It's Different When They Do It

The BBC is still struggling with the blowback after revelations over a so-called ‘gender pay gap’ in its wage structure. Personally, I think they’ve been harshly treated: whatever the difference in men & women’s earnings, at least pay rates were equal across the other 47 genders, so you know…

But this does raise the deeper point: the BBC has spent years claiming that any difference in pay or conditions between men and women, or black and white for that matter, can only be the result of bigotry, and furthermore anyone who disagrees is a huge Bigoty McBigot. Hence, why even rinky-dink little firms in Nowhereshire trying to recruit a night watchman need to put in a place a bloated formal process to prove their innocence, just in case some treasure hunting weasel trys it on.

Meanwhile, it turns out that liberals are recruiting each other for top jobs over lunch at the Groucho Club, more or less, and that’s just the way it is. Take Gary Lineker: he’s given the thick end of £2 million a year but they can’t tell you who else was considered for the job, who decided to hire him or what performance metrics he needs to achieve to get his contract renewed.

No wonder liberals are obsessed with the idea that the country is full of old school tie wearing Ruperts and Sebastians giving each other top jobs. Like the Third Law says, liberals always project.

They Can Give It Out....

Surely everyone now knows that member of thr Inner Party are not to be quizzed as though they were commoners?

No doubt this will be the next bogus scandal after the Twitter Wars. Meanwhile, don't hold your breath waiting to find out how many times during his tenure the BBC ran shows featuring alleged 'consumer' journalists ambushing small businessmen?

Fort Apache: Salford

Now is this not the perfect metaphor for modern liberalism ? Britain's state broadcaster shifts some facilities from one part of Britain to another part of Britain, but let's not go crazy and expect them to start rubbing shoulders with the locals.

Hey, some of these people have never even heard of hummus.

Personally, I could almost live with the BBC making like Stanley Baker in Zulu, if only we didn't have to listen to their endless jibber jabber about diversity. Their staff roster looks like the United Colours of Liberalism, but they'd rather drink the local water than risk hiring someone who may once have gone to see a non-Premiership football match.

Planet of the Conspiracy Nuts

Say what you like about Russell T Davis, but at least his latest effusions are thought-provoking, even if the thought is 'hey, I never knew his stuff was ghost-written by a drunk, homeless guy'.

Second thought: how come whenever ones of the staff at the ever-unbiased BBC goes feral, they all go feral in the self-same way? They never suddenly announce that Cast Iron Dave should slash housing benefit and use the savings to bolster the RAF, or that we should have our own Second Amendment. No, it's always some guy who think the right is, like, totally evil.

Where's the diversity?

On the plus side, at least he is unusually candid about how he reached his diagnosis: he thinks the right is too harsh on media luvvies. Yep, these people are all about the hospitals & schools & long lunches at chintzy restaurants. He probably thinks the right are selfish too, all poncing round Barnsley with their coal-mining friends.

But that's not it. Liberals have always been leeches. No, the real question is this: in so far as the head honcho has now outed himself as an off-the-scale loon, are you still a tin-foil hatted kook if you complain about liberal bias in his shows?

Left Goes Full Retard

Oops - looks like they forgot to dial down the crazy.

Never mind anything else, is Mr Llewellyn really the best person to be demanding people have proper 'Anglo-Saxon' names?

I guess we're just lucky it isn't anyone from UKIP appointing himself 'Non-Anglo Name Finder General' - otherwise we'd never hear the end of it. Which is kind of the point.

I'm a real conservative - unlike some David Camerons I could mention - so I all for free speech. What I object to is these guys being able to let their freak flag fly, then whip off the balaclava, put a suit on and have the MSM present them as disinterested seekers after truth and justice.

The Clue Is In The Question

On today's theme of liberal thuggery, another Beeboid has got caught waving his balance at the crowd.

Like I keep saying, for an impartial broadcaster, it's funny how every time one of their staff goes feral, they always go feral in the self-same way.

As ever though, nothing destroys the left's arguments like listening to actual leftists. This kind of ranty lunacy is exactly why people want to send their kids to a free school - so they can be taught by actual teachers, instead of this guy's freaky fellow travellers.

