Rupert Wingfield-Hayes of the BBC is named…

…but is unlikely to be shamed since it’s doubtful he has any shame.

About 6 months ago I Googled for an old video attack on Israel by Wingfield-Hayes – which struck me as particularly vicious at the time and still does. I put it in ‘Favourites’ for future reference and went back to it today. But lo and behold, the video snapshot faded after a few seconds and I was informed that This content is not available in your location.

I found that rather odd since I’m in Israel, the video was filmed in Israel and Ramallah and plonked on the BBC website under the ‘Middle East’ category. Well, I guess the kindest interpretation is that there is a copyright issue and, just as I cannot access old Question Time programmes on the BBC site, I can now no longer have Wingfield-Hayes’ fossilized old bias inflicted on me.

A less kind interpretation is that the BBC has recently become aware of the foul nature of Wingfield-Hayes’ video and blocked it for Israeli viewers.

Anyway, all I can share for now with the good people on this site in terms of evidence is the link and the blurb:

Tel Aviv is like a new Miami but does it help talks?

Life in Tel Aviv is good with no attacks for years, despite the height of the Middle East conflict going on less than an hour away in the West Bank. But does this help the peace talks?

Israeli and Palestinian leaders are resuming their face to face talks in a bid to prevent the new negotiations from collapsing just days after their launch.
They will be joined by the American Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el Sheikh.

Rupert Wingfield-Hayes reports.

14 Sep 2010

The analysis will have to be done from memory:

Wingfield-Hayes strolls along a Tel Aviv beach while the cameraman videos Israelis having fun and relaxing. He (or his editor, if such a person exists) must have been particularly happy with the video of two women lolling on deck chairs asleep or half-asleep since that became the snapshot mentioned above and will be the first thing anyone sees when accessing Wingfield-Hayes’ understanding of the Israeli-Arab conflict.

The scene changes to an interview with a jeweller who is unconcerned about the conflict and for whom life is just fine.

Then we see Wingfield-Hayes strolling in relaxed companionship through the streets of Ramallah with a good-looking young Israeli-Arab (or perhaps he is Palestinian) who earnestly objects to the ‘occupation.’

The message? The Palestinians (or Israeli-Arabs or both) would create a wonderful future between the river and the sea if only those intransigent Israelis would allow them to do so. They represent the vigorous, young future.

The Je.., er, Israelis, on the other hand, represent the past. They are lazy, indolent, pleasure-seeking and interested in adorning themselves with fine jewelry (and profiting from it) rather than resolving the conflict. They should not become complacent because of the lull in (terror) attacks.

One can of course read a much more insidious message into that last bit. I leave it up to the BBC to consider the implications of it and to Wingfield-Hayes and his conscience (if he has one).

Edit 22/11
On the advice of a friend I have deleted ‘Rupert’ and replaced it with ‘Wingfield-Hayes’ in the text above. Use of the first name alone implies familiarity, perhaps friendship, and Wingfield-Hayes is an enemy of me and mine.

Intelligence Squared has Webb preening and Corbyn getting bashed

I drafted the following contribution before I saw the news of the horrific shooting at the synagogue in Pittsburgh

I appreciate the opportunity to expose the vile anti-Semitism that leads to these attacks, whether coming from Jeremy Corbyn or any other source, including the BBC itself – often disguised as criticism of Israel.

Here’s the earlier draft:

Intelligence Squared US is an interesting debating forum, left-leaning since it’s filled to the brim with academics, but still worth watching because of the differing perspectives from the knowledgeable panel members and the often-fiery debates. There are several on the IQ2 US site and on YouTube stretching back many years.

Intelligence Squared UK, on the other hand, is not only a pale imitation of its US counterpart but has also mangled the US format beyond recognition – with ‘debates’ that are actually left-wing echo chambers with no room for dissent. And so you have Justin Webb, lately BBC North America ‘Editor’, chairing a lefty fest around the following leading question:

Is the Trump presidency causing irreparable damage to America?

