58 Responses to CALL THE MID WIFE

  1. Ian Hills says:

    “Wonderful free NHS contraception” is good news for moslem child pimps.

       21 likes

  2. George R says:

    And here, Beeboids provide their reporting on behalf of homosexual men:

    “HIV increase in gay men caused by fall in condom use.”

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-21474066

       13 likes

    • Old Goat says:

      They don’t bother, now, being honorary members of the Back to Front Club. Do homosexuals spend their time enlarging the circle of their friends? Very probably…

         8 likes

      • wallygreeninker says:

        The Inspector General (a commentator at Cranmer) visits Pink News to save the other pillars of the church there the trouble He came back with this snippet a week or two ago:
        “One would think that CP, being a form of commitment, would stabilise infection rates. Not so. HIV rates continue to rise. 1 in 20 of all gay men are HIV positive. Rising to 1 in 12 in the London area. Both substantial increases. The blame is not put onto the individuals themselves (…it never is, you know…), but onto an explosion of ‘bareback’ porn. Porn is as much part of LGBTQ life as a bottle of wine in the evening is for decent people. “

           9 likes

    • David Preiser (USA) says:

      Unfortunate choice of acronym there: “MSM”.

      Still, the BBC should be reporting this stuff, and encourage safer practices amongst homosexuals. In all seriousness, it benefits all of society if they (or any group) don’t spread disease or create an environment where the virus can mutate into an even stronger form. We don’t want closeted homosexuals infecting women, either.

      I wonder if, after the strike is over, Evan Davis will have Iain Dale back in the studio to explain it to the straights, like they did with David Laws’ ethical difficulties.

         8 likes

  3. George R says:

    “Migrant baby boom triggers midwife crisis: Half of wards being forced to turn expectant mothers away.
    “Royal College of Midwives warns of massive shortage in parts of UK.
    “5,000 midwives needed in England alone to cope with demand.
    “Half of maternity wards shut doors an average of seven times a year.
    “UK witnessing highest birth rate in 40 years, as hospitals struggle to cope.”
    By FIONA MACRAE SCIENCE CORRESPONDENT.

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2265336/Migrant-baby-boom-triggers-midwife-crisis.html

       24 likes

    • johnnythefish says:

      ‘Some might say’ The Daily Mail is just one constant rant, but at least it gives an insight into the world outside of the BBC statist bubble.

      As Ian Hislop once famously asked of David Mitchell when he was using his chairmanship on HIGNFY to sneer at a Mail news item (paraphrased): ‘What exactly is inaccurate about that story?’ Mitchell looked like he’d been slapped with a wet fish, and – surprise, surprise – had no answer.

      That was in the days before Hislop had been Attenboroughed, of course.

         28 likes

  4. Aerfen says:

    As I recall there was no comment in any of the Jennifer Worth books on the benefits of free contraception.

       20 likes

    • Framer says:

      Actually condoms were available to purchase in the late 1940s but our rather too well coiffed mother-of-eight hadn’t heard of them.
      And the Beeb deliberately played her and her husband as a hapless loving couple to get our sympathy while ramming home the point.

         2 likes

  5. colditz says:

    What’s wrong with free contraceptives?

    Is Mr Vance actually a closet Catholic opposed to birth control? Does he prefer unwanted pregnancies with the inevitable consequence of a rise in abortions?

       8 likes

    • chrisH says:

      There`s nothing wrong with “free contraception” colditz.
      That`s not the point.
      It`s just the predictable continual drivel and propaganda from the BBC in regard of one its usual hobby horses.
      They can`t even do a sit com or drama without giving us their extra side dish or sideswipes.
      Contraception, white Christian nutters, heroic Muslims, wondrous women, black and lesbian, nasty Tories and abortions…for Gods sake, colditz if you see any BBC vehicle that is supportive of Israel or of the need to rein in state largesse and spending(those free condoms of yours!), then do tell us.
      Until then it`s continual drip feeding of liquid Guardian!
      But the 24/7 output is free isn`t it coldie?

         58 likes

      • Rufus McDufus says:

        It’s probably free for colditz, just not everyone else.

           12 likes

      • George R says:

        There’s no such thing as a ‘free’ condom.

           6 likes

      • Lynette says:

        When last did you hear a drama on Radio 4 that didnot include a homosexual or lebian realationship.? The BBC is constantly portraying this kind of a relationship but will rarely portray a happily married couple especially one over 50, enjoying a passionate relationship.

