BBC topical comedy teams

If Nigel Farage meeting with some Eastern European MEP who has tenuous links with parties who were once Neo Nazi would be enough for the BBC's topical comedy teams to brand him a Nazi and get laughs week after week for making this incorrect claim.

Then surely Jeremy Corbyn who has openly called the anti Semitic, homophobic, genocidal Islamist terrorists of Hamas and Hizbollah his 'friends' should be (incorrectly or not) called anti Semitic, homophobic and genocidal by the he same BBC 'comedians'.

Somehow I doubt that this will happen, as for the likes of Mark Steel, Jeremy Hardy and many of the younger generation of such 'comedians' , support for Hamas and Hezbollah is understandably, along with wishing to hand over the Falklands to the Argentinians against the wishes of the Falklanders and increasing ties with the Putin regime in Russia.

UK progressive 'comedians' and UKIP

I've commented on the left-wing bias of the BBC's 'comedians' before, here Pat Condell nails it...



Jeremy Hardy, Mark Steel, Rufus Hound should take note but they're more likely to carry on with their 'progressive bigotry'.

Jeremy Hardy is left wing!

The BBC admit here http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-34014449 that Jeremy Hardy is left wing.

'A left-wing comedian has said he was told by the Labour party that he could not vote in its leadership election.

Jeremy Hardy said he paid £3 to become a Labour member in order to become eligible to vote, but that he has supported other parties in the past.'

Will they admit the same is true of Mark Steel? And which comedians they use on panel are also left wing, and which are right wing?

I wonder how The News Quiz will handle Lady Thatcher's death

I note that BBC Radio 4's The News Quiz returns for a new series on Friday, presumably they will be recording the show on Thursday night.

I wonder how the assorted lefty 'comedians' will respond. My prediction would be the very nasty and very left-wing Jeremy Hardy to be nastily sarcastic and vicious (in his faux sweet middle class voice) and Sandi Toskvig to have some nicely written barbs of her own against a woman who she could never dream of emulating.

I believe the other guests are Phill Jupitus, Daniel Finkelstein, and Roisin Conaty.

Phill 'Porky the poet' Jupitus is another resolute left winger, formerly a stalwart of Red Wedge, worked with Billy Bragg etc. etc. He's not usually as overtly left-wing but I am sure he won't be able to resist the temptation.

Roisin Conaty I do not know, but I'm sure she's hysterical. I wonder if she's not a left-winger how she'll respond to the nastiness.

Daniel Finkelstein is The News Quiz's token right of centre voice of reason. Even he is hardly right-wing; an ally of David Owen in the SDP and then a Conservative moderniser. I feel he'll be terribly outnumbered.

So that's two very left wing, one slightly more restrained left-wing, one mildly right of centre and another. Should be fun! Except I've sworn not to listen to The News Quiz, it was riling me too much and that much swearing is not appreciated by the neighbours.

I suppose I should just be grateful that the even more left-wing and nasty Mark Steel isn't on the show. He makes Jeremy Hardy seem reasonable, well sort of.

 

Allegations of rape within a political party but the BBC aren't interested

Reports of allegations of rape within the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) are all over the internet.

The Mail  managed to cover the story:

'Ordinarily, we would not bore you with the interminable machinations of the far Left. This scandal, though, goes beyond militant politics because it involves an allegation of rape against a senior figure in the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) by a more junior colleague.

She is in her 20s. He is a middle-aged, full-time party activist who has a partner. Remember, when you read what follows, that the SWP is also an organisation that has always professed to champion the cause of women’s rights. Many of its estimated 2,000 or so members are women, after all.

Women such as comrade Candy Udwin. Miss Udwin, 58, daughter of an eminent psychiatrist who enjoyed all the privileges of a comfortable middle-class upbringing in the leafy Surrey suburbs, now sits on the party’s seven-strong ‘disputes committee’.

The committee — or DC — is the mechanism for resolving routine grievances and disciplinary matters in the party ranks.

Decisions by the committee have to be ratified at the annual conference. Hence Miss Udwin’s address in Hammersmith earlier this month.

'We [on the disputes committee] are here to protect the interests of the party and to make sure that any inappropriate behaviour of any kind by comrades is dealt with, and we do that according to the politics of a revolutionary party,’ she said.

Even, it seems, when the ‘dispute’ involves the aforementioned allegation of rape. Not just sexist or misogynistic behaviour, but rape.