For those of my esteemed colleagues who might watch the thing, I should state that Webb engages in a long, excruciating introduction, which is well worth skipping, except that, at 3 minutes in, he has something to say about his ‘interview’ of Obama, putting a humorous slant on it. I watched it at the time, and it was apparent that Webb had no idea how to conduct the interview and sat there mesmerised by the great man, like a rabbit caught in the headlights of his car. Well, I guess Webb’s capacity for self delusion is boundless. He probably also thinks he’s a good journalist rather than a propagandist.

There is one panel member, the lady journalist, who has a couple of sensible things to say about the topic, but apart from that the audience is also predominately anti-Trump and the entire thing is probably a waste of time.

However, while surfing through the IQ debates I stumbled on a podcast questioning whether Jeremy Corbyn is fit to become Prime Minister.

This was much more of a real debate, with Howard Jacobson and Anna Soubry crossing swords with Ash Sarkar (I’d never heard of her, luckily) and Chris Williamson (of whom unfortunately I had).

Jacobson is really impressive, especially with his scathing and hilarious opening attack on Corbyn for his anti-Semitism.

Apparently there will be a video of the podcast at some stage. Might be worth watching it with the sound muted when Sarkar and Williamson open their mouths.

The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald mirror the BBC

I hope my esteemed colleagues will indulge me if I present a case against the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, rather than against the BBC. The latter is only guilty by association here since it practices the precise blinkered left-wing ideology demonstrated by these afore-mentioned publications.

Nick Miller, an alleged journalist ‘reporting’ for these papers, wrote an article purporting to enlighten his readers about anti-Semitism in Europe. Instead, it appears he set out to deliberately mislead them by pretending that the threat to Jews is overwhelmingly from the right.

So I emailed him:

To Nick Miller,

I refer to your article in the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age on anti-Semitism in Europe published on September 7th.

I note that you have concentrated almost exclusively on anti-Semitism from the right in countries such as Greece and Poland. While there certainly is a disturbing increase in anti-Semitism coming from the right in a few European countries, it is eclipsed by the anti-Semitism coming from Muslims in Europe – most prevalent in France, Sweden and even the UK, where the unholy alliance of Jeremy Corbyn with radical Islam and his unwillingness to expel anti-Semites from the Labour Party has caused a number of Jews to doubt their future in a country where Corbyn is likely to become Prime Minister.

Yet one has to scroll practically to the end of your article to find one paragraph on the very real threat posed to the Jews of Europe by Muslims:

“Both Williams and Schnurbein point to anti-Jewish sentiment imported to Europe in recent years through the influx of migrants and refugees from the Middle East and North Africa where a bias against Jews “has been culturally produced over the last 70 years”, Williams says.”

And that statement is then immediately minimised here:

“But the effect should not be over-emphasised. Europe was not a clean slate – indeed, a survey in 2014 found that anti-Semitic sentiment was more prevalent in Greece than in Iran.”

And it is virtually discounted here:

“Williams says Muslim communities should not be made a convenient scapegoat for Europe’s rise in anti-Semitism. “It’s not something that is coming from without, it’s something that needs to be dealt with within,” he says.”

I battle to understand that statement. This is not a matter of looking for scapegoats, but dealing with very real Muslim anti-Semitism, both from without and within Europe.

Regarding the 2014 survey, Greek Jews pointed out that there has been no violence against Jews in Greece, as opposed to France.

In recent years there have been frequent violent attacks and horrific murders of Jews by Muslims in France, and French Jews are emigrating in increasing numbers:

And the situation in Sweden is also dire:

“Historically, anti-Semitism in Sweden could mainly be attributed to right-wing extremists. While this problem persists, a study from 2013 showed that 51 percent of anti-Semitic incidents in Sweden were attributed to Muslim extremists. Only 5 percent were carried out by right-wing extremists; 25 percent were perpetrated by left-wing extremists:”

Frankly, Mr. Miller, you do the Jews of Europe a disservice by obfuscating and minimising Muslim anti-Semitism to the point of non-existence. You also do a disservice to the truth.

