Author Archives: Laban

Prime Minister Tony Blair has had a private audience with Pope Benedict XVI at the Vatican.

President George W Bush has discussed the sex scandal which has rocked the Catholic Church in the United States during a private audience with Pope John Paul II on Tuesday.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has voiced hope for improved understanding between the Catholic and Orthodox Christian churches, following an audience with Pope John Paul II.

Wait for it …

King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has met Pope Benedict XVI at the Vatican – the first audience by the head of the Roman Catholic Church with a Saudi monarch.

I may be wrong, but I thought it was King Abdullah who had an audience with the Pope, not the other way round. Radio Four’s Six O’Clock News (BBC Radio Player ’til tomorrow, 27 minutes in) told us the same thing.

“King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has met the Pope at theVatican, the frst time a head of the Roman Catholic Church has had an audience with a Saudi monarch“.

From the BBC News Search engine (which has lost a lot of functionality in the last couple of months. Gone is the ability to search by date range or by news area. It didn’t always work properly, but the current search is pretty minimalistic) – Eid has just passed, Navratri is still with us, so compare :

Your 7 pages for Lent.

Your 23 pages for Ramadan.

Your 1 page for Navratri.

In the days before 7/7, when the BBC were still worrying about a post-9/11 backlash, someone had the idea of a programme depicting ordinary Muslims coping with other people’s prejudices. “Don’t Panic, I’m Islamic“, went out on 12th June 2005, to mixed reaction.

What must the odds be against the footage inadvertantly including alleged British jihadists?

Mohammed Hamid, 50, who called himself “Osama bin London” and ran a religious book stall in Oxford Street, London, described the 7/7 tube and bus bombings, in which 52 people died, as “not even a breakfast for me”, the court heard. Many of the paintball sessions, indoctrination meetings and combat drills he organised across England were attended by a number of those who later carried out the failed 21/7 London bombings, it was said …

A paintballing combat trip was held at the Springwood Centre in Tonbridge, Kent. The visit was even filmed by a BBC documentary crew and later broadcast in a programme entitled Don’t Panic, I’m Islamic.

on the BBC on identity fraud.

Despite the fact that I (personally) consider Talk Sport to be an invention of the devil, the ‘Radio Bloke’ that everyone said Five Live was going to be, I like the cut of Jon Gaunt’s jib in this Guardian Media profile. He’s right about Victoria Derbyshire’s utility, too, though that again is a personal view.

Despite the fact that he built audiences wherever he went, Gaunt’s tendency to editorialise made him an uncomfortable fit at the BBC, which is governed by strict rules about impartiality. “I only fitted in at the BBC because I was successful,” he agrees. “They would have sacked me otherwise. Of course I should be on Radio 5.” In case I missed the point, he repeats: “I should be on Radio 5. I should be doing that show at 9 o’clock in the morning. [Host] Victoria Derbyshire’s useless. In the interests of impartiality, balance and Reithian values, they should have me on – clearly flag what sort of show it is, have guests on who oppose what I say – and that would be proper radio. Do you think Victoria Derbyshire and Nicky Campbell don’t have their political bias? They come with a soft-liberal, left-leaning view, all of them. And that’s what’s wrong with the BBC.“

Talk Sport’s predecessor, Talk Radio, had a weekly politics phone-in show presented by rightie social conservative Peter Hitchens and the Labour MP Austin Mitchell, which neatly balanced out the open bias of the presenters. You can listen to Radio Five from 6 am to 4 pm each day without any presenter ever stepping beyond the “the gamut of views from A to B“.

(Stealth-edited at 7.34 am to remove a refence to Rupert Murdoch’s non-existent ownership of Talk Sport. Thanks Andrew)

When Dr Jerry Brotton, then an English lecturer at Royal Holloway department and now part of BBC favourite Lisa Jardine’s English department at Queen Mary’s London, came out two years ago with his “It’s The Turks Wot Won It” theory – that action by the Ottoman Empire at the request of Elizabeth’s spymaster Francis Walsingham had “fatally weakened” the Armada, the Guardian were quick to follow up, seemingly claiming in a rather garbled editorial that the incident strenghtened the case for Turkey’s accession to the EU.

I noted at the time that we were seeing a new liberal myth in embryo.

A couple of months later Trevor Phillips repeated Dr Brotton’s claims in a lecture delivered at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies (he also name-checked the Islamic King Offa myth – I’m surprised the BBC haven’t picked that one up). The myth was starting to run.

