Happy Christmas to all our readers and contributors .
Christmas Thread 2020
Bookmark the permalink.
Search Biased BBC
Recent Comments
- G.W.F. Nov 5, 09:27
Start the Week 4th November 2024
Just how dense is the American people? Over 1.5 million have watched this song in the US https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=se-didBGn8A - Fedup2 Nov 5, 09:26
Start the Week 4th November 2024
G It will show ‘something ‘ that a creature like her can be installed as puppet president … as a… - AsISeeIt Nov 5, 09:23
Start the Week 4th November 2024
Next thing you know they’ll be signing up Paul Mason, Andrew Marr and Emily Maitlis - Eddy Booth Nov 5, 09:22
Start the Week 4th November 2024
President: Popular Vote Winner :Trump 3 to 1 ? But I’m staying away as I got my fingers burnt with… - AsISeeIt Nov 5, 09:20
Start the Week 4th November 2024
‘Covid, monkey pox and HIV’ Or to borrow Harry Hill’s catchphrase “What are the chances of that…?” - G Nov 5, 09:18
Start the Week 4th November 2024
Just how dense is the American people? A cackling Marxist with no good history versus a proven ex President who… - vlad Nov 5, 09:17
Start the Week 4th November 2024
Cometh the hour, they’ll scam-eth the man. Like they did last time. - G Nov 5, 09:13
Start the Week 4th November 2024
Hidden in plain sight…………The UN/WEF coordinating everything. - Lucy Pevensey Nov 5, 09:12
Start the Week 4th November 2024
GB News has dropped David Starkey. Without; Mark Steyn, Dan Wootton, Laurence Fox, Calvin Robinson, Neil Oliver, David Starkey…… not…
Categories
agw anti-American anti-conservative anti-Israel anti Israel. pro Palestinian Antisemitism BBC - sickeningly biased at all times. BBC agenda BBC bias bbc bias and balance. bbc bias by omission BBC censorship BBC Question Time BBC selectivity bias Biased BBC climate change dhimmis general thread immigration Islam israel Mark Mardell obama obama bias Obamalove open thread pro-labour pro-palestinian pro EU pro Hamas pro Islam pro Labour bias pro Obama PRO OBAMA AT ALL COSTS. pro Obama BBC agenda question time question time live Richard Black save gordon. USA politics US economy US News US politics US presidential elections
I sometimes – indeed quite often – turn for amusement, anger, irritation, a range of emotions, to the Guardian News and Opinion sites to treat myself to the maunderings of Owen Jones, Aditya Chakraborty, George Monbiot and the rest.
Today I learned from the Guardian news front page that one of the great sporting heroes of my youth in the 1960s, Surrey and England opening batsman John Edrich, had died at the age of 83.
I turned to the BBC front page: not a mention. One had to go to the sport page to be told by the BBC of the death of one of English cricket’s great names.
Now, not everone is a cricket lover: probably most people are not; and the name of J H Edrich is not going to be on the lips of everyone. But I had never heard of Chadwick Boseman or Kobe Bryant, neither of whom were fine representatives of England’s national game; but their deaths were reported in acres of column inches for days.
But you can bet your boots that when Edrich’s long-time England opening partner, Geoff Boycott, takes his final walk back to the great pavilion beyond, the BBC will be all over that: not because of his prowess at the crease, though; but because of his hateful conservative views and the fact that he was once accused, and acquitted, of striking his girlfriend.
Skelding – I wholeheartedly agree, but its sadly a reflection as to the age of those in the production/reporting offices who decide what news to report. If Sinatra or Crosby had died this year I wonder what sort of coverage they would have garnered, because I bet ‘those’ in the offices in the 20 to 40 age group certainly wouldn’t have heard of Crosby, and I wonder how many over 60 can claim to know who Boseman and Bryant were, and we are the age group who actually read a newspaper !
Worth remembering that Edrich scored a triple century in a test match.
And not many do that.
News of death came in just after midnight first thing on 25th
the BBC report cam at 10:30am
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cricket/55445972
Totally off topic.
But for quite a while, daily covid deaths have run at about 2% of the case rates 3 weeks before.
But 3 weeks ago case rates were at a post lockdown low.
So exactly why is the current death rate so high?
The new strain has not had time to work through to severe cases and deaths.
Or has it?
I do wish reporters would ask questions designed to yield information.
But they are too busy searching for a gotcha moment to embarrass the government.
Tier 4 here but cars still parked all around the grass verges visiting the benefit “families” down the road and all day parties
Here in tier 4, both our dear neighbours and family opposite had …ahem….extended family Christmases.
Meanwhile the guy two doors down has covid.
The people who break the rules are so often not the ones that pay for the results.
The Nashville bombing today
A van was recorded on CCTV giving out a warning to evacuate minutes before the bomb went off so it appears only first responders were targetted
Investigators will have their work cut out establishing alibis for those who want to abolish the police…
The Vicar of Dibley
A racing driver
Sky Sports and quite a few footballists
And of course the bbc with that big eared goalhanger at the vanguard
Merry Christmas
@Tomo that Taiwan story was already spoiled a few days ago when a New Zealand born pilot spread Covid to a “lady friend”
He was based in Taiwan doing the cargo route to the US and back.
Strangely Worldometer shows they have new cases all the time
been consistently 1 -2 per day couple of times recently 20 per day
I guess that is infected travellers coming in rather than local caught cases.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/taiwan
Happy Yuletide greetings to all from here in the Wairarapa.
May the new year bring good hunting.
Blessed Be.
In 2001 I was WWOOFING in Wellington/Hutt in November/December then I took the train upto Featherstone and upto Masterston and to WOOF at a place in the countryside that did pottery workshops.
before going back to Levin to work at the Organic River festival.
“Brexit deal ‘will make UK safer’, Priti Patel says”
“ She said the UK would be “more secure through firmer and fairer border controls” after 31 December.”
She says a lot of things . How about deporting all those “illegals” shipped over by France ? One of BoJo’s promises.
As we approach the New Year may I take the liberty of proposing some hero’s for“biasedbbc” that Al Beeb cover very little ……………….
Nigel Farage
Liz Truss
Lord Frost .
Taking one for the team, I endured about 45 minutes of the Toady edition featuring Lewis Hamilton.
Even for the BBC, this must rank as one of the most unutterably awful glaringly race-baiting programmes of all time.
No stone was left unturned in the search for wayycism.
Even more glaringly that search yielded so little true racism, it was just an excuse for general BAME whingeing.
So here’s an idea. Why doesn’t the BBC do a special on a really disadvantaged group. One consistently shown by one year’s data after another to underperform at school and have their life chances diminished as a result.
I bring you…..white working class boys.