Regards, etc.

And he failed to respond. Since my email did not bounce back, I assume either he read it or someone in his office, or whatever, did.

So today I gave the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age some info on their ‘Feedback’ page, pasting my email to Miller in and politely telling them that Miller’s article does no credit to their publications and that as long as the mainstream, left-wing media, so prevalent across the globe, insists on obfuscating and filtering news through its rigid ideology, social media will continue to be a viable alternative.

I didn’t mention fine sites such as this one, but Google might help them find such genuine information, in the unlikely event they’ll be seeking it out.

I look forward to the mainstream media becoming more and more irrelevant, something they richly deserve.

The BBC tried to diminish Entebbe

…but only succeeded in further diminishing itself.

I am pleased to report to esteemed colleagues on this fine site that I finally downloaded British government documents on the Entebbe rescue opened to the public in May 2007 and pounced on by alleged journalist Dan Parkinson who was named and shamed by the indefatigable BBC Watch for triumphantly plucking part of a conspiracy theory from the documents in order to demean and discredit the Israelis and diminish one of the most brilliant and daring rescue operations of modern times.

Here’s the conspiracy theory, in full, sent to the FOC from the British Embassy in Paris:

June 30 1976

A contact in the Euro-Arab Parliamentary Association rang me on 29 June to say that according to his information, the hijack was the work of the PFLF, with help from the Israeli Secret Service, the Shin Beit. The operation was designed to torpedo the PLO’s standing in France and to prevent what they see as a growing rapprochement between the PLO and the Americans. Their nightmare is that after the November elections, one will witness the imposition in the Middle East of a Pax Americana, which will be to the advantage of the PLO (will gain international respectability and perhaps the right to establish a state on evacuated territories) and to the disadvantage of the Refusal Front (who will be squeezed right out in any overall peace settlement ….) and Israel (who will be forced to evacuate occupied territory). Hence the unholy alliance of the hijacking. My contact says that the PFLP had attracted all sorts of wild elements, some of whom had been planted by the Israelis.

Amazing how the Israeli Secret Service would conspire to commit an atrocity on fellow Israelis at the hands of German and Arab terrorists. Only an anti-Semite (or a BBC journalist) could believe such trash.

Even worse, Parkinson had this to say about dual UK-Israeli citizen Dora Bloch:

Two Israeli civilian hostages died in the shooting, and a third died later in a Nairobi hospital.

No, Dora Bloch was abducted from the hospital in Kampala (this ‘journalist’ can’t even get his cities/countries right) and murdered by Amin’s thugs. Her body was recovered later that year 32 km from Kampala and her callous murder caused Britain to break off relations with Uganda.

It defies belief that Parkinson did not know about this, since it caused outrage amongst the public at the time – and since the documents he sourced the story from have several letters and other references to the disappearance of Dora Bloch as the British government strove to find out what had happened to her.

It’s high time the BBC understood that it can no longer simply throw things it doesn’t like down the Memory Hole. We’ll just fish them out again and shove them in the BBC’s smug face.

Benjamin Netanyahu tries to educate Evan Davis

Interviewing the Israeli PM back on June 7, Evan Davis starts with a fair question, and it’s fine that it has a challenging tone to it. After all, it’s an interview:

Prime Minister, you’ve said Israel will not allow Iran to have nuclear weapons; how do you propose to stop them?

But then comes the inevitable BBC perception that Israel is misguided and practically alone in the world in its approach to everything, including Iran:

Most of the world thinks the deal is the best way of stopping them. You’re not a supporter of the deal. All roads lead to military action, don’t they?

Netanyahu disagrees and mentions paralyzing sanctions as a way to subdue Iran.