        A case in point was the soap “The Doctors ” in 2003 shown at lunchtime In one episode two men passionately kissing and later to see them in bed together. It was shown at 1pm.. I argued that that this was unsuitable before the “watershed”( I did not know if this applied anymore)

        I got a quick response (unusual for the BBC) accusing me of homophobia. I wrote back that it was the promotion of homosexual acts I was objecting to and not the condition of homosexuality. They would not show a scene of a middle aged married couple kissing and in bed together.

        But of course the BBC would not wish to promote the continuation of long term sexually fulfilled marriages between husband and wife. They wouldn’t dream of doing that!

           18 likes

        • Guest Who says:

          ‘I got a quick response (unusual for the BBC) accusing me of homophobia.’
          Seems you got a near instant response here, too, if a bit removed (in more ways than one); maybe it’s an area of fast track interest?
          I’ll leave the now inevitable haunting of this thread to the now mustering forces of pink outrage on matters same sex, but I remain interested in the default accusation of homophobia.
          As you point out, what you had raised was not homophobic, but it seems the respondent felt secure that this would serve best to shut down any further concerns around the actual point.
          That sounds oddly familiar.
          However, there is one thing I’d like to check…

             3 likes

        • Scott M says:

          “When last did you hear a drama on Radio 4 that didnot include a homosexual or lebian realationship?”

          The vast majority of plays in the Afternoon Drama slot, perhaps? How about the Classic Serial? And the latest novel in the Cazalets sequence, about a large family in the early days of WW2, has just started in the 15 Minute Drama slot – last week’s serial in the same slot was another in the onoging series about Darleen Fyles and her husband.

          The Saturday Drama slot last weekend was a new adaptation of the Wind in the Willows, next week is a drama about the Profumo Affair and, looking at the list of dramas in that slot since before Christmas, not one has been about gay relationships.

          There have been some dramas including gay people – the adaptation of the first two of Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City books, the majority of whose characters are straight, for example – but you imply that gay people are in every drama, and in that you’re simply wrong.

             6 likes

          • Lynette says:

            Apologies, it just so happens when I tune in.

               4 likes

          • pah says:

            So how exactly do you know that there are no gay characters in the dramas you describe?

            Can a character not be gay without a sex scene or a mention? Why do you assume a character is not gay just because no mention is made of his or her sexuality?

            Or perhaps you now agree with me that the BBC is only interested in promoting gays when it can make a point of it. That, for the BBC, being gay is a political point not a simple fact of life?

               1 likes

            • Scott M says:

              “So how exactly do you know that there are no gay characters in the dramas you describe?”

              Well, let’s see. Listening to the dialogue is a good start. If a pivotal character is a married man whose daughter spots him out with his mistres (as happens in this week’s The Cazalets) is it not safe to assume that he’s straight?

              But this whole branch to the conversation started by Lynette claiming that Radio 4 featured so many gay or lesbian relationships that you couldn’t find a drama without one. I think she’s plainly wrong, and provided examples to subtantiate that view.

              It may well be that there are plays in which some or all characters’ sexuality is never referred to one way or the other, and the listener is free to make up their own mind. Are you suggesting that Lynette could count those amongst the gay people she imagines are running amok through the drama schedules? “Dear Radio 4, the shopkeeper in one scene of yesterday’s play didn’t make explicit reference to his wife, so he could have been homosexual! How very dare you!”

              “That, for the BBC, being gay is a political point not a simple fact of life?”

              Surely the reason that gay people pop up in dramas from time to time is surely because they are a fact of life? It strikes me that the people objecting to such portrayals are the ones attempting to make a political point…

                 1 likes

              • pah says:

                Surely the reason that gay people pop up in dramas from time to time is surely because they are a fact of life?
                To coin a phrase used by a recent poster, ‘well duh!’

                Of cause they are and who really gives a shit? Well homophobes obviously. Easy target really.

                But also those on the left who wish to present homosexuals as a target for such retarded thinkers. One of the deliberate side effects of the lefts divide and conquer ghetoization of society is that it pits groups against each other.

                If you honestly think the BBC is just reflecting a fact of life and not on some mission to educate then answer this:

                If they want to show gays as a fact of life why don’t they present dramatic characters as gay without any fuss, in a matter-of-fact stylee? Why does their sexuality have to be placed front and centre (so to speak).

                Why don’t we see gay couples in drama like that? Because the BBC don’t want viewers to accept gays as normal. They want them viewed as ‘normal’.

                Of cause it is a political game. And guess who the losers will be.

                   1 likes

        • aerfen says:

          “The BBC is constantly portraying this kind of a relationship but will rarely portray a happily married couple especially one over 50, enjoying a passionate relationship. ”

          Lol if they did they would be foreign ethnics!

