Whilst doing a little D-I-Y armed with my trusty drill, I decided to listen to The News Quiz on BBC Radio 4 earlier today. This programme was an extenuated sneer against the Conservatives and with “regular” Jeremy Hardy, Phil Jupitus and Sandi Toksvig herself, all we got was cheap political ad hominem dressed up as “satire” It’s hard to imagine that once upon a time this programme was funny. A glutton for punishment, I then caught most of Any Questions. The panelists were Keith Vaz MP, Pauline Black of the ska band The Selecter, George Eustice MP, and UKIP’s Lisa Duffy. This audience bayed when Eustice spoke but warmed to the student grant politics of Ms Black. What a biased hour of BBC trash.
AN HOUR OF BIAS
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I too was doing a little DIY with my trusty little drill, my trusty big drill, and my trusty power screwdriver. I was up a ladder fixing some electrics. The whole thing was unwise because of the wind and the freezing rain. I balanced my trusty radio on the shed roof nearby in order to listen to The News Quiz. My irritation grew but relief came when a sudden gust threw the radio off the shed roof and down into a plastic storage unit that was full of rain water. I was pleased.
I hope you were able to maintain concentration, keep the drill on target and not skew off the the left…
I hope you were able to maintain concentration, keep the drill on target and not skew off the the left…
I damn near fell off, and it would have been to the left, because that’s where the mud is.
Do you mean mud, or something more pungent it being ‘to the left’?
Well, mainly mud, stirred up by cattle, who might have had upset tummies.
I gave up long ago on both these programmes and Question Time because of the sheer predictability of the mirage of left wing consensus they manage to concoct, week in week out.
The News Quiz claim it’s their job to have a go at ‘the government of the day’. Funny, when Brown crashed the country jokes about the ‘end of boom and bust’ were quite notable by their absence. As for sitting ducks for satire like Blears, Burnham, Smith, Mandelson, Purnell, Abbott etc etc – not a whisper. The only one who seemed regularly to get it in the neck was Blair for starting ‘an illegal war’. Presumably the rest of his policies such as uncontrolled mass immigration, massive government borrowing, stealth taxes at every turn, a massive expansion of public sector jobs, the human rights act, the widespread use of Political Correctness as a means of censorship, massive overspending on the public sector generally (especially on pay and conditions), not to mention an insidious class war, were ok – for obvious reasons.
The BBC, with it’s pro-global warming, pro-EU and pro-anything that is of the Left stance, is a major threat to our democracy for once they have helped engineer a Labour government at the next election, they will do their damnedest to make sure they stay there.
Impartial my arse.
Sorry, but I gave up on the BBC a long time ago! The TV tax was irksome. But once I managed to cancel that 8 years ago, my health has improved tremendously. My doctor says that the BBC is bad for my health. I’m no medical professional. So, I decided to heed my doctor’s medical advice. I would advise everyone to do the same.
“Political Correctness as a means of censorship,” and “major threat to our democracy.”
Both points completely true Johnnythefish.
A Propoganda train for the Liberals.
Half an hour of bias today: “Dateline London” – everyone agreed! How is that debate?
Even in the days of the late great Alan Coren (he contributed until his death in 2007) the bias was evident on The News Quiz. I remember him saying something complimentary about Margaret Thatcher (can you believe that?) which was met with low murmers from the audience, to which he retorted something like ‘well that went down well!’ and he reaffirmed his remark.
Evenso the bias was much less evident in those days and the programme was often actually quite witty.
Not learning my lesson, I later listened to Any Questions. Strangely, the question about UKIP’s immigration policy appeared to elicit no response from the home audience in the follow-up Any Answers. Not for the first time!
I was interested to hear this first episode of the new series. It is true without a doubt that the News Quiz has an innate left bias. It is not a patch on The Now Show however, which should simply be cancelled.
This episode surprised me though. Hardy seemed less strident, and his tedious Marxist platitudes were absent.
I wondered if Rufus Hound’s disgraceful usurping of the BBC airwaves in his NHS diatribe on the edition broadcast on December 13th, 2013 has resulted in a slap on the wrist for all involved. It certainly should have done. It will be interesting see how News Quiz Extra is edited on Monday night on R4X. Perhaps it was a vagary of the edit, rather than a positive change in tone.
As a long time listener I remember Brown being gently mocked reasonably regularly, but not the policies themselves. Usually the News Quiz tactic is to have a gentle go at Miliband, or Brown when he was PM, and bypass the actual policies. When they move on to the Tories, leaders AND policies are attacked, long and loud. A cynic might think Labour policies are beyond examination on The News Quiz.
The point isn’t so much the lack of criticism of Labour, it’s that what little criticism there is is from the Left.
As johnnythefish says (above) the only meaningful criticism of the Blair junta was when comedians (sic) attacked his ‘illegal war’. Likewise McDoom, who was allowed to wreck the economy more or less without a murmur of complaint, other than that he wasn’t sufficiently like Castro, or one of the other Marxist thugs the Left so admires.
Even worse than Any Questions is Any Answers with their carefully selected voices. Switched on to listen to as I did the washing up (equivalent to Mr Vance with his drill but don’t say that on the BBC) . The first caller was a lady (sorry politically incorrect again) who said when she worked at the Environment Agency everything and everyone was marvellous. I switched off so didn’t need to throw said radio into the washing up bowl.
Buy a DAB radio & listen to LBC , I have not listened to any of that R4 socialist crap for years ,I guess, out of sight ,out of mind & feel happier for not hearing it.
If you do get nostalgic for the Beeb, James O’Brien is a good substitute on LBC.
I am going to be cynical here – the BBC logo ‘Love 2014’ – is virtually all red.
Subliminal advertising?
The last time The News Quiz was funny was when Alan Coren was on it. It’s truly dire now!
Alan was editor of Punch for years and it showed in his brand of humour on the radio. He was clever and witty.
We now get his lefty daughter Victoria and her even leftier husband David Mitchell appearing pretty much every day on some show or another, when they are not writing lefty claptrap for the Grauniad.
This site is hilarious. The BBC is an establishment organisation whose remit is to channel listeners consciousnesses into the mainstream conservative hegonomy. If you don’t see that – you’re just too Daily Mail.
If you really believe that you are just too Guardian, or completely deluded; but then I repeat myself.
No I think it more likely to be Socialist Worker, though deluded is spot on.
I didn’t listen to the News Quiz at the time, but have since caught up with it on iPlayer. As usual, Vance’s summation of the programme as “an extenuated sneer against the Conservatives” may have excited his minions, but it’s far from the truth. Sad really, that he feels the need to be so disingenuous in order to garner attention for himself. You’d think a man of such intellect as he believes himself to be would realise what a stupid idea that is.
As usual, you don’t back yourself up with any examples and instead resort to intellectual snobbery and ad hominem attacks on the site’s contributors. Your opinions don’t carry any weight beyond your own ‘minions’ that see to it that your vacuous posts always get between two and six likes but never any more than that.
Again – stop wasting your time repeatedly telling us how much you dislike a site you’re clearly obsessed with and focus on your own one. You’re nothing short of tragic.