Davis says, You’re not going to get the world behind sanctions, demonstrating BBC wishful thinking, along with the bias.

The debate on Iran and sanctions and military action goes on for a while, with Davis losing, till, at 3:40 minutes in, he switches to two major events on May 14, which must have had the BBC gnashing its collective teeth in rage and frustration: the opening of the US Embassy in Jerusalem and the shooting of protestors on the Gaza border. He does his best to portray the Israel PM as a monster, glorifying in the Embassy opening while refusing to wear sackcloth and ashes over the tragic deaths on the border – of 50 Hamas terrorists, a couple of Islamic Jihad terrorists and about ten human shields, including children, as the terrorists cut through the fence under cover of a huge cloud of black smoke from burning tyres, striving to get into Israel to murder Jews.

At 7:40 minutes in, Davis says, I think the really important thing is, who is the obstacle to peace. And in terms of how the world sees the division of terrain… [And he carries on with the standard BBC uninformed bias about the conflict. Now of course we’ve graduated from not only the majority being against Israel but the entire bloody planet.]

There’s a funny moment at 11:10 minutes in when Davis says, …we’re out of our allotted time… and the PM responds with a smile and, I’ll give you a little more time. Davis does not appear to grasp the humour.

The PM ends on a positive note, re Israeli Jewish and Arab doctors treating wounded Syrian civilians who cannot believe the kindness and help they find in Israel because they have always been told that the Israelis are the devil.

I haven’t dwelt on the PM’s responses to Davis since I’ve tried to concentrate on Davis’ bias, but the way he dealt with the bias – by calmly explaining the Israeli perspective – is worth a look.

The scruffy Evan Davis, who looks, with his growth of beard and open-necked shirt, like he has just been hauled off the street, freshened up a bit and plonked before the PM, might even have learned something from the encounter.

George Orwell, the professor and the BBC

I’m indebted to Guest Who for posting this bizarre tweet by Nick Robinson about Orwell. I was stunned by it, struggling to absorb the fact that the BBC could put a statue of Orwell up at its headquarters, complete with the following quote:

If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear

Once I’d recovered sufficiently to ask Google for help, I was directed to Jean Seaton, professor of media history and the official BBC historian, who last month wrote an article on Orwell. I found her assertion that, “Orwell would laugh at the statues of him that are sprouting up,” fascinating since it appeared to be a direct assault on those who had commissioned the statue and placed it at BBC headquarters. Could this be evidence of independent thinking, free of the iron grip of far-left ideology which has paralysed so many universities?

Well, maybe not since the professor also tells us that, “In the US, sales [of 1984] surged as people searched for a way of getting to grips with the reality of the Trump administration.” As if Trump, the embattled president of a democracy with all its checks and balances, resembles Big Brother, who has absolute power over life and death as the head of a dictatorship; as if Trump, as he struggles to drain the swamp, is in fact the alpha alligator.

Why did the professor need to signal her virtue with the obligatory anti-Trump stance? Perhaps she is simply making amends for being critical of the statue. She needs to understand that even if the rise in sales of 1984 can be positively linked to Trump, that says nothing about the president himself but is rather revealing about the paranoia and ignorance of so many who oppose him.

But to get back to the BBC, does it not realize that Orwell knew what the state propagandist was about even back in the 1940s and that he would be horrified if he could see it now?

Did the BBC read 1984 without understanding a word of it?

In attempting to align itself with Orwell, the BBC has committed an arrogant act of historical revisionism that, for me, is the culmination of all its previous sins. This alleged media champion of liberty is standing shoulder to shoulder with George Orwell and telling people what they do not want to hear? What rubbish. From climate change skeptics to Donald Trump’s remarkable achievements to the courageous stand by Tommy Robinson and others against the Islamic invasion of the West, the BBC is in fact not telling people what it does not want them to hear.

The Ministry of Truth is lying again and this one is the biggest lie it has ever told.