Can you imagine the BBC running a Toady special for them – or do I mean us?
Nope, me neither.
Stuff
De-fund Al Beeb.
Simples
According to St Lewis of Hamilton, no one had ever faced up to any negatives in British history before.
Really ?
i don’t think we thought Henry VIII killing his wives was a great thing
or the persecution of Catholics
or that the Charge of the Light Brigade or Gallipoli were great things
Or Peterloo or the Tolpuddle martyrs or the victims of suffragettes etc.
And if the ancestors thought slavery was great, why did they end it ?
Contrary to what Hamilton says, his upbringing was not that bad. Funny how the cameras don’t go anywhere near his white Mum to get her views of her arrogant son.
Toady plus – “My dads life matters, but my mums life obviously doesnt Hamilton” What a woke combo!
Above and beyond Sluff – I salute you
For those of you that still watch BBC don’t you want to
throw something at the TV every time you see Laura
Kuenssberg opens her sarcastic gob?
If one were to shove a brick in her mouth she would still demand clarity
The ladies appear to be front and centre in the press this Christmas. First and foremost is Her Madge, on the frontpage of most titles, save the republican-leaning Guardian and the formerly patriotic Times.
It’s good to see our nonagenarian Queen given some respect as she plays her part as reassuring mother of the nation: ‘Powerful words of comfort as she tells virus-hit Brits you’re not alone’ (Mirror)
Most papers, although they may not directly voice the feeling, pick up on the contrast between the corona restrictions and our inate yearning for human contact: ‘As Queen says we all need a hug at Christmas…’ (Daily Mail)
Despite the tabloids both right- and left-leaning uniformly embracing the Queen as though she were our shared grandma, The Telegraph is a little staid in its praise: ‘The Queen kept her presentation simple this year, emphasising on the good that had prevailed despite the hardships of 2020’ – I’m afraid I baulk at the phrase “emphasising on” which seems to have the tone of a compulsory staff Zoom conference on diversity training – something I think we’ve had more than our fill of this year. Shame on you Telegraph.
Sharing the Telegraph frontpage, her laughing expression more suited to the thrill at her own promotion than to the sentiment of the report, we find another powerful unelected female Brit: ‘Jane Sarpong. White privilege is a reality says BBC diversity chief’ – despite the white Christmas for some of us, I think we all know what we can look forward to on the BBC in 2021.
The Sun favours a triumvirate of tabloid queens who appear to suggest, at first glance, would have us believe women can have it all.
Katie Price insists: ‘I will marry hubby No 4’ Her Christmas wish is: ‘I’m not getting any younger…so I want a new husband and baby in 2021’
Seems it’s been a bit of an annus horribilis for our Katie: ‘After being declared bankrupt and spending time in The Priory, she broke both her feet in a freak holiday accident and her 29st disabled son Harvey was hospitalised and nearly died.’ – that litany of bad luck certainly has me couting my blessings.
Shirley Ballas (of Strictly notoriety): ‘My guilt over leaving family’ – this is a tale not of infidelity but of: ‘Not hugging family at Christmas brings back memories of being away from my son when he was a child’ – perhaps women can’t have it all in terms of both family and career and difficult choices do need to be made. Seems the televised announcemnet of Boris’s Christmas restrictions upset our Shirley and brought back memories of separation from family: ‘I was so upset even my false eyelashes were falling off.’
Joanna Page (TV Gavin’s Stacey) bemoans: ‘No sex in lockdown’ – we’re not talking puritanical non-mixing rules blunting hook-up opportunities here. Our Joanna’s been suffering a dry spell with actor hubby James (off Emmerdale): ‘The real-life drama echoes the sitcom’s plot in which Mat Horne and Jo’s Gavin and Stacey Shipman find their marriage in turmoil from a nookie drought… Jo – a mum-of-three like her character – says her youngsters, aged four to seven, killed any chance of intimacy’
So there you have it, decades of feminism seem to have left the ladies in desperate need of an agony aunt.
The Times also features a Joanna, a little longer in the tooth and rather more feisty: ‘Joanna Lumley Yes I’m 74 No, I’m not vulnerable’
Not to be left out, the right-on Guardian has females on the cover. Black nuns, no less: ‘Light in the darkness: Christmas prayers in the Nairobi slum…’
To the weather and another gentle reminder to the BBC that once prohesied British children would never again witness a white Christmas: ‘White Christmas… But storm Bella will hit on Boxing Day’ (Express) – seems we can’t keep the ladies out of the news, or the weather, this time in the form of storm Bella: ’70 mph Bella to batter Britain’ – says the Daily Star whose thought for the day reads: ‘Deadly storm? Oh isn’t that just typical of 2020.’ – deadly? Is this a prediction of storm-related fatalities? Watch out for the death certificates reading “died during storm Bella”.
Not wanting to leave the Christmas paper review on a such a cold note of dark humour, I thought I would refer those knockers of the Brexit deal hereabouts with the Star’s other frontpage female, the shapely: ‘Rhian’s red hot’
‘Page 3 icon Rhian Sugden flaunted her hourglass figure as she stripped off to a strapless red bodysuit for a sexy Christmas display. Rhian, 34, smouldered for the camera as she flaunted an impressive amount of cleavage in the tiny leotard, which was held up by luck alone.’ – and with the sort of luck we’ve all had this year…
AslSeelt,
“The ladies appear to be front and centre in the press this Christmas.”
But they still ‘make up’ to attract the males, why on earth do that?
The reality? Nothing really changes………….
AISI, June Sarpong, BBC’s BAME Diversity Director provides me with a ‘M R-D moment *’ on the front page of the Daily Telegraph. And no, I’m not using a French vulgarity there. ‘White privilige is a reality, says BBC diversity chief’
* A Mandy Rice-Davies moment = “She would say that, wouldn’t she?”
Up2 – have some respect – that’s the next chair of the BBC you’re ‘dissing’ – seasons greetings ..
When I hear ‘white privilege’ being uttered, I think that someone is envious of not being born white too, and that all this “black and proud” display is just a front.
Sluff – you shouldn’t endure such hardship at this time of year . And you probably increased the listening figures by 10% – bit like the ‘sports personality ‘ thing .
I missed the Queen reading somebody else’s words on an autocue yesterday .so I want to my 2021 ‘go to’ BBC – site – pidgin English to watch her there .
But to my disappointment it had the president of Nigeria – Mohamed odinga and his pidgin Christmas message .
Pidgin – for those too thick or lazy to learn the real one.
The Christmas viewing figures must be eagerly awaited by those thousands of BBC managers …..
Nigerian Xmas message ?
Has it been a difficult year for all the royal families and ex government ministers trying get gold and cash out of the country via emails to UK pensioners ?
