Should you ever feel that your sense of moral self was being eroded by the distractions and temptations of everyday life the new priesthood of the BBC, and its acolytes at the Guardian, are here to stiffen the moral fibres and instil a bit of virtuous virtue into you godless, heathen, brutish infidels.
You may be morally lacking, backsliding in your duty to the global humanity as you prevaricate about letting in the odd million ‘refugees’ into your European Eden but wait, tune in and get with the righteous….open your hearts and your borders…show some compassion for your fellow humans in peril and the BBC is here to show you how and why.
The BBC has been shroud waving vigorously as immigrants die in their attempts to reach Europe by various means….the BBC’s latest trick to appeal to your humanity is to spend two days examining, trumpeting, the migrant’s dangerous journeys and asking why they make them in a sensationalist stream of supposedly guilt inducing moral blackmail, but it is a moral blackmail on the BBC’s terms, they set the parameters and it is they who decide what is the ‘right thing’ to do, they are the moral arbiters passing judgement on you and your own feelings and decisions.
‘They’ being two-bit disc jockeys like the BBC’s Paddy O’Connell who today launched into a patronising and contemptuous rant against those who dismiss migrants as, er, migrants. The description apparently dehumanises the migrants…do you not understand that these are ‘humans’? These are people? They have feelings, hopes and dreams. You need to recognise that and help them fulfill their dreams, they must be allowed into Europe and given a safe passage to do so.
Wonder where O’Connell got his hairshirt from? Strangely in the Guardian today there were these two sanctimonious pieces…
Refugees are human. This simple fact seems to have been forgotten
We deride them as ‘migrants’. Why not call them people?
Just a coincidence I’m sure….Craig at ‘Is the BBC biased? is obviously wrong as he says…‘No one will ever be able to say that the BBC is ‘the non-inky version of the Guardian’ ever again…’
Curiously I had absolutely no conception of migrants as people, or as human beings who may have suffered in the course of their lives…I always thought of them as cockroaches, parasites, swarms of marauding inhuman insects….thank God the BBC, and little Owen Jones, has enlightened me and shown me the correct path…I now encourage the millions, if not billions of the poorest and most destitute, the miserably oppressed, the victims of tyrants, dictators and brutal regimes worldwide to head to Europe where Owen Jones will feed, clothe, educate, nurse and house you at his own expense.
However, I am actually flattered that such a worthy grandee, such an eminent and renowned intellect as O’Connell should take the time out from his Radio 2 disc jockeying to lecture me on the ethical approach to the migrant, sorry, the human/people/swarm/marauders/victims/preferred term dependent on your political leanings, crisis.
And if you think he isn’t trying to influence, steer and change your mind, should you be opposed to mass immigration, you’d be wrong as he openly admits that the BBC is out to change your mind on the issue when you hear what the BBC has spun. (25 mins)
People define other people . We descibe them by defining them
Mothers , journalists , motorists , cricketers , burglars , politicians , beer drinkers , Christians , Muslims , soldiers , ethnics , indigenous, Scousers , tourists , migrants , immigrants , invaders , Beeboids Gramscians etc
If you do something , you will be described by what you do ( Bob is a milkman , Jane is a receptionist , John is a keen chess player , Sally is a feminist ) .
You can be in more than one set ( the policeman Roger is Warwickshire’s best golfer ) .
We have to categorise people . You get doctors going to a doctors meeting with the ministers , not people going to a meeting with people . If you need eye care , you go to an eye specialist , not just a person .
People may not like what they are categorised in , like murderers shouldn’t like to be categorised as murderers , but the way to stop being categorised into a particular set or subset is to not do what it described , like don’t play football to avoid being called a footballer , do not cheat benefits to avoid being called a benefits cheat .
I once left Britian for a holiday , so I was a tourist , traveller or holidaymaker . I also once left Britain to live abroad , so I was an emigrant, migrant and immigrant depending on which part of the journey I was on .
To not descibe people by what they do is illogical
And when I first came to New Zealand it was hard to avoid being cast in the category of ‘whingeing pom’! Just had to do it differently than those trouble-making unionists who caused all the trouble here in the 1950’s and it didn’t take long!!
The BBC’s obsession with policing any form of description, especially those they have decided don’t suit the narrative, to oblivion will surely only hasten their demise, especially as anything they carry ceases to contain information or education of value. Why would anyone pay any attention to ‘news’ on such a basis?