Beeboid Self-Awareness Fail

Bad news everyone! Supa-smart Beeboid ecoflack Richard Black has got our number:

I’m not surprised at the level of UK scepticism as the main impacts of CC are decades away and in other places.

Yep, that's us. We're just a bunch of selfish, insular bigots, blind to other people's suffering.

We should be more sensitive, like Ricky:

I agree that a short term disaster would be effective in persuading people.

A-huh! So we shouldn't ignore potential human suffering, instead we should fantasise about how we could use it to push our goofy cult.

How very.... sophisticated.

Gosh, it's a mystery why there credibility is in the landfill with the rest of the UEA's data. Perhaps they need to have another 17 meetings with each other to try and work it out?

Celebrity Swears

Stung by recent criticism of the output of its Siamese twin, the Guardian decided to rebut criticism of the BBC by soliciting the opinions of.... people who produce scripts for the BBC.

Aren't nationalised industries great?

Personally, I can't wait until the Guardian starts polling arms company executives on defence policy. Until that day, we'll just have to wonder whether the existence of 'celebrity writers' might just be part of the problem.

On the plus side, the Guardian featuring articles from celebrity writers about the BBC surely gives the lie to all those who complain that the MSM is too incestuous. The most noticeable feature of these articles is the sheer lack of self-awareness of these people. The whole thing reads like something from Ross - they really don't have any idea how they come across.

Take Tony Jordan's article. Take away the obscenities and the oh so daring! sexual references and you're left with.... well, nothing really. The guy isn't being foul-mouthed for effect, the naughty words are the effect. He swears a lot, what more do you want from a writer?

The most - indeed, only - interesting thing about Jordan's rant is what it says about the BBC's attitude to the working class. The 'soft bigotry of low expectations' doesn't quite cover Jordan's belief that working class authenticity is conveyed by sounding like a perv with Tourettes.

Mind you there's always Billy Ivory there, Guardian of the Working Class, ready to..... hey, haven't I seen this somewhere before?

Again, the most notable point about Ivory's article is the complete absence of any actual arguments. He throws out all the usual diversity duckspeak but never explains in what sense evil, straight white guys are making him write rubbish scripts.

To the point: nothing speaks to the inbred bubble world of the BBC than the arguments of its defenders. Or, more precisely, the lack of any actual arguments. They simply assert their own supremacy and denounce opponents as bigots. That's the problem with a political monoculture like the BBC: there are no normal people around to tell them their talking points suck.

The 'Secret Policeman' Was Not Available For Comment

Having spent twenty years leading the charge against anyone on the right who fails to grovel sufficiently to PC, the BBC has now decided accurately quoting stuff people say is sleazy and underhand.

Let's check the scorecard again: when knuckle-draggers are secretly filmed late at night by a fraudster impersonating a police officer, that raises important questions about the culture in the police, but when a senior member of the BBC's management calls for the BBC to deliberately bias its output in a leftist direction, it's underhand for anyone to cite that as evidence of leftist bias.

Still, on the plus side, in so far as this article, like any by a BBC staffer, would have had to be checked and approved by multiple layers of management - none of whom apparently found anything unusual in Stephenson's comments - we may finally, years after Macpherson, have found an actual case of institutional prejudice.

Of course, that in turn leads to the real crunch question: are you still a crazed, tin-foil hat wearing loon if you claim the BBC is biased? Or does it mean that the people the BBC has smeared for years have been totally vindicated?

There's a wider issue here too. If politics is your bag then, yes, bias in the BBC's factual output should be your main concern, but from the perspective of culture war, their overtly fictional output is where it's at. It's that word again: metacontext, the wider cultural assumptions which set the terms of political debate.

Take taxes: no matter how well the right makes the intellectual case for lower taxes, they're going to be up against it just as long as they're working in the context of a society that sees keeping your own money as greedy and, as a corollary, big government as the source of all social progress. Ditto, law enforcement. So far as BBC drama is full of bent coppers, crusading lawyers and super-articulate criminals, who are actually victims of society, maaaaaan, then the right is facing an uphill struggle.