Let us hope more bank account numbers are forthcoming in the new year
and plenty more multiple housing benefit applications are successful for our many wifes and kids
I have part of the trnscript, allegedly:
“Dat Queen sed sumfink about Anal Horrible or sumfink, woss she talkin bout ? she cant even speke English
But sound dirty to me
like dat Prince Andrew,
if he eva touch my 45 daughters on state visit he get his balls nailed to a chair no problem, appy Xmas over and out”
I’m waiting for ‘yes minister’ to be redubbed into pidgin but I’m worried that trolls and BBC staff reading this site will ‘develop ‘ the idea . They must be desperate for a coloured PM by now – as long as it’s not called ‘Priti’ . …..
“Yes Massa ” ?
BBC: Brexit: How European leaders reacted to EU-UK trade deal
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-55439756
You’ll find the BBC garnered comments from 14 of the 27, plus 3 Eurocrats.
Nothing from Hungary or Poland. Perhaps they don’t do Twitter?
The Spanish bloke made some rather unnecessary reference to Gibralta.
BBC on normal form….how many remoaners have been invited on..Ed Davey on this morning….he was what one might call..a miserable barsteward….the anti brexit vitriol spewed forth..and the BBC didnt challenge..
Why dont these people now put energy into positive action…?
Perhaps a new political party will form with EU funding aimed at rejoining – so they can get their 20% funding back . Let’s call it The Change Party ….Ed Davey seems to have forgotten what happened at the last election to the last Change Party ….
…. I’ve been trying to find ‘odds’ on a knighthood or peerage for Nigel Farage – one of the papers said odds had tightened on a knighthood ….
Whenever these gongs are awarded you see the way the bubble works – maybe the former speaker will get it this time – but even more friends of Princess nut nut will get their ermin and free money …
Any one wanna predict some ?
Apart from the fact that whole honours business makes me sick, as very few deserve any reward-its those that selfishly give their time to vulunteer or those that devote their lives to helping others through a number of social services for which they get little thanks. Scrap the Lords as is, and to counteract the commons replace it with a new house with members nominated by the public possibly through their Councils. Shall we say only UK Citizens, who have lived and worked in the UK for a minimum of 10 years. One other proviso, absolutely no member of Islam would be allowed. Accepetable?
It is going to be very dismal.
Loads of the usual gongs to civil servants who have heroically errr…..turned up for work…..or worked from home. No short time working. No redundancies.
Lots for NHS workers who are even now busily injecting themselves with vaccine when, hey presto, there is a lot left over at the end of the day which will otherwise have to be thrown out. Kudos though to ITU and A and E staff.
Nothing for shop workers and bus drivers who have worked all through and kept us fed and mobile, and put themselves at proven greater risk.
And what about all the gongs to BAME people for services to skin colour?
And a special award to RocNation, for outstandingly successful management of Marcus Rashford’s off-field profile.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-8450015/After-signing-Jay-Zs-Roc-Nation-people-guiding-Marcus-Rashfords-career.html
Sir Lewis of Monaco?
St Marcus Rashford Earl of Tupperware OBE BLM
In the RN we used to say OBE stood for Other Bastards Efforts.
Lord Lewis of Bling.
For services to wasting petrol for a German company.
they should swap cars around every race see how some do then
I’ll eat my hat if he plumps for ‘Stevenage”, as he hates the place.
Instead of trying to cram even more lords into the bursting at the seams HofL building why don’t they use one of the many empty unused nightingale sheds.
I’m sure the lords can happily sleep in those huge unused buildings, the lords who stay that is, not the ones just clocking in for the expenses.
Maybe the nightingale sheds are used (to do the choreography for the multitude of dance routines we get from the overworked nhs staff) as they must have to practise these routines quite a lot and then do the dress rehearsals before the videos.
Cant see the BBC seeing anything positive out of it – and will be desperate to look for ‘rejoining arrangements ‘….
Since this document is to be debated in the commons on 30 December it’s only fair that we get to see it …..
Fed,
Yes, they will have to wait the 5.5 years (contained in the agreement) for there to be any move toward rejoining. I even see Farage increasingly seeing the cracks in the plaster:
It’s politics . Boris May have delivered a decent Brexit, judgement reserved until the ERG et al have perused the deal, but he wants to show he is a ‘good guy’ to the Woke and Princess nut nut. So we get an appeasing the Woke green agenda , which won’t cause much trouble until after he has left No10 ,a reprieve for the BBC , which hopefully is only temporary and isn’t a pardon, and taking in few million more aliens which will accelerate the destruction of our culture and hence our nation state.
This latter point is the one which disturbs me the most. What was Brexit for if it wasn’t to reestablish the sovereignty of the British nation state? Yet for the past thirty years our leaders have been allowing millions, probably ten million, aliens into our small island , who don’t share our culture or values. In my view this policy is one which has already wrought much damage to our country and will ultimately destroy it. Brexit will be for nothing other than the last stand of the nation and yet there is no politician who dare even talk about it let alone oppose it.
Very few politicians have the courage to embark on a strategy opposed by the great and the good and stick with it. In my time only Lady T has had the guts to do it and then after 12 years of great achievements the establishment got her and frittered away much of what she achieved. She was head and shoulders above Boris and much further ahead of Major and Cameron . As for Brown and Blair , so many of our current problems can be laid at their door, two of the biggest , mass immigration , devolution and the seige of NI threatening to break up the UK , are entirely their creation. Within five decades of the end of their premierships the long term time bombs they planted will have destroyed the country.
Well put and said Doublethinker, this sums up my own analysis of the situation. Believe me or not these matters glanced through my mind ( even though I had enjoyed a few glasses) when spending such a great Christmas day with my children and grandchildren-what will be their future be?-my eldest grandson 13trs, loves history but is not gaining much from the way it is apparantly taught today-you can imagine where the emphasis is put- Not against the great achivements, inc inventions, industrialisation, this nation has brought to the world, the benefits the world now enjoys- they take certain historical issues usually out of time to illustrate not how we defeneded our nation and gave so much Oh no, quite the contrary. Indeed social liberalism has been allowed to creep through this nation, aided by the UK’s time in the European Union-we owe them nothing but they owe us one hell of a lot, not withstanding two world wars. Happy New Year.
BBC WEB-SITE Watch #1 – this could be fake news, it probably is fake news
https://www.bbc.co.uk/ top line, middle item ‘France finds first case of new coronavirus variant’. Will Marianna be despatched to check it over?
No?
I thought not.
She should be right on it. Firstly, the language is suspect: ‘new coronavirus variant’. It is sloppy science. That could mean a variation on regular influenza or even something as mundane as the common cold to a chronic rhinitis sufferer. Is it Covid or is it not?