             4 likes

    • David Preiser (USA) says:

      colditz, I’m glad you finally admit that you have no problem with the BBC being biased and using your license fee to promote a political or ideological agenda throughout the spectrum of their broadcasting, as long as it’s an issue you agree with.

      Time for you to give up.

         37 likes

      • dez says:

        David Preiser,,
         
        Free, reliable contraception changed many lives for the better – is a statement of fact, not opinion.
         
        Just because Old Testament Christians such as Mr Vance, or Advanced Teabaggers’ such as yourself hear something in a TV drama that they disagree with is not evidence of ‘bias’.
         
        You might as well argue that any programme mentioning a ’round Earth’ is a biased because some people think that the Earth is flat.
         

           8 likes

        • Wild says:

          Dez,

          You simply prove David Preiser’s point. Because the BBC promotes views you agree with, you think everybody should be forced to pay for it.

          So make up your mind.

          Either the BBC is not biased, or it is biased, but you approve of its agenda.

          Which is it?

             37 likes

          • ltwf1964 says:

            wonder if he’d be on spamming if the mozzies objected

            wait……wait…….

            no

               12 likes

          • johnnythefish says:

            Dez,
            Do you think free contraception encourages underage sex?

               6 likes

          • dez says:

            Wild,
             
            “Because the BBC promotes views you agree with…”
             
            Whether or not you or I approve of free, reliable contraception; that it’s introduction changed many lives for the better is a statement of fact not opinion.

               3 likes

        • chrisH says:

          Why the bile Desmond?
          You don`t have to be pointlessly personal and insulting, mocking in such a straighforward case as this one?
          Have a listen to last nights “Feedback” if you want to hear how BBC management treat their own listeners-the Archers message board no less(8p.m R4, 17.2. 13).
          Any vehicle is used to give us the BBCs views of what the world should be like, and rather skips over what it would rather not like to think of( polio vaccinations in Pakistan, Dez…just the one to start with).
          If you`re saying being Tea Party or a Christian( “Old Testament” Dez?…if you deign to check, you`ll find that to be an oxymorn…Jesus is quite New Testament I think you`ll find!) prevents you from seeing the endless steeping of each and any issue in Guardian slops and sloppy thinking in general?…then say so.
          But stop the abuse eh?..and don`t call anybody an Old Testament Christian in future until you`ve checked my thinking.
          See-I can be a smug patronising Beeboid when I try to be too!
          “Open minds” of Guardian?BBC fantasies turn out to be empty head sometimes Desmond!

             18 likes

          • chrisH says:

            Oh fudge!
            Do you think Dez will major on my spelling error?
            Let`s see now shall we, guys and gals?”Aah…ah ah ah ah…ah ah ah ah”
            (Better spelling of Saviles Tarzan call anybody?)

               8 likes

          • David Preiser (USA) says:

            Don’t waste your energy, chris. Dez thinks that the condemnation of homosexuality is only in Leviticus. He actually doesn’t know about what Paul said in Corinthians or what Jesus said about it according to Matthew, hence the silly “Old Testament Christian” attack.

            Having said that, it’s news to me that DV is a Jew for Jesus.

               7 likes

            • dez says:

              David Preiser,
               
              “…hence the silly “Old Testament Christian” attack.”
               
              David Vance has several times justified his support of the death penalty by quoting a verse from Genesis. That’s pretty much the definition of an Old Testament Christian wouldn’t you say?

                 5 likes

        • David Preiser (USA) says:

          The issue lies in the “free” part, dez, and promoting a government agency. I don’t expect you to agree with that, either, but it’s still a fact.

          My support for the Tea Party movement (aren’t you charming as always with your imitation of BBC correspondent Kevin Connolly) has nothing to do with this issue.

             6 likes

          • dez says:

            David Preiser,
             
            “aren’t you charming as always with your imitation of BBC correspondent Kevin Connolly”
             
            Would it help if I just said I heard on Monty Python one time and thought it was kind of amusing? ;p
             
            Oh, and by the way Kevin Connolly was just reporting on what other people had noticed thanks to your friends here:
             
            http://goo.gl/xEPCD
             
            and here:
             
            http://blog.reidreport.com/?p=8547
             

               3 likes

        • aerfen says:

          Dez.
          Point missed.
          The BBC deliberately introduced this into the drama when it wasn’t in the original books – and NOT for ‘dramatic’ purposes, thus it can ONLY have been political.

             9 likes

        • Ian Hills says:

          And how about global warming dez, or is that “settled science”?

             1 likes

    • Guest Who says:

      ‘What’s wrong with free contraceptives?’
      In some unique cases, it could be argued that availability was no guarantee of use, with tragic consequences.
      But then, it may have been a different time.