Yet they seem to still be on a hiring spree to fill the cubicle gardens with opinion formers whose primary role is emotive ‘analysis’ to push singular agendas. All on the public tab. A state propaganda bureau. Of course backed by draconian censorship lest any seek alternatives that the BBC try to suppress, express a different view or, horrors, criticise.
There is one question, perhaps THE most important question, which totally seems to baffle anyone from the left:
How many migrants is too many?
No lefty I have yet engaged on this issue can answer it.
Yet the left, the BBC, The Guardian, all of them, are busy emoting and virtue signalling like there is no tomorrow.
Indeed.
Perhaps the numbers question should be put to the Pollys and Owens of the world regularly.
Even better would be to ask them to differentiate numbers between economic migrants, refugees and asylum seekers – all quite separate categories.
If you can get a figure, the follow up question is “What would you do when your annual quota has been filled by February”.
” Just a coincidence I’m sure….Craig at ‘Is the BBC biased? is obviously wrong as he says…‘No one will ever be able to say that the BBC is ‘the non-inky version of the Guardian’ ever again…’ ”
I think Craig may have had his tongue firmly in his cheek (so to speak) when typing that.
Owen Jones! Why does he wind me up so much? He’s nothing more than an armchair socialist who I very much doubt practices what he preaches.
“Refugees are human.”
Of course they are! And Doritos are tortilla chips.
The art of verbal distraction seems to be churning out from the BBC on an almost hourly basis – forget the numbers, just focus on the misery. But once again those on the left cannot quite see beyond the misery and identify the causes. They believe the misery of the refugees and migrants is all Europe’s fault for not doing enough. Really? How much is enough?
As for the UK, as we heard the other day, net migration is up, to a staggering 330,000! Irrespective of whether you believe we’re not doing enough for the thousands of people crossing borders into Europe from ‘troubled’ nations, we are certainly becoming overwhelmed by bona fide migration. We already have a problem without adding to our woes by letting in our ‘fair share’ of asylum seekers, refugees and whatever else you want to call them. Sorry – humans!
And the BBC are constantly telling us how Germany is doing a lot more than the UK when it comes to immigration, but a quick search reveals that Germany’s net immigration was much lower than ours last year at 1.06 per 1000. That’s less than half the UK’s figure of 2.56.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_net_migration_rate
Lies!
” I very much doubt practices what he preaches.”
He doesn’t:
The BBC defines humans .
Environmentalist, progressive , Thatcherite, Corbynite , Blairite , moderate , expert , analysist , left of centre , right wing anti , pro , etc etc .
Imagine a news story ;
Lorry drivers are complaining about migrants in Calais , and an off duty policeman has seen a people trafficker take extra money from migrants because they have elderly relatives to bring across , our correspondent in France talks to the authorities to see what happens .
Now replace all the appellation s
People are complaining about people in Calais , and an off duty person has seen a person take extra money from people because they have other people to bring across , a person in France talks to some people to see what happens .
Notice that calling them People Traffikers doesn’t humanise them any more than if they were called migrant Traffikers .
In lieu of how to solve this problem the liberal left BBC want to talk about semantics.
“Siblings, this calls for immediate….discussion.”
It becomes more like 1984 by the month.
It may not be long before some hapless reporter is hauled off by ‘Polizei’ for re-education while in middle of his piece to camera for accidentally using on a Tuesday a word that while it was ‘Approved’ last week has by the following Monday been moved to the ‘Banned’ list.
The BBC are attempting to dissolve an issue, by dissolving the language that defines it. While they can do this subtly and unnoticed, it works in their favour. Since substituted language always has less genuine descriptive power, people may well be deflected into ways of thinking which are more convenient to those who control the narrative. Entire viewpoints may be rendered unutterable within the NewSpeak of public discourse.
However – eventually, this censorship of thought always requires assistance from outside the purely linguistic. Words and terms have to be acknowledged and named, even if it is only to vilify and banish them. Euphemistic discourse naturally becomes notorious, unfashionable, emotionally labelled and tied to what it refers to, even in its denial.
For the BBC, and other organs of that good Leninist term, political correctness, any obvious instances where the simple truth has been substituted by morality, inevitably lead to cynicism and apathy on the part of its audience. The corollary of this is that the BBC is forced into falling back on ‘entertainment’ in order to engage with that audience at all, and loading that ‘entertainment’ with morality in a second-best attempt to maintain any authority.
This is now, I think, the current state of things – the wheels have fallen off the BBC’s pretentions to be an authoritative teller of truth. It is resorting to cruder attempts to influence a public for whom it is largely an irrelevance. It is desperate to do this in order to maintain its funding streams, but is increasingly caught in the contradictions it has itself manufactured.