Secondly, only one discovered so far and just happens to be a person who has travelled from Britain. What do we know already about this new variant. It is already global and has possibly/probably been around since the spring of 2020. O ho ho!
Pull the other one, France and BBC.
BBC put on some Gullible Travels this Christmas ….. ?
Naturally the lying BBC are giving a very biased account of the situation in America concerning the stimulus package that Trump has refused to sign off.
They present the package as a splendid thing, being opposed by Trump for political reasons. In fact it’s a rotten deal, squandering aid on overseas projects while giving Americans a meagre $600. Trump is rightly demanding more for domestic aid and less for overseas.
Wish our politicians would do the same.
Predictably the BBC makes no mention of the wasteful overseas aid aspect of the bill, nor of Speaker Pelosi’s months of dithering and political shenanigans that have led to the present crisis.
Exactly Vlad.
Had it been the other way around, ie the Republicans offering a paltry 600 dollars to each person and Obama insisting on 2K per person, there is no doubt who the BBC/Guardian would be supporting.
The fact that Trump is seeking to fund it by reducing overseas aid means it is, in some way, coasted too.
I’m going with Lord Cummings of Barnard Castle ….with a task of ‘reforming ‘- or abolishing the Lords ( I know the latter one is naive because it provides somewhere to go for the political class when they die ) …
Princess Nut Nut, Duchess of Woke seems to be doing well with her own private HR company on Downing St
The Nashville car-bombing interests me.
Who and why? It was a technically proficient job and with no fatalities.
Therefore not Islamic.
Since it was a camper van it could be something to do with ex Top Gear presenters
with a strong dislike of country and western
Al-beeb will be praying it was one of those imaginary Far-Right terrorist groups they keep warning us about, that never seem to materialise.
We’re told the van ‘broadcast a warning to leave the area’.
Concern for human life, so definitely not islamic.
Conspiracy theorists have already noticed AT and T s connection to Dominion voting machines…
That ‘our’ doing some heavy lifting from Jane and the BBC there.
Don’t worry, Ducks, there’ll be loads of private planes arriving in Glasgow sometime next year, full of climate change wannabes, all spending millions on aviation fuel etc.
They’ll all try to rival prescott’s daft idea that he was a ‘broker’ in some sort of ‘deal’ years ago, and everyone forgot that in just a few months!
Come on BBC, give us a break from your relentless, boring rubbish about all this! Leave it to people who actually create the wealth, not waste it all like you all do!
I suspect any primatologists arriving in Glasogow will have a better understanding of silverbacks than when they try to book a bed and breakfast on on Sauchiehill Street
Always plenty of fruitcake at Christmas – maybe she is of the Scrooge ‘surplus population school – to link a malicious / negligent leak of an experimental virus from a Chinese state laboratory to ‘green issues ‘ really does push the nutty cake a bit far…
….. guess she’s related to a BBC bigwig …
Probably mentioned earlier but I have just watched BBC Queen’s speech…does anyone know if Queenie sees the images that are displayed?
Talk about pc woke BBC bias..Mary Secole wasn’t a nurse and contrary to popular BBC belief the country isn’t 85% Bame..and as for the bloody NHS singers.why did one have a bloody stethoscope aroiund his neck?
Ruined Queens speech..defund in 21
I was less then impressed with the Speech. It was full of nothing, despite what the commentators say. Plenty of thanks, full of platitudes and a Merry Christmas to you all. Oh, and we’re missing hugs. Big deal. I could see what was happening when the first couple of minutes were filled with black NHS workers here and medics overseas. Then despite being Defender of the Faith, we had references to all the other lot. Waste of time.
“We have terribly harmed this planet… It’s our disrespect of nature…”
Really, Jane?
‘The Gombe Chimpanzee War was a violent conflict between two communities of chimpanzees in Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania lasting from 1974 to 1978. The two groups were once unified in the Kasakela community. By 1974, researcher Jane Goodall noticed the community splintering… During the four-year conflict, all males of the Kahama community were killed, effectively disbanding the community. The victorious Kasakela then expanded into further territory but were later repelled by another community of chimpanzees.’
‘The outbreak of the war came as a disturbing shock to Goodall, who had previously considered chimpanzees to be, although similar to human beings, “rather ‘nicer'” in their behaviour’
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gombe_Chimpanzee_War
Its a chimp eat chimp world.
“It’s our disrespect of nature that’s led to this Covid-19 pandemic”
And there was me thinking it was the Chinese penchant for bat-soup and monkey-brains (and possibly monkeying around in bioweapons labs).
Changing the subject, I’ve just watched all of Series 8 (the last) of, ‘Homeland’. I’ve watched avidly since Series 1 in 2011. For any other devotee, I’m confident that they would agree that the Series’ had a knack of mirroring, slightly late, events in the US. Until now. The hitherto depicted fictional ‘closeness’ between the CIA/FBI was, for me, in S8, totally out of place. Not that the writer could have foreseen that the now real CIA/FBI no longer support the presidency both, now, being rouge outfits devoted to cherishing the growing communism.
G
I thought it got tired and the girl who was as mad as a box of frogs got to be too much – I was trying to think of a ‘spoiler ‘ but couldn’t be bothered ….. I was always surprised that Jason bourne and Jimmy bond turned up in the latest series though
( oops )
It is a while since I saw series 8 so cannot quite remember but they did make a mistake with making a female president in the series they made in mid 2016 .Homeland producer/writer clearly assumed that Hilary Clinton would win as the female president was so similar to Hilary.Thought Series 1 2 4 & 6 were brilliant 3 & 5 were poor whilst 7 & 8 were watchable.
George Blake dies…
Great sadness at the BBC no doubt
Obituary: George Blake
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-25675566
Davy – yes one of their traitor comrades lived far too long …
I’m sorry – I caught the BBC news at 1300. The autocue reader was positively chirpy about huge numbers of the English going into tier 4 5 6 7 or whatever it is . He obviously enjoys the idea of 25 million people having basic civil rights removed for an unknown time .
Brexit didn’t get a mention until after
Boxing Day sales ( meaningless )
Somewhere flooding
Russian spy dies
In fact – Brexit didn’t get a mention at all – after 12 minutes – maybe the BBC is in full denial – why won’t they put up a count down clock until new year – new country . ?
The Hard Lockdown flag flies outside the BBC building
alongside
: the Hard Remain flag
: The BLM flag
: The Rainbow Flag
: The GreenDream flag , Great Reset flag, the UN open borders flag
etc.
Our local news had on the Indian American scientist on who advises the Scottish Government, talking about ENGLISH tiers
presumably cos she is the hardest lockdown voice they could find.
They also talked about the 100 tonnes of dead sperm whales on the Hornsea beach
without a hint of mentioning the “world’s biggest windfarm” that they usually promote.
