Ian Hislop has a new BBC programme (tonight BBC2 21:00)….Ian Hislop’s Olden Days….
Ian Hislop’s Olden Days, The Power of the Past in Britain, explores a cultural history of Britain’s idealised past and our fondness for yesterday.
You can see why the BBC likes that…..destroying the ‘myths’ that surround the Nation…you’re not really who you think…..you’re not as good as you think…your national identity is a fraud conjured up by devious politicians and right wing orators.
Cue Evan Davis on Today chatting to Hislop……apparently Michael Gove should listen to the programme…he might learn something about the foolishness of those who hark back to some golden age in the old days and try to exploit the myths we construct of our past today.
Yes …never look back…there’s nothing good there:
Sadly, Ian Hislop has become a BBC stooge. He is paid so much for “Have I Got News For You” that there is no way he could ever bite the hand that feeds him. I doubt that “Private Eye” provides more than a small percentage of his income these days, he is effectively a BBC man with a sideline as the editor of a magazine.
Private Eye has been remarkably silent on the great Global Warming scandal. Correlation is not causation, but Hislop is very pally with George Monbiot. Coincidence?
I believe Mrs Hislop’s occupation might have a bearing on PE’s silence on the subject of renewables subsidy farmers. The story has all the elements that PE would usually be all over. That it isn’t shows just how far this former favorite read of mine has sunk. Peter Cook would not approve of the weasel currently at the helm.
National identity is something in very short supply in Ukraine & the country may very well fall apart. It is totally understandable that their pro-Russian population will want to bail out of the austerity measures that will be imposed on the bankrupt nation. National identity is a necessary virtue when times get tough
I shall watch but expect the usual denigration of my past and my people’s past. Never mind. It only makes me more determind to oppose these appalling people and their dreadful ways.
National identity must have taken a great leap forward for the English nation on the appointment of an Asian Culture Secretary !!!!!!!!!
Culture to a liberal does not mean what many of us believe it means. Anything this coalition does is irrelevant. So who cares who is culture secretary.
We know that, but does the rest of the world,who’s perception of the UK will not be one of a 95% white North European country but a mongrelised mish mash of third world immigration who’s culture gas been sacrificed on the alter of diversity.
Hopefully the new culture secretary knows the difference between who’s and whose, and how to spell altar.
And I’m just guessing here, but I suspect he’s less likely than you to prejudge people based on their ethnicity.
I would prefer it if they knew right from wrong, were not greedy nor self serving.
How can a European culture be represented by a muslim of pakistani origins ? Cameron is just daring someone to make this point in order to scream racist at them to further ingratiate himself with the muslim voters in a move that Blair himself would be proud of.
The very idea that culture, media ,and sport should ever be the concern of any government is questionable in itself ,the very description of the department puts one in mind of Communist China or North Korea and is a hangover from their days in opposition when the Tories seemed to think it necessary to ‘shadow’ every labour department however ludicrous its title and function .
“The very idea that culture, media ,and sport should ever be the concern of any government is questionable in itself…”.
I couldn’t agree more. However I think it’s fair to say that we are probably looking at a “jobs for the boys” scheme. An awful lot of what passes for employment in this country is little more than a make-work scheme of the government – and that includes most of tertiary education. The higher up the chain you go – and a cabinet post is quite high – the higher the wages and the less chance that you will ever have to do a proper job. Of course he will lose this one, they all do, but another one beckons and one way or another we’ll be keeping him and his mates in a style to which they imagine is their innate due (in an egalitarian kind of way, of course) for the foreseeable future.
His ethnicity is not important. The mere fact that this dreadful bunch feel a culture secretary is necessary tells me all I need to know. He and they are becoming irrelevant. Mrs Miller, Mr Cameron, Mr Milliband, Mr or Mrs this or that -who bloody cares any more. The political/media class is finished. Just a matter of time now.
Get rid.
Scott, do you just sit waiting to pounce and demonstrate your marvelous spelling skills?
Any other website comment sections or just us that are blessed with your presence?
Spelling and grammatical errors are tolerated by the regulars on here.
I think tolerance is a virtue meself.
JtF, I agree, but surely we can all admire Scott’s mission to correct spelling mistakes on the internet. It truly is a stirling effort.
[There ya go Scott, another one just for you]
Old fashioned patrician class snobbery Scott?
I thought you were better than that. I truly did.
Scotty is no patrician ! – it implies a person of high birth.
Pointy-headed snob, yes.
This will be another platform for the Left to Trot out their tired old clichés about how crap we used to be as a country before The Great Enlightenment, 1997-2010, save for the fact ‘We’ve always been a nation of immigrants’.
Yes Alan, it’s believing in myths that has made you the person you are today.
You are to be congratulated for an all too rare moment of insight.
No need to congratulate him, because he is already has the comfort of the secure and certain knowledge that he is not you.
Dez believes in the myth that Islam is beyond criticism and it can only enrich our culture.
Don’t you, Dez?
For once Hislop was interesting. Contrasting the various perceptions of Arthur and Alfred down the centuries.
I was surprised. Maybe Hislop is a closet conservative. The liberal would really not wish to dwell upon Alfred. Very much an Anglo- Saxon nationalist and creator of what is now England.
Of course I am biased regarding the last real king of my country as Harold. Upstarts the rest of them.
However it was good to see our past treated quite well.
I hope it offended most liberals.
Of course that last loony they interviewed, who thought he was the re-incarnation of King Alfred, was a mindless leftie who repeated the usual left-wing mantras and lies. Funny that the lefties who hate England, the English People and the concept of Englishness try to steal a major English hero from the English People.
Strange isn’t it. So many lefties who hate our country and its culture, so many foreigners who love it so much they can’t wait to get here.
Ah, well….
I think the self-appointed arbiter of social justice saw himself as King Arthur; not the Stalinist Trades Unionist but the one with the round table.
Sorry, Arthur not Alfred. I just thought he was a gormlass (an Alfred word) SSP (Self-Sex Practitioner (i.e. a Winker*) ), so wasn’t too bothered which delusion he was under.
* mistype
Yes champion of egalitarianism who styles himself a king, not at all ironic
He mainly seemed exercised about benefit cuts – His I suspect .
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