But even that's not the biggest knock on the BBC's biased drama output. The effects on the cultural weather is one thing, but the even-worse problem is that it leads to so much just plain awful TV.

It's not just the absurdly anachronistic, mood killing, political commentary in shows like 'Robin Hood' or 'Doctor Who', or the fact that as soon as a character quotes scripture you know he'll be the killer. Nope, it's that these people have absolutely nothing to say. Hey, any organisation that considers pushing liberalism in the arts to be edgy and innovative is clearly running on empty.

This isn't just a matter of their drearily predictable liberalism. Joss Wheddon (Buffy/Angel/Firefly) is a far-out moonbat, but his best work has mass appeal precisely because it rises above the specifics of politics and hits on broader themes. Meanwhile, the BBC is full of people penning paeans to their own bravery in producing the seven hundredth show featuring corrupt businessmen and heroic ecoloon activists. Compare and contrast the BBC's saccharine sweet love letter to legal fascism 'Judge John Deedes' with Wheddon's creation 'Wolfram & Hart'. To the point: it comes to something when you get a better critical analysis of the inherent contradictions in the left's pact with lawyers from a show about a vampire than from a supposedly serious BBC drama.

That's what wrong with the BBC. Not just the bias, or the waste of public money, serious though both these issues are. The biggest problem is that the end product is so lifeless and predictable. I can't do better than finish off with a quote from John Nolte on a genuinely innovative piece of work:

After forty years of liberal rule in Hollywood it is nihilism that’s old-fashioned. It is moral relativism that is tired. It is political correctness, the always-noble people of color, the always-evil white guy, and the metrosexual that is cliched. A film with a clear divide between good and evil is something new. A film that celebrates patriotism, heroism, sacrifice, freedom, and honor is something revolutionary. In 1955 300 would be old-fashioned. In 2007 it makes a counter-culture statement as strong as Easy Rider in its day.

Sauce For The Goose

With a windfall tax on those nasty energy companies on the agenda both here and in the US, DH raises an important question: why not stick a windfall tax on these guys?

True, the British movie sector isn't as big, but showbiz still pays pretty well. After all, find me a power company executive who would do this.

And you can't even switch to another supplier.

Moronic Convergence Continues

Further evidence for Tim Blair's that all the world's idiocies are converging into one big ball o'stupid.

The BBC was under attack last night for paying expenses to a disgraced academic who says the 7/7 London bombings may have been an intelligence agency conspiracy...

Dr Kollerstrom, 61, who also denies the Holocaust, is due to appear in a programme in the BBC's Conspiracy Files series.

Of course, some of us would also say that the media narrative of four loveable young scallywags who, totally for no reason at all, suddenly decide to blow stuff up is ridiculous. The only problem is that, in so far as we ascribe the bombings to Islam, we wouldn't be allowed to say that on the BBC.

On the contrary, the BBC constantly issues pious proclamations about the dangers of 'extremism'. Even a simple statement of Islamic doctrine is apparently as too 'inflammatory' - another favourite word - for the BBC.

The BBC has long established itself as an organisation that would rather see whole theatre-fulls of people roast than give airtime to anyone shouting 'fire!', except now it turns out that neither extremism nor inflammatory rhetoric are problems for the BBC, after all. You just have to be the right kind of extremist.

Blowback - Special Footy Edition

The Ian Wright thing just gets better and better. The Guadianistas' Guardianista Martin Jacques has the real story - don't be shocked, but it turns out to be all about the racism!

That proved too much even for some of those freaks, but my sympathy meter is firmly stuck on zero. As evidenced by the decision to hire a slavering thug like Wright in the first place, the BBC has assiduously promoted racial victimhood, so all this case really proves is the inherent problem with feeding crocodiles. Still, I did like this insight into the liberal mind:

Given that one-third of Premier League players are black, this is a disgrace. It would not be accurate to say that the BBC operates a colour bar in football punditry, but it is certainly the case that black representation is, at the very best, token.