Yesterday’s viewing figures
Queen 8 million : 12.5% of UK population
Soaps 5 million
Mrs Brown’s Boys 4 million, 6%
So 92% of UK public weren’t watching the hours top programme
Listened to the Queen on the radio, but watched no telly at all on Christmas for the first time in my life. And liked it ????????
Mrs Browns Boys. As funny as piles. Has anyone seen the C4 Alternative Queens Speech. A comedienne digitally enhanced to look and sound like her Maj. interesting comment about the Prince and Princess of Woke, something about Canadians and a comment that Andrew won’t be visiting North America anytime soon… certainly more funny that 4extra this morning with the painfully unfunny Sarah Milican introducing ‘comedy’ that started with a rant at Donald Trump and his nasty woman jibe at the witch Hillary. I was waiting for the balance, ref Killarys deplorables comment but of course this being the Beeb, it never came.
Switched on R4 only to hear something about the racist privileged racing driver, so turned that straight off.
Still I’m sure June Sourprong on her £70k for 3 days work is having a nice Christmas.
As might be expected – the obituary of the Russian spy / British Traitor is enthusiastic and skirts over the effect of his betrayals . Strange – or maybe not – how the BBC gives a free pass to the Evil Russian Empire – but perhaps there are so many senior managers in the BBC who got ‘signed up ‘ by the Russians that one might expect such behaviour .
There should not have been an obituary – or main news coverage of one of Stalin’s boys
June Sarpong is trending
@AsISeeIt & Up2Snufff already mentioned the Telegraph article
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9088273/BBC-director-cultural-diversity-June-Sarpong-insists-white-privilege-fact-life.html
Parody Grauniad comments
Racism | BBC Head of Diversity, June Sarpong promises to continue the hunt for white privilege racism where none exists, starting with an 18 month investigation at BBC Asian Network
Here is the BBC getting 5 fold ratio-ed as they promote the interview
Laurence Fox’s take
Critical Race theory is the most divisive, racist and patronising ideology.
So much so that it’s been banned in schools and it’s pseudo doctrine of unconscious bias banned from government departments.
Why should the @bbc be any different?
#DefundTheBBC
Mad Theories and June Sarpong ??
It’s not like she presented 16 episodes of the US show Conspiracy Theory 2009-2012
alongside people like Alex Jones. …./sarc
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/bbc-diversity-chief-june-sarpong-presented-fake-news-show-mjr8m56jq
“White privilege is a reality says BBC diversity chief”
Well she would, wouldn’t she?
THAT’S HER JOB!!
No white privilege = no need for overpaid ‘diversity chief’ = you’ll have to find a real job, if you can.
It would appear that this Sarpong woman really hates this country, a country that has been of a white colour for 1000,’s of years, and where were it not for this country’s strenous efforts to abolish the slave trade, Ms Saprong would still be an enslaved woman somewhere else in the world. The biggest slavers were and still are the Arab traders, still plying their acienttrade and now they are enslaved into the abhorrent ideology of Islam. It is they that this coloured woman should be fighting against, it is Islam that promotes raceism. It is Islam that is invading all Western European countries, and unbelievably being gievn support by some European leaders-we know their names.
At least being ‘white privilege’ I don’t have to worry about the constant change of wigs to make myself look like whitee girls do with their straight hair. If they’re proud to be black then ditch the wigs and reveal the Afro frizz.
I was looking through todays Telegraph – and the ist thing that struck me was the interview of this race Hustler. I suppose they need to restore a bit more “woke” balance to last weeks phasing out of “The wrong Trousers” column in the magazine about some journos “transition from a he to a shim.
We also had articles by the once eminent Charles Moore and Liam Fox all billed as Britains “best” writers on a “historic” deal. I was especially not interested in the Liam Fox article who was such a determined brexiteer he couldnt wait last time to endorse the Theresa May surrender. Juliet Samuel is another one who poses as a serious journo but in reality is more vanilla than a Mr Softee 99 cornet.
The Telegraph was the last newspaper left to still encourage critical journalism but this too appears to have drunk on the Kool Aid, with all of its journalists apparently jockeying for position to praise the Bojo deal despite very little analysis of the small print.
Such a shame – For me it will be following the way of the BBC – I will no longer buy it and just hope that at some point a truly conservative paper one day will come along.
The media bemoans the loss of the printed newspaper but appears blind to the fact that just like all of the political parties the “meeja” have followed them only allowing one accepted view and regarding everything else as “extremist”
Never mind, the Carry on films continue today on ITV 3 reminding of us when we were a more cheerful nation and not afraid to cast our indigenous population or admit that boys fancy girls and vice versa.
No Bernard Breslaw today or Barbara Windsor in the typical NHS uniform of 6 inch stilletos, mini skirt, seamed stockings, low cut blouse and a little hat with a red cross
although judging by the waistline of so many anychess staff nowadays maybe thats not a bad thing
I hear many bad comments about NHS meals but suspect they may have been quite good when they left the kitchen but somewhere along the way all the sausages, bacon and pies went missing and just the veg left
Now I’m for it…heresy … what’s the punishment nowadays?
Lucky I am not on Twitter it may have exploded by now
Oh. hang on it’s Carry On Again Doctor just started
Which comes with an ITV warning (yes really):
“which reflects the language of its time”
In case our millenial snowflakes get offended by Dr Nooky I suppose, and lines like
“NOT bowels Doctor BELLS ringing in me ears”
Double FFS
Be like me
Have a drink or three
Forget about your troubles…….
And the BBC !
I meant to post this yesterday, don’t ask! Many thanks to all the people who run the site and best wishes to all contributors.
Seems the BBC’s website has a single thread open for comments.
(Guess the mods are sat at home exhausted after removing so many non woke comments all year)
“Mikel Arteta says Arsenal’s next three fixtures could define their season”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/55428796
Top comment:
“Basically Arsenal are shit.”
Up 256
Dowm 45
Unfortunately Pug it isn’t limited to the BBC. Does anyone still wonder why Boris & Co haven’t made a move to tame the BBC? It’s because the fake Conservatives espouse the same views. Remember they showed their fangs this year.
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Apols if already covered, as seems likely if it is pernicious lying and the bbc as one, but sharing to see what is being referred to.
Ah, yes, covered but worth promoting further.
GW,
I would welcome the BBC becoming totally Black and Asian. Then it could broadcast to the 13% of that population. No problem. But I’m sure very little money will exist to pay staff when all those with, “White Privilege” leave an unfillable gap in licence fees behind.
But for the present, please tell me what qualifications this person has to occupy such a position within, “Our Worlds Most Trusted Broadcaster”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/June_Sarpong
I’ll swap June my white privilege for her salary, pension and perks.
