MARRED AND QUESTIONED

MARRED AND QUESTIONED

>> SUNDAY, MARCH 14, 2010

Anyone else have the misfortune to watch the Andrew Marr show this morning? It was the usual left-liberal fest. First up we had the new Green Peace President Kumi Naidoo on to tell us about the horrors of global warming. He took the opportunity to also express his support for law-breaking. Andrew just smiled at him. Then we had author Ian McEwan on to warn us about the horrors of...global warming. Get the message? After that, on sauntered Lord Adonis to warn us of the evils of Conservatism and the need to abolish the House of Lords. To finish, Ken Clarke was interviewed and he insisted that Conservatives needed to go after the liberal vote in order to win the election. Balanced and fair from start to finish as Andrew shines his light.

Next up, the execrable Nicky Campbell "Big Question." The first question on this Mothering Sunday was "whether we need fathers". The general consensus was that we didn't and that two lesbians provided the almost perfect model for bringing up children. There was also talk of "it takes a village" to bring up a child. Fathers were seen as an irrelevance to having a happy child. The feminised audience were a disgrace but par for the course. Next up, "Is it time for a maximum wage"? Hard left trade union Unite had a representative on to explain that it is an outrage that there is no ceiling on how people can be paid. He lied about the minimum wage being a great success (It hasn't) and now he demands a maximum wage. Pure Communist thinking and endorsed by Nicky Campbell.

Setting The Tone

>> SATURDAY, MARCH 13, 2010

Here are the opening paragraphs of two articles from the BBC today, both from stories about anti-government protest movements. One discusses the "egalitarian" Purple People movement in Italy while the other is about the "conservative" Tea Party movement in America.

"Think of a world of politics without spin doctors, teleprompters, stage-managed conferences, party headquarters, manifestos, cynicism or even leaders."

"When the bearded activist in wraparound sunglasses put his hand on my shoulder, I felt his anger."

No prizes for guessing which is which. (Compare the pictures, too. One group is happily "festooned" in symbolism, the other has "declared war" "bitterly".)

Cringe Spotted

From Autonomous Mind:

John Inverdale, the BBC presenter fronting the Scotland v England Six Nations Rugby today, said a few moments ago on BBC1 that Christine Bleakley successfully managed to water-ski ‘across the whole of theBritish Channel’ yesterday.

Simon Says... What He Was Signed Up To Say

The first offering from Simon Schama's much-trailed ten-week stint on Radio 4's A Point of View is pretty much as expected - Labour spin from a Labour supporter. According to Schama the narrowing polls prove that "we" the electorate really want bad tempered tough guy Gordon Brown as our leader, in defiance of those nasty anti-Brown newspapers and their politically-motivated narrative about the PM as a bully. (Remind me - where was Andrew Rawnsley's book serialised? Oh yes, those renowned Tory rags The Observer and The Guardian.) In his attempt to convince us that Gordon's the man we desire Schama gives much of his essay over to an embarrassingly unfunny imagined phone call between Peter Mandelson and Alastair Campbell (whose name he misspells). Schama's services don't come cheap; if this dire effort is a foretaste of what's to come I think a BBC Trust inquiry could be in order. There's not much that BBC bosses enjoy more than throwing bundles of cash at their favourite historian in return for his reliably left-of-centre take on events, but even some of them must be concerned at the quality of this opening piece.

And what's with Schama referring to himself in the third person? He did in it one of the two oft-repeated trails for the programme (the other had him enthusing about Labour closing the gap in the polls), and he does it again in an interview for the Radio 4 blog. It's an affectation that's ridiculous in ego-inflated punch-drunk boxers, never mind fucking historians.

Update. Forgot to add, Schama does get one thing correct - suck up to your opponents and likely they'll spit in your eye. Last week, in one of those depressingly common celeb-obsessed announcements that all political parties love, the Tories promised to involve big-name historians in theirproposed overhaul of the national curriculum. One of those historians? Simon Schama.

USING YOUR MONEY WISELY?

The BBC needs every penny of that £3.5bn it steals from us each year. I mean, it does such invaluable work.

The BBC has spent tens of thousands of pounds on teaching staff how to use Facebook. The corporation is holding classes for large numbers of its 23,000 workforce, despite the fact that using the social networking site is second nature to millions. Hundreds of BBC workers have already signed up for the sessions, in which they learn how to set up accounts on Facebook, as well as Twitter and Bebo.

SAMCAM BAD, LIBDEMS GOOD

Caught BBC TV news this morning, rather in the same way as one catches a cold. There was an item on Samantha Cameron talking about her husband, David. I thought she came across fine and quite human. The BBC instantly went to get a woman's group who found the whole thing "patronising". It's clear they seek to undermine the Conservatives even on the most mundane level. Then there was a fawning interview with Nick Clegg, in which he was allowed to bash "the rich" and agree with the Orwellian Childre's Commissioner that we are criminalising children. BBC loves the liberal agenda and this translates into the toadying interview with Cleggy.