Instead of calling in the police, it now transpires the claims were dealt with internally by Candy Udwin and her comrades on the disputes committee. The SWP insists it was the alleged victim herself who chose not to involve the police, but that does not excuse the charade that ensued.

No one on the committee knew the young woman, but all seven knew the ‘accused’ — who, it must be said, has vehemently denied the allegations against him. He was referred to as Comrade Delta throughout what can only be described as the kangaroo court hearing that followed.

Five of the committee had even worked alongside him at the SWP. That revelation alone would have immediately disqualified any potential juror from trying a case in the British courts.

It was not the only shortcoming. Comrade Delta was given a copy of his accuser’s statement before the hearing, but she did not see ‘his evidence against her’. The woman was also subjected to embarrassing questions about her sexual history and relationships with men.

The SWP, just to remind you, is the party which often boasts of its proud record on women’s rights.

What verdict then did the ‘disputes committee’ eventually reach?

They exonerated Comrade Delta. The decision was unanimous and was approved by conference. Party members voted to accept the panel’s findings by 231 votes to 209, before retiring to enjoy a buffet supper.

Could there be anything more distasteful — or plain wrong — than asking for a show of hands to ‘decide’ whether a young woman had been raped?

Friends say the woman has been left feeling utterly betrayed and traumatised by the process.
The only spurious justification given at Hammersmith Town Hall for these shameful events (apart from the fact they say they had the young woman’s consent) was that the SWP had no confidence ‘in the bourgeois court system’ to deliver justice.

Of course, the SWP, which describes itself as a ‘revolutionary socialist party’ in the tradition of Leon Trotsky, didn’t want you to find out about any of this.

The only reason that details have leaked out now is because someone made a secret recording of the ‘dispute committee session’ at the annual conference. A transcript has now been posted on the internet. It runs to 27 damning pages.'

Why nothing about this case on the BBC? It's not as though the Socialist Workers Party is unknown to them. A regular on the BBC is 'comedian' Mark Steel, a long time SWP member, albeit one who resigned from the party in 2007, long after he started to make his hugely amusing
appearances on BBC radio. The 'Right To Work' campaign that the BBC gave huge prominence to last year was a SWP offshoot.
I think it safe to say that an equivalent sex scandal at the BNP would be headline news on the BBC so why not when it's the equally vile SWP?

Now why might the BBC have a soft spot for the extrame-left Socialist Workers Party? Who can say.

Anna Chen’s blog on the SWP’s current Sex Implosion  provides an insight into the cultish nature of the party, and the toll – both financial and emotional – which it takes on members.

Here's an interesting aside, during the course of discussing the SWP’s role in the Stop The War Coalition, Anna Chen makes a shocking, but unsurprising revelation:

When a Jewish socialist group requested platform time to speak against the war, they were refused on the grounds that their presence would alienate Muslims. The guy who’d made their case protested and was told that “you people” were “too sensitive.”

 The SWP just get lovelier by the day, don't they.

Mark Steel shows why he's one of the BBC's favourite comedians

What a lovely chap.

The BBC's anti-Semitic past

Thanks to a contributor to Biased-BBC, I have found a fascinating article from The Independent. It's from 1993. The article is entitled 'Why the BBC ignored the Holocaust: Anti-Semitism in the top ranks of broadcasting and Foreign Office staff led to the news being suppressed, says Stephen Ward' and contains a huge amount of interesting material. Here are a few extracts:

'ANTI-SEMITISM in the higher ranks of the Foreign Office and the BBC during the Second World War led to a policy which suppressed news about Germany's attempt to exterminate European Jews, new research will show this week. 

...

... both Foreign Office and BBC officials held a low opinion of Jews, and believed this was shared by the public.

They deduced that saving millions of Jews would not be seen as a desirable war aim by the British. At other times they justified suppression of details of the atrocities by arguing that they would not be believed.

News reports could only be carried if, in the view of the BBC and the Foreign Office, they were well-sourced. If the sources were Jewish, they tended not to be believed.

...

The BBC accepted unquestioningly the Ministry of Information's advice that anti-Semitism was rife in Britain, and felt it was not its role to do anything. On 17 November 1943 the director-general, Robert Foot, issued a policy directive . . . 'that we should not promote ourselves or accept any propaganda in the way of talks, discussion, features with the object of trying to correct the undoubted anti-Semitic feeling which is held very largely throughout the country'.

...