Updates, June 10:

1. Thanks for all those fascinating contributions. I learned a lot from them and have responded to some of them.

2. I have substituted ‘bizarre’ for ‘extraordinary’ to describe Nick Robinson’s tweet.

3. The following is taken from Orwell’s The Road to Wigan Pier, published in 1937, Penguin edition pp 189-90. Over 80 years later, it still rings true:

“It is usual to speak of the Fascist objective as the ‘beehive state’, which does a grave injustice to bees. A world of rabbits ruled by stoats would be nearer the mark. It is against this beastly possibility that we have got to combine.

“The only thing for which we can combine is the underlying ideal of Socialism; justice and liberty. But it is hardly strong enough to call this ideal ’underlying’. It is almost completely forgotten. It has been buried beneath layer after layer of doctrinaire priggishness, party squabbles, and half-baked ‘progressivism’ until it is like a diamond hidden under a mountain of dung. The job of the Socialist is to get it out again. Justice and Liberty! Those are the words that have got to ring like a bugle across the world. For a long time past, certainly for the last ten years, the devil has had all the best tunes. We have reached a stage when the very word ‘Socialism’ calls up, on the one hand, a picture of aeroplanes, tractors, and huge glittering factories of glass and concrete; on the other, a picture of vegetarians with wilting beards, of Bolshevik commissars (half gangster, half gramophone), of earnest ladies in sandals, shock-headed Marxists chewing polysyllables, escaped Quakers, birth-control fanatics, and Labour Party backstairs-crawlers. Socialism, at least in this island, does not smell any longer of revolution and the overthrow of tyrants; it smells of crankishness, machine-worship, and the stupid cult of Russia. Unless you can remove that smell, and very rapidly, Fascism may win.”

Will the real Jeremy Corbyn stand up….

…. and if so, will the BBC help him to his feet?

He didn’t sing the national anthem because he doesn’t know the words Er, or perhaps he does know the words but he was thinking of something else.

(Well, at least he stood for it.)

He will participate fully in future commemorations but cannot or will not say whether that will extend to exercising his vocal chords.

He first rejected the EU but then was sort of rising off his chair for Remain.

He is either a supporter of the IRA or an impartial peacemaker with utmost respect for both sides of the conflict.

He befriends Islamic Jihad in the form of Hamas and Hezbollah….

….and then unbefriends them, so to speak, with mealy-mouthed words after being put under pressure.

He stands by idly as Labour Momentum activist Marc Wadsworth takes the microphone and humiliates Jewish Labour MP Ruth Smeeth who leaves the meeting in disgust. (I cannot find the clip I originally saw of Corbyn smiling warmly at Wadsworth soon after Ruth Smeeth’s humiliation; perhaps it went down a memory hole.)

He is utterly committed to rooting out the anti-Semites within Labour except when it comes to doing something about it: looks like he simply cannot bring himself to expel anti-Semite Livingstone.

(In fairness I should add that I’ve just learned that Marc Wadsworth was expelled last month from the party: took years though, for some inexplicable reason.)

Could be that Corbyn was finally forced to act after Ruth Smeeth and Luciana Berger read out in parliament the vile anti-Semitic abuse they had received from Corbyn devotees.

This is the same Corbyn who joined four or five racist, anti-Semitic hate sites on Farcebook (not a typo) but apparently didn’t know what they were about or what he was doing there. (4:50 minutes in)

While grimly scouting the Web to find the real Jeremy Corbyn I’ve been adding ‘BBC’ to every Google search. Judging from the results, this most trusted broadcaster appears not to associate much with the extreme manifestations of Corbyn’s deceit and duplicity.

It seems, though, that David Dimbleby bears some ill will towards the Labour leader, judging by the number of probing questions he has accepted re the latter on Question Time, many throwing doubt on his suitability as leader and challenging Labour anti-Semitism.