Get that ? The massive over-representation of black footballers not only isn't a problem, it means the BBC should discriminate against the natives so that their own line-up will be similarly unbalanced. Uh, OK.

As Opposed To A Serious One ?

Here's a free clue: if you're complaining about not being taken seriously, try not to come out with a phrase as redundant as 'comedy jester'.

Still, the race-hustling dead beat does have a point - just not the one he thinks he does.

I feel like I am just there as a comedy jester to break the ice with Alan Shearer and Alan Hansen, who just do run-of-the-mill things. I can't do that any more. People want something different."....

[Wright] told Broadcast magazine: "Times are changing. I don't know how long young people are going to want to sit down and watch that same old "jacket, shirt and tie" format.

Yep, - that's his indictment of BBC Sport: poor dress sense.

The charge is moronic, but what else did you expect ? The real question is what it says about our achingly PC friends at the BBC that they chose a violent semi-literate imbecile as their avatar of black authenticity in the first place ?

UPDATE:

Got to give the Beeb some credit though - they have moved fast to find a replacement who not only lacks the dubious record of violence and racial arson, but also manages to speak more coherently.

More Liberal Family Values

AS Gordon Brown’s chief fixer, Stephen Carter has the unenviable task of selling the prime minister to the public. Now it can be revealed how Carter’s wife has helped revamp another British institution - BBC news.

Call me crazy, but if the BBC really want to know why people aren't watching them, they might just find a clue in the above paragraph.

Eldery Race Hustler Makes Desperate Bid For Relevance

Oh dear! Looks like someone at the BBC has finally grown a spine and yanked the feeding tube out of one of Britain's most sucessful shakedown artists:

Lenny Henry launched a scathing attack on the "Alf Garnett" generation of programme-makers last night and claimed racism still exists in TV.

Apparently racism is so deeply engrained in British TV that he can't find any examples from the last quarter century. It's that common!

Y'know, if a conservative tried to make a point by citing The Sweeney as an example of modern pop culture, we'd never hear the end of it. Maybe it's just that TV people don't want to hire a guy whose metaphors are old enough to have little metaphors of their own ?

Britain's most famous black comedian lambasted the BBC and ITV for not employing enough black staff behind the screen as well as on it.

Giving a Royal Television Society speech, he said: "TV producers of the 1960s and 1970s missed a great opportunity.

1960s and 1970s ? Yep, I'm guessing the ol' grievance mine is tapped out.

"Rather than reflect the reality of multi-ethnic Britain they chose a more xenophobic route - emphasising points of difference instead of similarities.

"If they had been more truthful in their observations, who's to say we couldn't have encouraged more young black kids at school or prevented the Brixton riots even?"

See ? He's not just another sleazy shakedown artist - giving him money will help heal our broken society.

Call it a hunch, but I'm guessing black underachievement at school might have less to do with what their grandparents watched on TV, and more with prominent black public figures tacitly excusing outbreaks of mass thuggery and continually telling kids that The Man will keep them down whatever they do.

Henry singled out 1970s comedy Till Death Us Do Part for its racist main character Alf Garnett, claiming the creation was "adopted as a hero by the very people he was satirising".

He said: "Writer Johnny) Speight tried to ensure that in each storyline, Alf came off the worst.

"But when I went to school the next morning, it was always me who came off worst.

And then I parleyed my modicum of talent and my whiny claims of victimhood into thirty years living the life of Reilly off of your licence fees

Actually, I added a bit to that quote. It's by way of making a point. OK, we'll buy into the young Lenny being traumatised by people laughing at him - at least that doesn't happen these days - but only if we can do the rest of the story, the bit about him going on to become filthy rich and having three decades plugged into the free money spigot. In Earth cultures this is known as a 'success story' but, nope, even after decades of thoroughly undeserved fame and fortune The Man is still oppressing him (and now we're back to those disengaged black kids).

Henry also criticised underrepresentation of minorities in Coronation Street and costume dramas - despite his wife, Dawn French, currently being in one - saying: "You can't move for bonnets and crinolines and the people wearing them are all white.

To say nothing of the lack of Inuits in martial arts movies.