Throughout the ‘white’ UK interview and promotion boards know they have to justify why a ‘black’ candidate shouldn’t get the ‘thumbs up’ while for a ‘white’ candidate it is a case of why they should.
It is twice as hard to reject a candidate who is ‘black’ and female.
Largely this is because of so-called ‘equality’ legislation.
It seems to lower productivity and increase costs because of the need to increase the level of bureaucracy in state run organisations. The Black person in charge becomes the useful idiot of a white puppet master. But George Soros is 90 years old, and so could soon die of the Covids, leaving his puppets in charge of the madhouse.
She’ll be signing up Nadya next as her side kick.
YouTube Cancelled Anna Brees’s channel cos she covered anti-lockdown demos
Maybe I’m weird but I quite like Lewis Hamilton. When he talks, he sounds like a decent bloke to me. But this morning on Today I got annoyed by so many of the ideas and assumptions underlying the material he was apparently editing.
Does he ever stop to think if pushing this racism in sport theory makes sense when he has risen to be the most successful racing driver in history? Does he not feel the slightest pang of cognitive dissonance?
If you look at the early life of other racing drivers, many came from motor racing backgrounds. Many had fathers who were very supportive and ambitious for their sons. This can also be seen among the top practitioners in many other fields of endeavour. Think of Mozart or the pianist Lang Lang in music. They had tyrannical fathers who bullied their sons into becoming the best.
I believe that to a large extent Lewis is where he is today because of the support of his father. I suggest the reason why he has found himself to be the only black driver in the sport is not just because blacks make up a small percentage of the population anyway, but because too many black fathers are absent during their sons’ upbringing. Opportunities are not being denied to blacks by the motor racing establishment. Hamilton’s success proves otherwise. But one needs a lot of help to get into a high-status sport like motor racing – and that help begins with one’s family background.
Very few people who become the best in the world at something come from nowhere and do it on their own. There will usually be a solid support network behind them, constant encouragement and strong fathers.
I’ve said on here before many times Zel, that Hamilton had an ok upbringing, and his Dad would take him regularly to the go karting centre not far from Stevenage where he grew up , and where his love of speed was nurtured and his talent clearly grew. Sadly he decided to denigrate his home town and said he grew up in a ‘slum’ – well, anyone who knows Stevenage knows that its one of the new towns built after the War, so hardly a ‘slum’ in the pure sense of the word. This has not endeared him to the people of Stevenage, and if he was ‘decent’ , instead of decrying his upbringing he would go back and do some good in the town, but no, he just continues to dig himself deeper into a hole with his outbursts. Like I said earlier, the cameras and interviewers haven’t exactly beaten a path to his white mum’s door.
I will take your word for it, Brissles, that Lewis Hamilton isn’t as “decent” as he sounds. I didn’t know he had called Stevenage a “slum”.
I went off Grand Prix when Nelson Piquet Jr. deliberately crashed his car at the Singapore Grand Prix in 2008 and now I don’t follow the sport closely.
Brissles and Zelazek.
This comment will be buried in mid thread but I cannot help noticing that the overall insight analysis and balance of the above posts contrasts so starkly with the shallow, uncritical Leftoid woke BBC coverage of Hamilton despite their near limitless extra resources.
PS Compare and contrast. BBC coverage of UK tax avoidance of Philip Green versus that of Lewis Hamilton. Both Monaco residents, I believe.
If there is anyone looking for Boxing Day reading – the full text of the agreement has been published – 1200 plus pages here
Click to access COM-2020-857-F1-EN-ANNEX-1-PART-1.PDF
The papers are talking about tears , resignations and splits within the socialist cum the vote on the 30th so get yer popcorn in before the panic buying starts …
Fed, It’s beginning to look a lot like a sell-out.
Seems to full of nods ands winks to committees and councils to be set up to discuss all things…. some sort of four year time periods for deals, more red tape and befuddlement, also something about permanent access to EU boats in the ‘eastern Chanel’ to catch Cod with a 97% quota in perpetuity.. WTF?
More like a treaty than trade agreement.
I’ll await the likes of Cash and Redwoods take on it, but it’s getting clear, the outgoing PM Doris has sold us down the river. Surprised? Nah. Time for him to go.
The fact that “Sir” Keir will order a 3 line Labour whip to support the “deal” and all of the popular press are jumping aboard tells me everything I need to know about how good the “deal” is for us.
Now Isolated on Boxing Day for the first time in my life. But yesterday I was told by a cousin that my uncle was persuaded to watch the Xmas edition of All Creatures Great and Small. He hasn’t seen the new series yet. Apparently he switched off after watching the first five minutes of the program. James Herriot is seen walking up to the isolated home of a dales farmer. It turns out the farmers wife is as Black as they are in the Xmas adverts.
My uncle is in his ninties, he served in the Home Guard in the Dales, protecting the Ribblehead viaduct, he has been camping in the Dales for years and walked the Pennine Way. He has been a railway volunteer and been to shows in the Dales. He reads the Dalesman magazine and has read the books and watched the original series All Creatures. He has even visited the James Herriot Museum in Thirsk. But the first time he encountered a farmers wife of African descent, was in the first five minutes of the new series of All Creatures Great & Small.
It also reminds me of my Grandmother who said that when she was young in the first world war, she remembered a German retail businesses in Hull being smashed up. She also remembered a Chinese Laundry business in Hull. But said that the Blacks did not arrive in Hull until after the creation of the welfare state and NHS after the second world war.
But then that is what is unique about Blacks. Continental Europeans, Jews, Chinese and Asian immigrants did not need the state for help to set up businesses. While like BBC employees, the overwhelming majority of Blacks of African decent seem to be dependent on support from the state. In fact the only ethnics living down my street are Chinese, and my nearest Shopping Centre has a Chinese takeaway.
So therefore if the state collapses due to bankruptcy. The Blacks of African descent would be the group of people least likely to survive if an advanced civilisation was in a state of collapse.
So whites are privileged in being less dependent on the state due to the privilege of having an evolved higher intelligence level, fifteen percent higher than Blacks.
Richard
Netflix have some Regency type downtown abbey thing which just started – it too – is peppered with coloured tick boxes – I gave it 10 minutes before realising the demographic group it was aimed at – it wasn’t me .
Same as when I was growing up.
I think the first black man I saw was when I was almost 20.
I saw quite a few in the Army if you include the excellent Gurkhas. Never ever had any problems with any (and that was the time when we are told we were all racist)
Even now there’s no huge number up north here (in Sunderland) but on tv you can’t go for a few minutes without seeing loads of Anne Boleyns, woke adverts and, have you noticed, every (good) US President/police captain in films is black.