         7 likes

    • Richard Pinder says:

      What’s wrong with free contraceptives?

      Its not free you idiot.

      The manufacturers are paid by the government, and the government forces you to pay for contraception through a compulsory payment called taxation, even if you are a catholic.

      Its the same type of compulsory payment as that for the upkeep of the BBC.

      That is why Murdoch is morally superior to socialists, payment for his media services is voluntary.

         17 likes

      • stewart says:

        The compliance secretariat insists that,bourgeois liberal ‘values’, be back projected onto all period drama.
        The past must serve the present comrades

           4 likes

  6. Fred Sage says:

    You can get free abortions as well.

       8 likes

  7. Bandicoot says:

    ‘I argued that that this was unsuitable before the “watershed”…I got a quick response (unusual for the BBC) accusing me of homophobia. …They would not show a scene of a middle aged married couple kissing and in bed together. ‘

    I know the response, and it doesnt accuse the complainant of homophobia. The scene was a couple in bed, and if I remember correctly it was a ‘peck’ rather than a passionate kiss.

    It is not unusual to see two couple lying in bed together in a soap or sitcom, One Foot in the Grave comes to mind. And certainly before the watershed, as theres nothing remotely explicit about it.

    The BBC Editorial guidelines don’t treat homsexual relationships any different from heterosexual ones. And thats the way it should be.

    I suspect you objected to it being before the watershed, as young people might see two men in bed together and suddenly turn gay. Like Ernie & Bert?

       6 likes

    • Guest Who says:

      …in replying to Lynette it may help to actually hit the reply button?
      ‘I know the response, and it doesnt accuse the complainant of homophobia.’
      To clarify, as I am presuming Lynette to be sharing the results of an exchange between her and BBC complaints, how do you come to know about anything around this, much less what was or is?
      And if not an accusation of homophobia, what was it that gave her that impression?

         5 likes

  8. ltwf1964 says:

    and I accuse the bbc of sodophilia and homo-obsession

       9 likes

    • stewart says:

      substitute “bourgeois liberalalism” its quicker and incompasses “sodophilia and homo-obsession ”
      Remember Frued not Marx

         2 likes

  9. hothandsdave says:

    BBC `analysis` – i.e highly selective and tendentious repetition of facts. no `analysis` of why visas are so important when india trades more with belgium than the uk and buys french jets when it could have bought british. presumably, the massive number of indians living in and wanting to enter belgium dwarfs the figures for uk. shame there’s no `analysis` explaining all this.

       4 likes

  10. Ray Brown says:

    How can you argue against free contraception if it slows the procreation rate of the deadbeats characterised in “Midwife”. Even better – make it compulsory.

       1 likes

  11. Rob says:

    From what I can see, the appeal of Call The Midwife lies in nostalgia for a time when the East End of London was still recognisably British. God knows what you’d call it now.

       5 likes

    • David Preiser (USA) says:

      Naughty. The BBC will have to come up with a quick fix for that.

         3 likes

    • wallygreeninker says:

      In the mid-nineties a guy who worked in a Tower Hamlets school I was talking to, described the maternity ward of the Royal London Hospital, on Whitechapel Road as a 24 hour production line for turning out little Bengalis.

         3 likes

  12. Teddy Bear says:

    Viewers’ anger at ‘graphic’ Call the Midwife scene that showed a backstreet abortion before the watershed

    A BBC spokesman said: ‘Call The Midwife is inspired by the reality of East End life in the 1950s and prior to the legalisation of abortion, back street terminations were a documented phenomenon.

    ‘Call The Midwife has never shied away from the tough conditions and difficult decisions made by pregnant women throughout this era and the series has become a critical and popular success thanks to its frank and honest approach.’

    So no response to why it was deemed necessary to put this kind of scene where children should watch it.

    If only many at the BBC would have undergone a similar ‘surgery’ before their birth.

       2 likes

  13. Anders Thomasson says:

    One question to which I have yet to find an answer is of whom Miranda Hart has incriminating negatives. And given what the BBC has let go in recent years (Savile, Islamic terrorism, socialism), just how depraved is the practice which those negatives show?

       2 likes

  14. Scott M says:

    This is pure Statist propaganda — ended up telling is how wonderful free NHS contraception is.

    I just watched the repeat – and Vance’s summation is subject to his usual oversimplifications and general lack of understanding. After a storyline in which a mother nearly died after going through with a backstreet abortion (an issue dear to Jennifer Worth’s heart – read her response to Mike Leigh’s portrayal in Vera Drake), the voiceover at the end of the programme suggested that the woman’s children and grandchildren would have better options than she did.

    Why is that so wrong?

       1 likes