I thought this was a rather good point sent my way by Rodney Atkinson;
I am must say I have always been incensed by the presumed right of the comic and BBC classes to insult everyone else and deny the insulted the right of equal – or indeed any – reply. I note that the new PRESS Royal Charter allows this, by making prominent or front page apologies (depending on the prominence of the original insult or error) but the BBC which reaches many millions of viewers and listeners is not required by its Royal Charter to make apologies of equal prominence. Perhaps MPs should consider such a change – before this “two thirds of both houses” nonsense comes in.
Good idea?
The day the BBC is accountable to anyone or anybody apart from its own I will be looking skywards for the Second Coming.
Exactly so. The BBC is so full of the rightness of its liberal left world view that it believes it has the duty to suppress the news that doesn’t fit that view and boost news that does.
It ignores its charter every single day but it is NEVER held to account by anyone. The BBC Trust, who are supposed to hold the BBC to account, is just a BBC supporters club, witness their behaviour during the Savile scandal, and are as objective as football supporters are when their club suffers from a bad referring decision.
The BBC is an untreated disease which is undermining democracy in Britain.
You speak as if the “Saville scandal” is in the past tense?
Yes, the BBC (British Brainwashing Club) have done a good job, even on you Doublethinker.
Fair point. I apologise for being hoodwinked by the BBC machine. I am duly contrite and my suspicion of anything coming from the BBC is even higher.
‘when their club suffers from a bad refereeing decision’
I’d have preferred ‘adverse’ to ‘bad’.
The BBC clamps down if anything looks like putting the BBC in a bad light, good or ill, justified or not.
Old Timer is also right to stress that, much as the BBC would wish it, and their glee clubs feel an insincere apology is all that’s needed to ‘move on’, there is much outstanding still, and just because the BBC thinks the file is closed doesn’t mean it is. This isn’t a complaint they can blow off at Trust level on a ‘belief’ basis. There are facts out there that will still bite them.
Mr. Atkinson joins many in wondering how this all got framed the way it has.
Leveson has always alluded to the media when it means the dead tree press, and only at the last minute has panic set in with the Charter as certain groups suddenly realised the #lawofunintendedconsequences had stuck their baby in the same bathwater about to be ejected, and are now squealing too.
In all this broadcast has remained separate and remote from any reference or censure.
I have yet to have clarified how, when I was told that OFCOM means that a Savile/McAlpine couldn’t happen, it did. BBC and ITV up to their necks in a tribally-motivated, unprofessional, integrity free attempted character assassination.
So they remain as gutter bound as any tabloid as far as I am concerned, and as subject to any rules as they would impose on others.
“…the presumed right of the comic and BBC classes to insult everyone else…”
This is a serious problem. Gentle wit and non-political humour are things of the past n the BBC. Contrast R4Extra with R4 and see what I mean.
By coincidence, David, I was reading your posting just as “The Now Show” was ending. I was waiting for something funny to come along like a passenger on some long defunct railway station expecting a phantom train. Yes, there were a few jokes that made me smile. But the general tone was mean. And sadly the brain-dead (young?) invited audience yelped at every line. By now I guess a generation has only one measure of “humour”. The personal insult.
“Comedians” push a number of buttons and the Pavlov dogs in their rows of red seats guffaw. The “Barry-Manilow’s-got-a-big-nose-ha-ha” school of comedy rules the airwaves. Its a world in which “Cameron is a posh git”, “Boris is a fat posh git”, “all conservatives are posh fat gits”. The irony is that the people who give us this stuff are themselves fat posh gits. (What silence? Doesn’t that insult get a laugh? And there I was expecting raucous audience laughter and applause.)
The more this stuff is indulged, the more comedy itself is weakened and the performers sink into a self-reverential pit of slim. I’m sure many of them, if they were torn from their foul mouthed routines, would shine. But while Auntie pats them on the head for every lazy “joke” nothing will change.
What a great, great shame.
To be fair I did hear a new “joke” on Radio 4 a couple of days ago during their six thirty supposed comedy slot. They came up with a whole new punch line during one of their inbred mock the anti-PC people rants. They changed their usual “Daily Mail – ha ha ha” to “Daily Express – ha ha ha”. Wow, that really was cutting edge of them.
“Gentle wit and non-political humour are things of the past at the BBC”
That is what we where saying as we watched the BBC television centre special, at one point they invited old and new comedy stars together on the sofa.
I still have no idea of the politics of the more working class older stars, but its clear that the younger middle class stars make jokes about the three main parties from the perspective of the Socialist Worker Party.
I suppose being funny and non-political is now seen as a bit too right-wing for the BBC.
The 18:30 so-called comedy slot on Radio 4 is a cancer that needs to be treated. “The News Quiz” is so rabidly and unashamedly Left-wing and PC that it is the nadir of current BBC output, but even it instantly improves when a bit of balance is introduced, e.g. when Danny Finkelstein was on it recently, the week after one of the most Left-biased editions ever. I find “The Now Show” funnier, but with Brigstocke and co entrenched it is still biased. The only one I can recall which has Left-wing targets in its sights is “Clare in the Community”, a refreshing change from Tory-bashing banality.
It says something about the content of the Now Show, when tonight, my left leaning Liberal girlfriend, phoned me up to complain about the left leaning content of the programme!
She also stated that there was absolutely nothing funny in the whole programme and that it really was past its sell by date.
For what it is worth, I though tonight’s programme had reached the lowest of the low. Well done the BBC., you got it just about right.
The reason why “Left-Wing comedy” is so mean spirited is because reality falls short of their deranged sense of their own importance. Whereas “Right Wing” comedy attempts to reconcile us to the imperfection of our existence. The first is motivated by hate, whereas the second is motivated by love.
I agree with your girlfriend. The worst moment was the “song” at the end – a three chord tuneless ditty which made Billy Bragg sound like Cole Porter. Yuk!
The Labour Party ensured that Leveson was only able to enquire specifically into the press and only the press, but certainly not the broadcast media, in order to specifically exclude any questioning of the activities and behaviour of their beloved BBC. Hence the press can be pilloried and forced to fall on their swords in penance the BBC can push any propaganda it wishes and can use it’s extraordinarily special treatment to either ignore any objections or carry out it’s own internal enquiry and declare itself purer than Caesar’s wife.
As censorship will cover the Internet too, I’m looking forward to suing the socks of Auntie every time her website slags off my victim group – straight white Englishmen who oppose immigration, the EU and Labour.