Still I doubt that the BBC will be much use in helping to find the real Jeremy Corbyn. I suspect they would prefer him to quietly vanish and for someone more acceptable to replace him so that Labour will have a better chance in future elections, thus enabling the strewing of BBC corridors with empty champagne bottles.

If he ever does stand up, will we see a committed social justice warrior with a genuine desire for the betterment of society but who blunders badly in working towards that betterment?

Or will we see a rigid, cunning, anti-Semitic, far-left ideologue who has calculated that his alliance with radical Islam will eventually draw enough public support to enable Labour to win an election, and is only pretending to be less of an extremist because he senses that the time is not right?

Perhaps my esteemed colleagues here can help find the real Jeremy Corbyn.

Update: June 5th is a bit late to update a post from May 20th, but I wanted to plonk a couple of things above the line:

Jagman84 contributed a link to a video clip showing Corbyn’s warm interaction with Marc Wadsworth after the Momentum ‘activist’ had just singled out Jewish Labour MP Ruth Smeeth for a sly, anti-Semitic slur, causing her to storm out of the meeting.

Ruth Smeeth and others at the meeting were outraged at the anti-Semitism, shouting, “How dare you,” at Wadsworth, so there is no way Corbyn could have been unaware of the incident. Yet he did nothing and his warm relationship with Wadsworth was apparently unaffected.

A day after I speculated here about Corbyn’s extreme reluctance to expel Ken Livingstone, the loathsome anti-Semite resigned. I had a look at a couple of interviews of him justifying his resignation on YouTube. In this one he claims that several Jewish people have come up to him agreeing with his take on Hitler and questioning whether MPs read their history. This simply demonstrates the implacable nature of his anti-Semitism. In this one with the BBC he claims that no Jewish people have come up to him expressing their outrage.

Livingstone cannot acknowledge his own anti-Semitism, at least not publicly. Worse, he takes this opportunity to perpetuate it yet again. And that’s all I have to add about the creep.

I believe now that there is more than enough evidence that Corbyn is also deeply anti-Semitic. He’s just a bit more careful in demonstrating it.

BBC struggles to recognize Jerusalem

Thought I’d check out what the BBC had to say about the historic opening of the US Embassy in Jerusalem yesterday so I Googled:

bbc US embassy opening ceremony Jerusalem

These first four results came up from the BBC:

Gaza clashes: 52 Palestinians killed in deadliest day since 2014

Gaza protests turn deadly before US opens Jerusalem embassy

Jerusalem embassy: why Trump’s move was not about peace

Repeat of the first result

Apart from the obvious bias, this really had me scratching my head. I thought Google simply picks up key words and then produces links that feature most if not all of those key words.

Those results are followed by a couple of clips from the ceremony uploaded to YouTube by BBC News

Not sure who calls him/herself BBC News and why he/she would want to plonk clips on YouTube.

Perhaps those among my esteemed colleagues knowledgeable about these matters could throw some light on this peculiar happening. How did Google tweak those results to force them away from the US Embassy to Gaza?!

Meanwhile here’s the ceremony for those interested

It starts at 10 minutes in and there’s a fabulous Ethiopian/Israeli singer introduced by the president of Israel at 41 minutes in. She sings again at 1hr 24 min in.

Resistance to the BBC and all other far-left ideologues

The ideologues of the far left in the US have misappropriated the term ‘resistance’ to define their frantic attempts to undermine the Trump administration. Perhaps they really see themselves as noble fighters akin to those of the French Resistance and the Warsaw Ghetto and Trump as a Nazi as they scream obscenities at him and insist on his impeachment.

Well, it’s these frantic ones themselves who should be resisted and US voters have made an excellent start in electing Donald Trump. He has in effect become the leader of the Western world in resisting those who would drag us back into the darkness of ideological oppression. And that would naturally include media giants such as the BBC – whose compulsion is to indoctrinate the masses in failed far-left ideology.