Is it the one with the Black Duke of Hastings. If I remember correctly I saw on the telly, a Black Duke of Hastings talking to William the Bastard prior to him coming over to England from France in 1066. Also I saw on the telly a Black Duke of Hastings in the new series about Robin Hood.
My guess is that the Black Duke of Hastings is related to Hastings Banda, who succeeded the Queen as head of state of Malawi, or came from
Hastings, Barbados or more likely Hastings, Sierra Leone. A secret Duchy founded by freed slaves.
Yep, like I mentioned on here the other day, all thanks to a black activist colour blind casting producer called SHONDA RHIMES. She’s responsible for a lot of black casting on Netflix dramas – whether they’re any good or not.
Phew… she has logged back on.
And on the matter of the BBC’s stellar factual accuracy, here is a new post from Craig.
http://isthebbcbiased.blogspot.com/2020/12/predictions.html
Chris rather suffering not just from being the wrong colour, but old, and male.
Don’t see him making it much further.
Unless he commits to a few more po-faced howlers for Ms. Spring to ignore.
Guest – I really thought the BBC would quietly dump this whittee after he was ripped a new one by Peter Lilley live on Toady about 18 months ago .
I think once ‘fact checkers ‘ are created it is a real sign that the broadcaster isn’t even pretending to be unbiased any more – it sees anyone outside their group think as an adversary – an enemy – who must be damaged or destroyed .
People on this site keep putting up the young lady (age @25?) who is now if ‘fact check world’ ascendency – I will never hear – see or read anything this kidult puts up .
As for fact-checker Morris – I think he might be doing a ‘leaving the BBC after 30 years’ tweet before too long ….
Must be a good 70 years since Sherman tanks rolled down the streets, but then I’m not ‘only 24’.
I think that’s a T34 .
And I think you are probably right.
But just as old?
I tried to get into a T34 once ( yawn ) didn’t fit . I was a bit too long ….
Oh am I the only person where@ JimS image does not show up on ?
I’m on Chrome on Windows
and on Android
On neither does the very wide screenshot show up.
It does show up in Microsoft Edge
i cant see it either
I was trying to work out what Ms Spring’s emoji ???? was all about – could it be an epaulette from her Chinese Communist Party uniform?
Turns out it is supposed to be a police car light, woo, woo.
Encore!
http://isthebbcbiased.blogspot.com/2020/12/chris-day-continues.html
And let us not forget another colleague from next door…
http://isthebbcbiased.blogspot.com/2020/12/whoops.html
Breitbart: Poland to Pass Law Protecting Online Free Speech Against Big Tech Censorship
On the other hand our government agrees with the censorship of free speech as proven by its politically driven persecutions and the fact it refuses to close down the lying bBC.
Here AMW speaks to Dr Bill Warner, Scientist, Educator and author of best-selling books on ‘Political Islam’.
https://rumble.com/vc6wz4-deep-waters-15-the-dr-bill-warner-inteview.html
For Britain are the only registered party that will talk openly and honestly about immigration, rape gangs, protecting our culture and anti-white hatred.
We must build on platforms our enemy do not control.
As For Britain will talk about the subjects the communist want to shut down, our accounts are hidden by YouTube and Facebook.
Over Christmas Radio4 has filled space by repeating progs 3 times instead of just 2 times
So I heard the Radio4 Science show where Alarmist-Activist-Presenter Adam Rutherford
interviewed Alarmist-Activist-Scientist T*msin Edwards
she told us ‘I cheered Boris’s net zero announcements
.. he was listening to what we scientists advised’
‘I think we are heading for +2.7C by 2000,
a bit less if China backtrack on coal plans’
Those words seem to me to be PR , NOT science
Ben Pile also tweeted
Hard to exclude the implication of what T*msin Edwards @flimsin
is saying on R4 — that new papers have been produced to coincide with #COP26.
We always knew that was the case
— that “science” tries to urge policymaking. Good to have it confirmed.
We could call it the Ferguson model of science communication.
Next week, Alice Roberts and Brian Cox review the decade in science. (with Rutherford again)
C’leb and BBC “science” is so predictable, so ideological, so shallow, incestuous.
Next programme after the news, no shit, is Adrian Childs investigating UK self-sufficiency. Autarky.
It’s religion.
Autarky = a nation in self-sufficiency
Scientists don’t have free speech on the BBC. Editors get sacked, so most scientists and almost all Atmospheric Physicists and Solar Astronomers haven’t even been invited on to the BBC in the last ten years. Its now been established that 24 out of 28 of the BBC’s best scientific experts, turn out to be environmental activists without any scientific qualifications. On the Mensa forum they call it a Dogma. See the article from the Mensa forum, below.
Climate Dogma? We do know that the Greenhouse Effect exists because all Planetary Atmospheres have a surface temperature higher than the grey body temperature. The problem is that the Arrhenius hypothesis, as explained by NASA, does not work on planets with carbon dioxide atmospheres, proving that it is a Dogma. On the other hand a formula for the Greenhouse Effect based on Atmospheric mass, gravity and air pressure first suggested by James Clerk Maxwell in 1871, was proved correct in 2011 for all known Planetary Atmospheres by Ned Nikolov & Karl Zeller, Gravity pulling molecules downward producing the heat gradient. Other scientists have found the same results using NASA data with air pressure and the Ideal Gas Law. Therefore I hope that environmental activists like Greta don’t phone up Mensa and demand that the editor should be sacked for publishing this email, which is what scientists are presuming to be what is going on within the British media these days.
My experience is that environmental activists rule the show. They control the politicians through the media. They approve and make sure taxpayers money goes to those scientists who are the crooks, but keep decent scientists off the air and censor most of the science. In Britain most of the scientists are only discovered to be decent when they are free from control by the state, by becoming retired.
Off to Warmington on Sea now, the only time it is worth risking the black Broadcasting corporation without wondering if we have tectonically shifted to the Carribean or some minor African republic over the last year
off course we do hear about the Sudan in some detail
Rather surprised each episode is not prefaced by an apology
they don’t like it up em
Talking pictures has a little gem at 2010 Saturday called
‘Went the day well ‘
Which ages quite well…..
BBC The home of Diversity
BBC2 last night 2 hours of Victoria Wood
BBC2 tonight 2.5 hours of Victoria Wood
A happy report in the Telgraph that the number of subscriptions for pay TV has gone from 24 million to 36 million in a year ….
…. the BBC is gonna have to do a lot of ‘strictly’ and ‘flea bite ‘ to beat that shift .. defund it now …
Every time I hear a Bee Gees song I’m reminded of their contribution to Bomber Command’s UK WW2 memorial. Left to Dan Snow and his BBC friends this would never have happened. Nothing sums up this foul organisation better than giving military history airtime to an incompetent nobody like him. Thank the Gods that he’s not the bloke next to me In this trench.
