Author Archives: Laban

"typical urban dwellers"

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From the Socialist Unity blog yesterday :

Can anyone explain why Jeremy Vine’s show on Radio 2 this afternoon ended up interviewing John Rees, former SWP big cheese, as a studio guest representing typical urban dwellers, in a debate contrasting city life with rural living ?

Among the comments :

As National Secretary of Respect, John Rees appeared on the show many times, presumably the producers & Vine liked his style and so when they needed someone to speak on this subject called a few names on their list and JR came through. There’s no mystery.

The SWP have these weird connections in the BBC. A few years back, Paul Thatcher from Portsmouth SWP appeared on R4 as a “man in the street” disgruntled ex-Labour voter, neglecting to mention that he had actually stood against Labour in the previous general election as a Socialist Alliance candidate.

How strange that the SWP should have connections at the BBC when many of its ex and current members have presented or been involved in producing programs for it.

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"a city they had recently tried to wipe off the map"

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Isn’t life strange ? One day you’re trying to erase Berlin, another you’re trying to save its people.

North by Northwest on this Dan Bell report. I can see what Mr Bell is trying to do – the human side and all that. But a little context would be in order – maybe a little about why Stalin was trying to “expel the Western powers from the city” – aka “starving its inhabitants”. Maybe the words “Communist” or “Union of Soviet Socialist Republics” might put in an appearance here and there.

(Surprisingly for the PC BBC, Mr Bell’s cheery account of Hamburg brothels, black markets and the ‘hedonistic post-war atmosphere‘ misses out the important contributing fact that, while historians differ over the degree of starvation and the number of deaths incurred, it is accepted that post-war Germany was extremely short of food and fuel – a condition exacerbated by the harsh winter of 1946-47.)

NNW asks – and rightly so – what effect this lack of context, repeated again and again, does to a British people with a dumbed-down history curriculum, and overseas readers for whom the BBC is their window on British culture :

“… think how this is being read in Islamabad and Cairo, in Ankara and Nigeria, in the Caribbean and in mill-workers’ cottages in Leeds and Burnley where 1066 is never mentioned, and in Halifax, West Yorkshire and in curry houses in downtown Halifax Nova Scotia. What impression will this give to people who don’t grow up with the perspective and (limited) historical knowledge that The Great Escape and Tora Tora Tora and Kelly’s Heroes and Schindler’s List provide ?”

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Campaigning Starts In Euro Elections

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Keep an ear out for next Thursday’s Radio Four ‘The Report’ which promises to reveal the electoral tactics of the British National Party as they campaign for ‘a coveted Euro seat’. I somehow don’t think it’s going to be an admiring profile. Isn’t there some kind of law about doing this sort of thing at election time ?

(the revelations have also appeared here and here. Doesn’t Nick Griffin look more like Patrick Moore every day ?)

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More on policing …

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Inspector Gadget points out the disparity between this morning’s BBC News coverage of the slapping/striking of Nicola Fisher and the killing of police officer Gary Toms.

… this story gets one page in the ‘England’ section with no photograph of the officer and no ‘trial by media’ of the alleged offenders. It was reported on BBC Radio national morning news at 8.03 am for 1.8 seconds.

Uninjured Nicola Fisher, 35, from Brighton, who was slapped across the face and hit on her leg with a baton by a Police Sergeant during the G20 protests has been talking to journalists. She refused to discuss the fee she has received via Max Clifford.

On the BBC News Website this story gets a full page in the UK and England sections, two videos and more discussion ‘out of Court’ of the officers actions from Ms Fishers perspective. On Saturday, BBC Radio national morning news ran the story twice every hour, from 6.30 am to 9.00 am. It was featured twice at length.

On my Ruralshire Constabulary team of young police officers, many of whom provide Public Order support at National events (without incident by the way) the difference in coverage will be noticed, and may add to the widening gap between police and public. Unfortunately, police officers see the media as representing public opinion.

I can understand that many people are upset by the G20 incidents. But when one of your own workmates is killed and receives less media coverage than someone who is slapped round the face and hit on the leg with a hollow metal stick causing no injury, we start to see the moral battle lines being drawn.

(Via JuliaM. Also noted at Landed Underclass)

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Desperate Times, Desperate Measures

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Don’t get me wrong. I think we can all feel a little sorry for Gordon Brown these days – at least until we look at our pensions, or our children’s futures. The BBC were really doing us all a kindness when they kept his poor rictus grin off the screens as Nigel Farage and Dan Hannan tore into him the other day. It was painful to see him.