Nope, turns out that Mr Hustler... Henry has an answer:

"By the time Queen Victoria was on the throne, this country had a sizeable black population, so where are they?"

So sizeable that no one living at the time thought to mention them. But let's pretend Henry isn't talking complete liberalism. Is he really saying that this country - the most racist evah! remember - had a large number of blacks in it back in the day, yet somehow they managed to get by without a huge race relations industry or a descent into massive criminality ? Hmmmm...... maybe homicidal insanity isn't a natural part of authentic black culture after all.

Henry told the audience that writers and producers were still using offensive discrimatory terms for other minorities - such as "chav" and "pikey".

Chavs as a victim group ? Huh ? Has this guy ever met any chavs ? Probably not - after years of living under the oppressive boot of the white power structure, Henry has somehow managed to scrape together the cash to buy a enormous place in the country - very, very far from the Hood - and from chavs too. Of course, it does mean there's one person out there ready to offer our 'travelling' friends somewhere to set up, right ?

And he called on TV bosses to use 'affirmative action' to employ more black people, adding: "And I am not talking about cleaners, security guys, scene-shifters - I am talking about decision-makers."

So the only person who's actually, provably, advocating racism in TV is Henry himself. Does recognising irony count as 'actin white' or what ?

In 2001, Greg Dyke famously described the BBC as "hideously white".

Henry said: "When I started, I was surrounded by a predominantly white workforce. Thirty two years later, not a lot has changed."

Spookily enough, Britain too is predominantly white. It's a conspiracy!

I thought these guys wanted a workforce that 'looks like Britain' ? Besides, I'm wondering if Henry sees a lot of brothers in his local village ? I guess racial arson is more rewarding when you're insulated from the consequences.

Again, back to the point I made above. This is a true rags to riches story, but no: Henry is still a really huge victim. He might have made his pile off of a mostly white audience, but Britain still sucks and whites are still scum. This goes beyond black culture's death spiral into victimhood, and it's broader than just Henry's desire to hang a 'No Natives' sign on the doors of the BBC. It's the same phenomenon Jonah Goldberg identifies here.

This where we are in the culture wars: a guy can stand up and spout insane conspiracy theories while proposing racist recruitment practices, and he's hailed for his courage in fighting racism.

Liberal Self-Awareness: Still Not Getting Any Better

The BBC Pioneers continue their cataloguing of the revolving door between the BBC and Labour, including this classic quote from Martin Sixsmith, during his spat with the Blair:

"Over the 10 years since 1997 there has been this chipping away at the confidence of the civil service, and I don't think it's the impartial, honest organisation it used to be....."

Yep, Mart, y'know, there's a lot of it about....

Independence!

And talking of the BBC.....

Contrary to liberal strawmen, few people on the right claim that the BBC top brass issue actual talking points to their staff each day. Nope, the truth is actually worse. The BBC's recruitment pool is so narrow that their staff don't need any prodding to take the leftist position - they simply don't think there are any others. All of which wouldn't be so bad, if we didn't have to listen to one of the most monolithic institutions in the country lecture everyone else about diversity!

All of which is by way of saying that the BBC Pioneers' Heroes of Socialist Broadcasting series reminds us just how fast the revolving door spins between Nu Lab and our independent state broadcaster.

How Come They Get So Angry When We Point This Out ?

Faced with a tidal wave of corruption allegations, the BBC has decided that the obvious answer is to soak the licence payer for £1 000 000. Apparently, their staff need training to teach them not to lie. A-huh.

As ever, what really grates is that up until five minutes ago, claiming BBC staffers had integrity issues was proof positive you were an unhinged right-winger. Now it turns out that the right was right after all, but the new integrity-enhanced BBC is still resolutely refusing to even acknowledge its critics, far less acknowledge that they called the shot and the pocket. I'm guess they need more training.

Who's To Say ?

The BBC's latest outrage is getting a lot of coverage in the blogosphere - and deservedly so. I've only got two things to say.