Only one problem – the complete lack of evidence for the claim. For the theory to be tenable evidence for three things would be necessary :

1. That Walsingham had asked the ambassador to encourage Ottoman action against Spain
2. That Harborne, the ambassador, successfully induced the Turks to harass Spanish possessions or otherwise threaten Spain, over and above the existing semi-endemic warfare between them
3. That this had a decisive impact on the Armada

Unfortunately only the first of these – Walsingham’s letter to the ambassador at the Ottoman court – is supported by any evidence.

There is no evidence that the letter resulted in any movements by the Ottoman fleet or army – or by any Ottoman allies.

There is no evidence of any impact on the Armada.

I did mail Dr Brotton to ask if such evidence existed, but he didn’t reply. In the absence of any supporting evidence I can only conclude that Dr Brotton’s making it up as he goes along.

What’s this got to do with the BBC ? Because they’re repeating this myth.

British history should be rewritten to make it “more inclusive”, says Trevor Phillips, the head of the new human rights and equality commission.

He said Muslims were also part of the national story and “sometimes we have to go back into the tapestry and insert some threads that were lost”.

He quoted the example of the Spanish Armada, which was held up by the Turks at the request of Queen Elizabeth I.

No. The Armada was not ‘held up by the Turks’. The BBC are perpetuating an untruth. Don’t take my word for it :

Dr Simon Adams, co-author of “England, Spain and the Grand Armada” argues the Ottoman Turks were not threatening the Spanish in the Mediterranean.

“The Walsingham letter had been sent in 1584 or 1585 and although England might have hoped the Turks would cause the Spanish problems, nothing really happened,” he told Reuters.

“The Turks were not really doing anything (against Spain) in 1588. They were busy in the near east,” added the University of Strathclyde academic.

Adams said the Armada failed because the expedition was poorly planned and the English had an effective navy helped by favourable weather.

So Dr Adams thinks there’s no evidence for a theory the BBC are presenting as fact. And who’s he ? Well, he’s the guy who wrote the BBC History pages on the Armada.

Why is this so important ? Because the Armada story is a key component of our history – of the English national story, which still carries enormous cultural significance. As CLR James put it :

English people, for example, have a conception of themselves breathed from birth. Drake and mighty Nelson, Shakespeare, Waterloo, the Charge of the Light Brigade, the few who did so much for so many, the success of parliamentary democracy, those and such as those constitute a national tradition.

The motives of Dr Brotton and Trevor Phillips in seeking to present a politically correct travesty of a key moment in English history – an attack on the English national story – are outside the remit of this blog. But it is shameful that the BBC are repeating their claims as fact.

UPDATE – surprise surprise – Dr Brotton is a Newsnight reviewer.

I think it’s fair to say that Alfie at Waking Hereward was not impressed with the opening of Scot Andrew Marr’s Radio Four series Unmasking The English.

(I thought it pretty poor stuff as well. Eighty years ago another Scottish media type wrote about the English rather more successfully. Archibald Gordon Macdonell found fame with his first novel, the autobiographical England, Their England. It’s still in print. The visit to the avant-garde theatre production is my favourite part – you can just imagine the respectful Front Row review.)

Who says the BBC is full of moral relativists ?

“Outrageous Wasters sees a crack team of eco experts on a mission to transform Britain’s most wasteful households … Joanna, Dan and Andy descend on a household of wasters to assess just how bad they are based on what they see in the house, by ‘interrogating’ them and from the evidence of a waste diary that the family has compiled. The family then spends up to five days living at ‘the house of correction’ – a purpose built eco-camp of large traditional Mongolian yurts (tents) – where they live without creature comforts and have Joanna and Dan teaching how them to waste as little as possible and how to live off the land. Meanwhile, Andy oversees an eco-makeover at the family’s home – designed to challenge their behaviour and inspire them to change their ways …”

“Just how bad they are”, “house of correction”, “to what extent our outrageous wasters have reformed their lives” – that kind of evangelical, Victorian moral certainty has pretty much disappeared from BBC Religious Affairs, but no matter. We have a radical new priesthood, too – represented here by “anti-waste enforcer Dan Carraro“.

(via Tim Blair)

“Headlines suggesting the Tories have “lurched to the right” are, of course, precisely what Mr Brown wants”.

– from a Nick Assinder piece headlined Is Cameron lurching to the right?