At the very end of the war, Richard Dimbleby made his historic broadcasts from the concentration camp at Belsen. In the light of the BBC's wartime policy, it comes as no surprise that these broadcasts mention only in passing the Jewish identity of victims, or that Belsen's gas chambers and the sheer numbers of its dead so shocked the BBC newsroom that they refused to use Dimbleby's reports until they had seen them confirmed in newspapers.'

Shocking isn't it, but does the BBC's current attitude towards Israel have its roots in this anti-Semitic outlook?

Another matter that strikes me, and it is something that I have remarked upon before, is that the BBC's favourite left-wing 'comedians' (including Jeremy Hardy and Mark Steel) love to remind people that the Daily Mail once supported Hitler and so its views are not worthy of respect now. Since we can read that the BBC once supported the minimising of the coverage of Nazi Germay's anti-Semitism and killing of Jews, can we apply the same stricture to the BBC? If not, why not?

The BBC deliberately making a mountain out of a molehill

I only heard some brief headlines about the security staff left to 'sleep under a bridge' and assumed from that that they had been left overnight to sleep under a bridge. This would have been totally wrong and I would have been willing to protest on their behalf re shoddy treatment by the company that was using their labour. However this morning I discover that despite the BBC trying to turn this into a major scandal, they even inviting John 'chipolata' Prescott onto the Radio 4 Today programme to whine about the affair, the group were left for just two hours under a bridge due to a logistical error. As this was a two hours wait why was the headline all about 'sleeping under a bridge'.

This is a nothing story, given prominence by a BBC desperate to get government cuts back on the agenda and boost some anti-establishment sentiment following an incredibly popular Diamond Jubilee.

Today I discovered that Mark Steele, the nasty socialist and anti-Israel 'comedian who the BBC use on far too much of their output, has had a little anti-Jubilee rant on his blog:

'But the oddest part is no one can explain what we were supposed to be celebrating. She’s been the Queen for sixty years, but all she has to do to be Queen is to be. As long as she exists, she’s the Queen, that’s how it works, it’s not like a boxing champion that has to keep seeing off challengers. If you’ve been an electrician for sixty years that’s worth celebrating, because you have to keep rewiring stuff to be one, but as long as she exists she’s the Queen. In effect people are spluttering ‘Isn’t she marvellous, still existing for us. Most of us wouldn’t have the stamina to keep on existing, but even at her age she puts in a full days existence seven days a week’.

That’s why royalists get in a tangle when they claim she’s doing a marvellous job, as if she’s earned her position on merit, having worked her way up after starting out as a humble princess.'

That's the trouble with so many lefty types, they just don't understand why their views are such a minority view. Here's what I posted on his comments page, still awaiting moderation apparently:

'notasheepmaybeagoat says:
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
June 6, 2012 at 7:10 am

Since the alternative to the monarchy would be an elected President, surely a nice lady who waves a lot and asks ‘Have you come far’ is preferable to a past their sell by date politician. President Tony Bliar must fill everyone with dread as must President Mandelslime. The point of a monarch is that they embody the country and don’t have political affiliations. By not having elections the role of monarch is non-confrontational and so easier for all parties to support.

The foaming at the mouth of certain republicans has amused me this last month. It must be upsetting to realise how small a minority you really are. With even the BBC having to sheath its pro-republic sentiments, even that ally was lost, albeit temporarily, to your cause.'

I wonder if Mark Steele allows free speech on his site, as I do on mine, or is he the sort of radical socialist that only allows views that match his own to be made public?

Mark Steel shows his class

Mark Steel showing his class by mocking both the age related illness of Lady Thatcher and Ariel Sharon's medical predicament.

CIF Watch has more details but here's a comment I made a while back:

'Mark Steele is a regular BBC commentator on Radio 5 Live where his political affiliations have never been mentioned (so far as I am aware), despite his being invited to discuss politics on a semi-regular basis. Simone Clarke was denigrated by the media for being a supporter of the BNP a party whose views many would find no more repugnant than those of the SWP." '

So there we go, Mark steel showing why the BBC love him so...

'it’s BBC Radio’s gang of Lefty comedians that betrays its political bias '

Patrick West in The Telegraph back in March blogged aboutthe lefty bias on BBC Radio 4 and why it's bias in the comedy output that is most pernicious and he highlights some of the culprits that I have mentioned in the past:

'An obvious example is Jeremy Hardy, who will be familiar to listeners of The News Quiz. Unlike Brigstocke, Hardy is amusing. He has a quick mind and a wonderful sense of the surreal, but whenever the topic veers onto Northern Ireland or American foreign policy we know what sarcastic and formulaic conclusion is coming. The same goes for Mark Steel, a man with an eye for the ridiculous – except when his own political opinions are concerned.