So it is unsurprising that many exceptional members of this genuine resistance have emerged from the ranks of the US masses – among them two strong black-American women calling themselves Diamond and Silk. Here they are on Newsnight forcefully resisting Evan Davis to the extent that he eventually has no idea how to handle them and appears to end up actually liking them, can you believe it:

Davis no match for D&S

Evan Davis will have to be cautious. Sharing good vibes with staunch conservatives is a poor career move at the BBC.

And here they are resisting vitriolic attacks from black-American members of the House Judiciary Committee – who are trying to catch them in a lie re Farcebook’s discrimination against conservatives and then get them for perjury under oath.

I doubt US Congressmen and women have ever seen witnesses like Diamond and Silk. Witnesses are generally awed by the power vested in Congress and refrain from talking back aggressively to those who wield the power. Let’s hope the example of the forceful, no-nonsense attacks by Diamond and Silk on the political correctness of the political elite will encourage many others to take a similar stance in Western Europe and beyond.

BBC buckles under Brexit, but bounces back

This is already old news, but I thought I’d plonk the BBC coverage of the Referendum results above the parapet for all who would like a record of it in one prominent place. It’s from 10 pm on the 23rd till 1 pm on the 24th:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

I imagine the BBC found itself in quite a dilemma here: though yearning to express its pro-Remain bias as the results came in, it must have realised that the pretence of impartiality had never been quite so critical. And so, with a fairly straight face and a tremendous effort, it managed to behave for the most part like a responsible news organisation.

However, the inbuilt bias was clearly revealed in a number of strange ways:

At 9:50 minutes in on Part 1, Jeremy Vine stands next to a yellow and blue strip, which have both just reached the end of their referendum race. The yellow strip is in the foreground and much wider with ‘Remain’ clearly perched in front of it in black while the white ‘Leave’ text is invisible, having merged with the white finish line. At 9:53, Vine’s leg blocks that meeting between Leave and the finish line. At the end of his demonstration, Vine says, “We put them 50-50 here,” but of course it was more like 75-25.

At 14:20 on Part 2 Dimbleby talks to Arron Banks, founder of Leave.EU, “who helped fund the leave campaign.” At 15:50 he asks him, “How much did you give to the campaign, yourself.” On hearing that it was six million pounds, Dimbleby asks, “Why?” Amazingly, Banks responds politely rather than telling Dimbleby it was none of his damn business. It was difficult to hear Banks. Those unfamiliar with the antics of the BBC would have thought that was purely a technical malfunction.

Then of course there is the funereal announcement by Dimbleby, at 2:39:30 on Part 2, that the ’75 referendum had been reversed as there was no chance of Remain overtaking Leave.

And at 3:21:30 on Part 2, Dimbleby asks Andrea Leadsom, “How can you have calm reflection when the world is falling about your…feet.” She politely points out that it isn’t.

At the end of a speech by Nigel Farage at 1:27:05 on Part 3, Dimbleby says, “Nigel Farage, who has now made by my reckoning three speeches …in fact when he sees a camera he makes another speech.” This was a Dimbleby theme re Farage on the night: somehow he felt justified to mock him for perceived inadequacies like “changing his mind.”

Andrew Neil takes over on Part 4, ending the nudge-nudge, wink-wink Dimbleby bias, subdued though it was by circumstances.

At 22:40, Victoria Derbyshire talks informally to a panel from the public, apparently representing various shades of opinion on the referendum. Fox News had a very similar format during the primaries and I was wondering whether the BBC copied it from Fox. But I can’t imagine any BBC hacks ever watching a Fox broadcast. If caught in the act, they’d never live it down.

Well, as we’ve seen over the past weeks, the BBC has bounced back after the great trauma of the Brexit win and is energetically pushing all the doom and gloom propaganda it can. May it suffer many more such blows. Maybe, just maybe, it has learned a lesson from Brexit.

Sunday Update: Thanks to Dazed and Confused for linking to the full BBC referendum coverage in one video.