steer the subject off the BBC and onto the Catholic Church was quite despicable.
There is no excuse for the BBC here, which you were trying do by implying it was no worse than other organisations. Considering how the BBC blamed the current and previous popes for the actions of a minority, the BBC heads since the 1970s must stand equally accused and guilty as the popes. I would like to see long custodial sentences for these people who assisted and aided the cover-ups – including Director Generals past and present.
Excellent Demon!
That “right wing Catholic” bit of Jims .presumably comes from Paul Merton reminding us all that Savile was a guest at Chequers , when Mrs Thatcher was in power.
Typical gratuitous slur from a mentally-recovering popinjay, whose recent shows have bombed…hence the sanctuary and sinecure there at the BBC.
File under Fry, Stephen…the BBC likes to parade its support for the Mental Health Survivors by giving them whacking salaries to be funny(if only).
Whether WE survive their whining victimhood from Hampstead is another matter…
On a very narrow semantic basis there may be a small aspect of validity to what Jim is claiming.
However, as the BBC is finding, and he will come to appreciate, pulling the usual denial, distraction and then Clintonian defences and making irrelevant points of order may once have served, but no longer. In fact all such attempts do is highlight the main issues and also the attempts at cover up.
The BBC bears more than a passing resemblance to the Catholic Church it despises.
Read “They Fixed It For Jim” at:
http://john-moloney.blogspot.com/
It’s hard not to hear tonight’s news reports of the awful tales of what (may have) happened at Broadmoor without hearing a metaphorical sigh of relief from the Corporation.
Operation ‘deflect at all costs’ can now be shifted up a gear as the BBC plead that ‘all the other kids dun it too, Mister’.
The curse of Clan Murdoch has been swift, thorough and merciless.
Just as the BBC itself seems incapable of conducting its own investigation concerning Jimmy Saville , so too the police, who have clearly suppressed information in the past vis a vis Saville’s connections with “the great and the good”. In some respects I agree it is a Macpherson moment for the police too, and why there are about it lets look into the logic behind the most recent “suppressing” of legal action and the Moslem paedophile ring in Rochdale, etc. The same “hands off” , “lets not go there” approach at the highest levels, Maybe its not the police itself but the CPS (Crown Prosecution Service) that needs to be examined here. Only an independent enquiry will work, it seems to me the BBC and police may have worked hand in hand.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/jimmy-savile/9606494/Jimmy-Savile-police-officers-repeatedly-failed-sex-victims.html
Murnaghan on Sky, just interviewed Sir Michael Lyons 11.15am about Saville. Well worth watching, the angle that its not just about the BBC but is “of much wider consequence….prisons, hospitals” was asserted. Lyons remarked on the non-showing of Newsnight’s prog. “I would be surprised if it was vetoed”. Re criticism of Entwhistle: “his actions have been faultless” . The approach to “deflect” criticism was clear. he thinks that the Savile affair doesn’t com[pare to the Hutton/Kelley affair, it is “one of those periodic events”. he thinks that there is always”hysteria” when we are talking about the BBC, but this case is “of much wider consequence”. Again damage limitation, worth looking at. I thought Dermot’s questioning was excellent, that “the BBC had one of the worst sex offenders on its payroll” , as well as remarking that he was allowed to get away with it “through the kudos and status of the BBC” and Lyons was on the ropes a few times. Dermot also remarked that Newsnight “didn’t want to queer the pitch”, and he questioned George Entwistle’s competence to stay in his job. In short the sort of interview that could never happen on BBC, and reveals also why they are incapable of conducting their own inquiry, Lyons says that Fiona Reynolds is in the chair “at the moment”.