...

Mark Watson, another environmentalist, has campaigned on behalf of Al Gore. Sandi Toksvig is a Liberal Democrat supporter and The Now Show’s Hugh Dennis is partial to delivering that ubiquitous line “It would be like a headline in the Daily Mail”. This has become an awful cliché, so beloved of radio and TV comedians, and is now about as original as making gags about Stevie Wonder’s eyesight or Stephen Hawking’s mobility.

The liberal-left love this line because it conforms to their lazy, stereotypical view of conservatives as either stupid or horrible. Yes, the Daily Mail is frequently alarmist and ridiculous, even callous, but a joke gets less funny the more times it is told. Making derisive quips about headlines that refer to “house prices” and “illegal immigrants” is pretty tiresome when people actually have sincere and valid concerns about house prices and immigration.

So why the bias on BBC radio comedy? An obvious answer is that it reflects a wider malaise that permeates Radio 4, in that it is run by people who think Left-wing opinions are the norm. What you hear on the Today programme, day after day is, if I dare say it, “just like a headline in the Guardian”.'

Finally someone does call attention to Mark Steel's politics

Mark Steel, just one of the sneery socialist comedians that the BBC like to employ at our expense, was finally challenged about his political leanings by Ian Hislop on "Have I Got News For You". Do watch it if you get the chance, he really, really didn't like being called out. I wonder if Ian Hislop has read my November 2007 piece about BBC bias that included this passage:

"Whilst I am on the subject, the death of Alan Coren the other week (a death that really upset me, as this was a comedian whose writings and radio performances I have been enjoying since I was at school) has meant that the News Quiz has lost its last semi right of centre voice and with Mark Steel's Socialist Worker humour ever more to the fore the programme is getting closer to being crossed off my must listen list. Mark Steele is a regular BBC commentator on Radio 5 Live where his political affiliations have never been mentioned (so far as I am aware), despite his being invited to discuss politics on a semi-regular basis. Simone Clarke was denigrated by the media for being a supporter of the BNP a party whose views many would find no more repugnant than those of the SWP."

So not a Stalinist but a Troskyist, but I don't think an apology from Ian Hislop is in order. Now where is that pause button, a screen dump of Mark Steel's flabbergasted face would make a nice desktop background.

BBC bias

Apparently "Disgraced former Cabinet minister Jonathan Aitken, who was jailed for perjury, is to lead a study into prison reform for a Conservative policy group."

Strange how the BBC refer to Jonathan Aitken as a "disgraced former Cabinet minister" and never tire of reminding the public of Jeffrey Archer's misdemeanours; yet they seem less keen to remind us of why Peter Mandelson and David Blunkett had to leave the cabinet twice each. Can you remember either of their scandals being referred to when they are interviewed now? Scarcely an edition of Radio 4's "News Quiz" or Andy Hamilton's "Old Harry's Game" is broadcast without a derogatory reference to Jeffrey Archer, yet the hugely more deserving of criticism Peter Mandelson gets off all but scott free.

Whilst I am on the subject, the death of Alan Coren the other week (a death that really upset me, as this was a comedian whose writings and radio performances I have been enjoying since I was at school) has meant that the News Quiz has lost its last semi right of centre voice and with Mark Steel's Socialist Worker humour ever more to the fore the programme is getting closer to being crossed off my must listen list. Mark Steele is a regular BBC commentator on Radio 5 Live where his political affiliations have never been mentioned (so far as I am aware), despite his being invited to discuss politics on a semi-regular basis. Simone Clarke was denigrated by the media for being a supporter of the BNP a party whose views many would find no more repugnant than those of the SWP.


Thanks to Iain Dale we also know that ITN's news reporting standards are well up there with the BBC:
"ITN should hang its collective head in shame. On their Saturday night news bulletin they just reported the following..."Disgraced former Tory Cabinet Minister Jonathan Aitken is going to be advising the Conservative Party on prison reform... He will be heading up a policy group which will report to David Cameron."
Er. Bollocks. He's been asked to do it by the Centre for Social Justice, which is an independent think tank, chaired by Iain Duncan Smith. It has no formal links with the Tory Party whatsoever. This type of sloppiness is just not acceptable from one of Britain's leading news organisations"


UPDATE:
You can read one of Mark Steel's SWP articles here.