But when Gordon’s advisers study the polls and attempt to get some more positive media coverage for him, there’s no need for the republicans in the BBC (i.e. 97% of the staff) to go quite so far overboard. Is the fact that the Great Leader is attempting to browbeat HRH over the tragic Royal discrimination against Catholics really worthy of the main headline on all BBC channels and the website this morning ?

It’s certainly not a subject that exercises Catholics, and I don’t think that’s what the recent trouble in Northern Ireland’s about either. The only people who are really bothered by it are the usual left wing suspects (who generally can’t stand Catholics unless they’re armed, anti-British and homicidal) and Lib Dem MP Evan Harris.

Why the BBC is acting as a megaphone for Gordon’s “diversionary exercise” I simply can’t understand – any more than I can understand why Robert Peston does the same for him on the economics front.

(of course the problem with the Act of Successsion is that Britain is (formally) not a secular democracy, but an explicitly religious state, with the head of state also head of the state church. Once discrimination against Catholics is removed, the basis of the UK constitution must also change. And why stop at Catholics ? Discrimination is discrimination, surely ? Shouldn’t Prince William be able to marry someone like Chah Oh-Niyol Kai Whitewind ?)

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But The Script’s Already Written !

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It has become apparent to commentators like Liam Halligan that the Great Deflation Scare of 2009 is, in his words :

“… largely a myth – an alibi for wildly expansionary fiscal and monetary policy concocted by Western governments and their media lackeys.

After all, where is deflation? Data released last week put annual US core inflation at no less than 4pc. So why is the Fed doing this, following the Bank of England’s lead? Because the real solution – forcing banks to face the music, while rescheduling massive private and public debts – is too politically frightening for our so-called leaders to contemplate.

A decision has been made, but not announced: we’ll inflate away our debts instead”

Media lackeys ? That’s a bit strong. Anyone in mind, Liam ? Robert Peston’s been waving the spectre of deflation for some time.

I invite readers to study the evolution of yesterdays lead BBC news story, from “Deflation risk as prices to fall” all the way through to “Surprise hike in consumer prices”.

It turns out that the only component of inflation to fall is mortgage costs – completely under the control of HMG/BoE. Everything else is going up. The only deflation is caused by the Government.

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“the ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas”

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Karl Marx’s dictum sprang to mind as I listened to tonight’s opening episode of Radio Four’s “Call Yourself A Feminist”, the first of ‘three discussions tracing the development of feminist ideas from the 1960s onwards‘.

Those ideas have over the last forty years made enormous differences to the way of life – and death – in the western world, and as such are well worth examination.

The programme, however, was not an examination, but a celebration.

Next week, Linda Bellos and Bea Campbell on feminism in the Thatcher years. I can’t imagine what that’ll be like – can you ?

More of the received view of history – William Gazy reviews the BBC News reporting of the miners strike, 25 years on.

“It was presented rather in the manner Soviet TV must have recalled the 1917 revolution – bloody, glorious, necessary and united against the forces of reaction.”

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It’s Liberal Myth Time …

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A key liberal myth, the “Myth of the Myth of the Golden Age” holds that crime wasn’t REALLY lower in the past, streets weren’t REALLY safer.”He who controls the present, controls the past. He who controls the past, controls the future.” The BBC is one of the main propagators of this myth.

And here’s Jonathan Freedland with today’s “Long View“, the programme which attempts to make history fit today’s liberal narrative, comparing youth crime in Liverpool now and in 1883, when a young lad was beaten to death in a street attack, or as the Beeb put it “a similar fight between gang members”, despite the fact that neither perpetrator or victim were identified as such. You see – kids were being killed then, too ! Nothing’s really changed ! Alas the programme doesn’t give the figures for, say, homicide in Liverpool 1880-1900 as against 1980-2000, a comparison which I’m sure would be instructive, although one of the contributors does point out that witnesses in Victorian times were generally happy to testify, rather than reluctant or unwilling.

The real giveway is in the description of the Michael Burns murder, which started with an arranged fight between two boys and ended with a young spectator being beaten and kicked to death. Burns is on the ground being attacked by a number of boys, when “two adults came upon the scene and the boys scattered“.

Can you imagine that happening today ? The adults would be more likely to scatter. Alas this went straight past Mr Freedland. None so blind as those that will not see.

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