Something else I’ve tried to cut and paste from the telegraph by someone who has ‘lost faith in TV news” – just for those inclined to read a bit longer ….
Starts …
I ..am one of the luckiest ones. The pandemic has changed my life remarkably little. My parents are long gone, my kids are grown up, I am used to working from home and I live right next to Hampstead Heath.
So I have mainly observed the drama from the outside but have still been surprised by what the crisis has revealed about our country. Great events like the pandemic provide snapshots of illumination, highlighting how the national temperament has been evolving beneath the surface. They, therefore, also provide a kind of audit on the national self-image.
And I’m sorry to say that we need to chuck out all those T-shirts and tea cups bearing the slogan “Keep Calm and Carry On”. I believe it was on Monday 20 April that it struck me most forcefully: that day, a grim milestone was reached, with 100 health and social care workers reported to have died from Covid-19 – and I was witnessing a national panic. I realised then that we can no longer do television news for grown-ups.
For the preceding three weeks, I had been watching the same thing every night on the BBC Ten O’Clock News: here is a shocking statistic about Covid, here’s someone who died, here’s a sobbing relative or frontline hero telling you to stay at home, save lives and protect the NHS.
The coverage was relentlessly emotional and infantilising, lacking explanation and context. Was the 100-plus NHS staff deaths from Covid a lot, or a little? There are 600,000 patient-facing staff in the NHS, so a few probably die from infections they catch from patients every month in normal times. Was 100 deaths since the start of the crisis, about a month earlier, twice the normal rate or 50 times? How did it compare to other countries?
Not a word. In Britain, we are supposed to be good at media. And no doubt in some niches we still are. But at the start of the crisis, our main channels of electronic communication became showcases for our contemporary vices: emotionalism, virtue-signalling and a querulously adolescent attitude to authority.
At the same time, I was keeping an eye on the main TV bulletins in Germany and France and while, reassuringly, they were having exactly the same debates as us about inadequate PPE supplies and the disease ravaging old peoples’ homes, the news seemed to be delivered with more rigour and authority and without the British reflex of blaming the Government for everything that was going wrong.
I am no doubt guilty of golden-ageism, the news of my youth having suffered from the opposite vices of being stuffy and over-deferential. A more expressive, emotional tone in news coverage reflects real, and often welcome, changes in popular temperament in recent decades and more aggressive treatment of politicians represents a robust democratic instinct.
Moreover, I was especially shocked by what I saw because, like many people, I stopped watching TV news regularly ages ago and so was suddenly exposed to trends in media culture that have been evolving over many years: the human-interest dumbing down, the presumption of shorter attention spans, the hyper-adversarial journalism more interested in exposing than explaining (embodied by Beth Rigby and Piers Morgan in the current crisis).
The Government contributed to the emotionalism and infantilisation. Inexperienced ministers facing a largely hostile establishment in the aftermath of the polarising Brexit experience were in an unprecedented situation. But no serious attempt was made to explain the pandemic trade-offs or to create a national unity political truce of some kind. Instead, at a time when the public were prepared to cut them a lot of slack, they defensively failed to acknowledge obvious failures and talked robotically to us as if we were children deserving praise for staying at home.
No doubt like many people, I have felt torn in recent months between thinking that we have overreacted to a relatively minor new infection that has overwhelmingly afflicted the very old – producing only a small blip in excess deaths – and feeling that there is no real alternative to the restrictions we have had to endure given the lack of spare capacity in our health system.
And while I enjoy the luxury of irresponsible commentary, those in power have to take life and death decisions every day and it is in the nature of a transparent, modern welfare, democracy that we will try to tackle the pain and loss in front of our noses – even if it ends up creating even more pain and loss in the future.
The two greatest forces in contemporary democracy are short-termism and “safetyism”. Democratic short-termism always prioritises the immediate danger over the potentially greater longer-term danger. And the reason why we are required to put our lives and living standards on hold to save the NHS, instead of it saving us, is that we have not been prepared to forgo sufficient current consumption to build in the spare capacity that our health system requires to ride out a crisis like this.
The other main reason we have succumbed to emotionalism and not been able to conduct a rational cost-benefit debate about the crisis is because of the smothering effect of what the American writer Matthew Crawford calls safetyism. To invoke safety is to claim the high ground of public-spiritedness, and it becomes almost impossible to argue for any course of action that might in the short term reduce human welfare. This lies behind the sanctification of the NHS.
We do, of course, place a value on life; indeed, the NHS places a very specific value of £25,000 to £30,000 on one extra year of decent quality of life when deciding how to ration expensive therapies. Yet in the crisis, we have talked piously about every life being priceless. And safetyism feeds on itself, the safer a society becomes the lower the tolerance of premature death.
My epiphany watching the BBC news in April bleeds into a wider point about power and authority in mature democratic societies. Compared with 50 years ago, power is far more constrained and tied down both politically, legally and psychologically. In normal times, that is a damn good thing, but in a crisis, not so much. Leaders have lost the habit of leading from the front and taking painful decisions that might mean a higher death-count in the short term. This is surely at least one of the reasons why more authoritarian Asian countries have managed the crisis better.
Notwithstanding this argument, I am an optimist about the crisis. I think it has also revealed attractive features of modern Britain, the high level of volunteering and the inventiveness of our medical-scientific infrastructure for example.
I have just written a book called Head, Hand, Heart about how we have allocated too much reward and prestige to the cluster of human aptitudes concerned with cognitive ability. So it was refreshing to see not only the “heart” work done in the public care economy, but also the key workers, mainly non-graduate “hand” workers, getting some of the recognition they deserve.
I think we will emerge from the pandemic a more decent society, more aware of our inter-dependence. But we also need to learn some lessons about emotionalism in the public conversation and accepting that with democratic authority, as with everything else, it is horses for courses. What works in normal times may not be right for a crisis.”ends
By David Goodhart -ENDS – although the piece is intended to flog a book it is a good example of the disenchantment so many more are experiencing with the Best Broadcaster in the World …..
David sure isn’t wrong about the countries media, but otherwise spouts nonsense.
“I think we will emerge from the pandemic a more decent society, ”
He’s got to be kidding; all I see is puffed up jobworths, smug people on furlough, grasses, stressed out people ( that may lead to longer term problems) etc
” I think it has also revealed attractive features of modern Britain, the high level of volunteering…”
Or unattractive..
Mostly bored posh people going out litter picking, gardening in the parks etc
Generally robbing the jobless of the chance of paid work, to get that warm feeling in their tummies.
” ,,,,the reasons why more authoritarian Asian countries have managed the crisis better.”
He he… like we’re not also living under an authoritarian regime..