First up, can we at least have a break from the BBC yammering on about the dangers of extremists ? Here's an organisation which rarely allows genuinely right-wing voices on the air, and then only with interviewers acting like they picked up their technique from Gene Hunt, but now we find out they've teamed up with folks who, whatever else they are, are hardly middle of the road centralists. I'm not expecting any Beeboids to describe Nick Griffin as a 'Celtic comedian' any time soon, let alone make a program featuring loveable jack-the-lad BNP members white-water rafting.

Note too, this wasn't just a case of the BBC being caught out by an unfortunate coincidence. Nope, the program concerned was specifically designed to rubbish the idea of Islamic extremism. Or, to put it another way, the BBC wasn't just wrong, it was full-on 180 degrees wrong.

In so far as we're endlessly reminded about Lady Thatcher appointing Jeffrey Archer to the strategically vital after-dinner speaking and raffles job of party vice-chairman, it's tempting to speculate just what the BBC would have said were a right-wing body to be caught in bed with fascists. Doubtless, even now the BBC top brass are hard at work penning an apology for the anti-Jihasists slimed by the original program.

Then there's the question of the BBC's refusal to pass their information onto the police. Apparently, running programs slimeing the British right is one thing, but taking sides between the police and terrorists would be a huge breach of impartiality. After all, who's to say that 'bombing' is necessarily 'bad' ?

In so far as the BBC is now officially neutral between the forces of chaos and the forces of order, maybe it's time to revisit the enormously important distinction between the BBC's enlightened output and the commercial dross on the other channels. Never mind questioning the value of a national broadcaster that sticks two fingers up to the nation's values, there's something deeper than that here.

If post-modernism doesn't allow us to say whether or not blowing up buses is a good or bad thing, I'm pretty sure that defining the difference between ephemeral rubbish like 'Pop Idol' and scholarly works like 'Fame Academy' is a lost cause. So how about it Beeboids ? Is commercial TV necessarily worse than mass murder ?

Besides, who are we to say that 'buying' a 'TV licence' is better than 'not' buying one ?

Reactionary != Conservative

There's a certain joy to be had in laughing at leftists who are just enraged that the BBC won't pay them money any more. Their sense of entitlement says it all about the BBC's supposed impartiality. It's splendid that the BBC appears to be cutting down on its old habit of presenting full-on partisans like the Yazzmonster as disinterested expert commentators, but the dead giveaway is that no leftist can write about the BBC's supposed tilt to the right without mentioning the words 'Jeremy Clarkson'.

Not to give aid and comfort to the enemy, but libs, here's a free clue for you: if you're going to argue that the BBC is being swamped by right-wingers, you might want to not all name the same guy again and again. It makes this right-wing invasion look distinctly undermanned.

Then there's the other thing. Sure there's a natural tendency to rally round a guy who so frequently sends the left into spasms of rage, but how representative is Clarkson of the right ? The deranged anti-Americanism isn't an aberration, it's all a part of Clarkson's shtick as a rhetorical bomb thrower. Not to say that it isn't tempting to adopt that approach when faced with the latest lunacy from, say, the econuts, but there's more to conservatism than that.

Liberals would love to portray the entire right as a bunch of fat blokes sitting on bar stools and ranting about 'elfen safety' - it helps to obscure the fact that all the actual ideas are coming from the right. Ask the average lib about reforming the NHS or the educayshun system and what do you get ? Nada. Nope, no need for reform at all, everything is just wonderful, we just need more of the same.

Ditto, no 'angry of Tunbridge Wells' fulminating about the Sixties ever dredged the depths of nostalgia like a lib recalling the golden age pre-Thatcher. Yes, indeed: these are the only people on the planet who think the problem with the education system is that it's too heavily-influenced by the right.

Yes, folks like Clarkson play an important role in breaking through the MSM's wall of noise and reminding folks that, no, not everyone believes in Gerbil Worming, but the left would love to cast the debate as one between the populist rabble rousers on the right and the sober intellectuals on the left.

The Clarkson phenomenon is a symptom of just how little real right-wing commentary makes it on screen. It's great that he's there to mock the obvious idiocies of the left, but we also need people there to make the intellectual case for conservatism too.