If it is to survive intact, it will need to sort out the conflicts in its funding, and decide whether its master is HMG, the EU or some consortium of ‘progressive’ lobby-funding channels. If it cannot decide who owns it, then it will be dismembered, and its masters will face the nightmare of a free and unfettered medium, primarily responsible to its consumers.
The public argument proposed by the BBC is very much in terms of whether the removal of it as a national broadcaster would threaten some core aspects of British cultural strength.
I think the real argument is largely in the other direction – would the absence of the BBC threaten the hold on British culture that is currently enjoyed by powers, organisations and opinion-formers of dubious democratic legitimacy – notably the EU, the permanent administration of HMG, and the motley assortment of ‘progressive’ and radical organisations with axes to grind and agendas to pursue, regardless of our consent.
At first we called them bogus asylum seekers, but nanny BBC scolded us and told that there is no such thing as a bogus asylum seeker (do I detect a whiff of semantics). Then we called them illegal immigrants (which is what they actually are), but no, they are migrants. But now even “migrants” is too harsh a term. We must refer to them as humans. But then “humans” lacks a certain gravitas and we’ve already had the Mary and Joseph analogy. So maybe saints or martyrs would be a more appropriate term.
Well, after all, many of them are making their way to The Camp of the Saints in Calais. (Anyone unfamiliar with this book needs to find it and read it urgently. What is happening was set out in great detail more than 40 years ago).
Indeed Jean Raspail had incredible foresight, although like all futurologists he got it slightly wrong, seeing France as the primary country of invasion when the reality is its northern Europe, Germany Sweden and Britain. We dont hear much about the Netherlands and Belgium either. How many are they settling?
Maybe we should refer to them as ‘cultural enrichers’.
I suppose that if you work for the BBC, then everyone outside would seem to be a member of the master race. They say that the computers in Broadcasting House are more intelligent than the people working there. So migrants and asylum seekers both bogus and that human swarm of illegal Immigrants, are seen by the BBC types as members of a master race, far more intelligent than those left-wing white ape like creatures working at the BBC.
Owen Jones is not a person, he is not a human being. According to his entry in Wikipedia he is
‘ a left-wing British columnist, author, commentator and political activist’.
Has anyone here ever come across a ‘political activist’ who looked like they had ever done an ‘active’ day’s work in the real world? (This is a rhetorical question).
I think a solution to this problem could be found if white people where segregated into two separate groups. Indications are that all the left-wing Liberal Fascists would love to emigrate to the third world. They then could look after the poor people of the third world in a multicultural Empire, run on patronisingly socialist lines by left-wing white liberal fascists. While we pro-British patriots could run our own Nation as we wish to do so with an Australian style immigration policy that would lower the numbers and increase the quality of immigrants and using this as competition for high level waged jobs, while driving up low wages by producing labour shortages at the lower end of the market, producing a paradise better than even Australia or Switzerland.
They then could look after the poor people of the third world in a multicultural Empire, run on patronisingly socialist lines by left-wing white liberal fascists.
What are you suggesting? The natives would be coming even faster then before, and in starving state. Socialists have always reduced a nation to starvation. Even Germans couldnt a make a go of socialism.
‘They’ being two-bit disc jockeys like the BBC’s Paddy O’Connell who today launched into a patronising and contemptuous rant against those who dismiss migrants as, er, migrants. The description apparently dehumanises the migrants…do you not understand that these are ‘humans’? These are people?
Following on from the denunciation of hitherto acceptable words like ‘swarm’ as dehumanising by the usual well-synchronized rats nest of leftist commentators/think tanks/charities invited to speak by the BBC, we now have the BBC and Guardian in step attempting to ban ‘migrant’ from the English language in their endless war to remove all moral boundaries from our society.
Just smell the overpowering stench of Common Purpose.
Whatever the BBC and the Guardian chose to call migrants/immigrants/asylum seekers etc etc it doesn’t change my view that we don’t any thanks.
This BBC/Leftist floundering for some new name for immigrants (having, aparently, become bored with their former term migrant) seems to have been predicted by PD James in her 1992 dystopian novel ‘The Children of Men’
James settled on the term ‘Sojourners’
Sojourn has the dictionary definition : To reside temporarily
What do you reckon, Paddy – that good enough for you?
‘Sojourners’ Sojourn has the dictionary definition : To reside temporarily
Seriously inaccurate description of the invaders though!