Bbc

Welcome to the new-look Spectator Life – that’s already making the front page news

I wanted to let you know about the new issue of Spectator Life that’s out today – free with the latest issue of the Spectator. It’s my first issue in charge as editor and I’m pleased to say that one of our stories – a profile of Alan Yentob by ex-Newsnight producer Meirion Jones – has made it on to the front page of today’s Sun. It’s a great read. The Sun has splashed on the allegation that Yentob branded Meirion and his fellow producer Liz MacKean ‘traitors to the BBC’ after they publicly complained about the Beeb’s decision to pull the film they’d made exposing Jimmy Savile as a

Steerpike

Listen: Sarah Montague’s disastrous turn on Today

Oh dear. Sarah Montague is not having a good day. The Today presenter managed to make not one, not two, but three gaffes while hosting today’s Radio 4 show. 1. Things got off to a bad start when Montague began her interview with Simon Kirby, the Chief Executive of High Speed Two, on the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s trip to China for investment for the rail network. Alas, Montague appeared not to have managed to get her head around the purpose of the trip; repeatedly grilling Kirby on whether the project is doomed if the Chinese don’t give up to £12bn to help finance it. He had to explain several times that China are actually being asked

Why emote about migrants during a concert?

How should we deal with people who sneeze in public places? Stephen Jackson, aged 49, has found himself in court as a consequence of taking direct action against those people who are kind enough to share their nasal mucus with the rest of us. Stephen’s answer is usually to slap the offender across the head and say: ‘Don’t sneeze in front of me.’ He will be sentenced in a couple of weeks on four similar charges of assault, the victims all being people who sneezed when he was nearby. There was one other charge, mind, which involved spitting at a baby in its pram. Now, it may well be that

Listen: Lucy Powell discusses her ‘very new relationship’ with Jeremy Corbyn

Lucy Powell is back. As Steerpike reported this morning, Jeremy Corbyn has appointed Ed Miliband’s blunder-prone deputy campaign chief as Labour’s shadow education secretary. The Labour MP kick started her first day in her new role with a return to old form. Taking part in an interview on BBC News, Powell spoke about how the party needed to rebuild their economic credibility. First, however, she addressed the point Mr S drew attention to earlier: that she had never met Corbyn before he offered her the shadow cabinet job: ‘It is a very new relationship. It was the first time I’d spoken to him directly. We had a good conversation, and he offered me the

Corbyn wins: a delicious humiliation for the liberal Left

The groans that must be coming from the newsrooms of the Guardian and the BBC right now! With a descant of coloratura shrieks from right-on luvvies. And, needless to say, vigorous hand-wringing – they’ll be sending out for Band-Aids to treat their sore fingers by the end of the day. ‘Progressive’ Labour supporters in higher income brackets did not want Jeremy Corbyn to win today. You only have to read the agonised Twitter streams of just about every liberal journalist in the country to realise that. You don’t have to tell me that the man’s policies are bonkers and the sympathies of his far-Left supporters verging on the sinister. But the Guardian/BBC

Watch: Tory MP accuses BBC of bias over ‘amateurish’ Newsnight Yemen special

With charter renewal looming, the BBC is under increasing scrutiny from the government to justify its licence fee. So it’s fair to say Thursday night’s Newsnight Yemen special did little to endear the corporation to some members of the Tory camp. The programme — led by the BBC’s Gabriel Gatehouse — looked into Yemen’s ‘forgotten war’; highlighting the Saudi-led coalition’s bombing campaign over Yemen to drive Houthi rebels from the city. It reported how the airstrikes — which have hit some civilian targets — are supported by Britain as the country sells arms to Saudi Arabia. Alas, this focus has not gone down well with Daniel Kawczynski, the Tory MP who is a member

The Spectator’s notes | 10 September 2015

Presumably Britain has some sort of policy on immigration, asylum and refugees, but instead of struggling to understand it, you can save time by following its media presentation, since that is what seems to concern the government most. Essentially, the line is that Labour lets them all in and the Tories don’t and won’t (‘No ifs, no buts’). When, as at the last election, it turns out that net immigration has been rising under David Cameron, he apologises shyly and sounds tough again. He was sounding very tough until last week, when the photograph of the dead boy on the Turkish beach suddenly turned him all soft. This Monday, his

Cock and bull

It’s hard to know whether the actor James Norton was being naive or disingenuous when he claimed in publicity interviews for BBC1’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover that ‘We are no longer shocked that people have sex.’ Either way, the tabloids soon proved him wrong. Days before the programme went out, the Sun had duly worked itself up into a state of delighted outrage about a TV drama that was apparently ‘so steamy it borders on porn’. In the event, this proved an exaggeration wild enough to suggest that none of the journalists involved had seen the programme —or, less likely, any porn. Sunday’s adaptation, written and directed by Jed Mercurio, was

The truth? Most people don’t want more refugees coming to Britain

I had intended to write something about the refugees, the migrants, for this week’s magazine – but we were well covered on that score. So I wrote about some lesbians instead. What I would have done was marvel at the Dianification of the issue. A potent process which somehow causes politicians to lose grip on common sense; Europe wide, one might add, apart from that singularly sane chap in Hungary. And yet it is not quite Dianification. It is nowhere near the whole country (if indeed it ever was with Diana; a moot point). An opinion poll, broadcast by a plainly incredulous and disgusted BBC, showed that the majority of people in

Listen: Bernard Jenkin vs. James Naughtie on BBC bias and the EU referendum

The government’s humiliating defeat on purdah is the first major victory for Eurosceptics in the battle on how the EU referendum is fought. Bernard Jenkin, one of the lead Tory rebels, appeared on the Today programme to explain why his gang took on the government last night: ‘They initially wanted to abolish the purdah rules altogether, which would mean going to back to the kind of referendum that Wales had in 1997 which was so roundly criticised by the Committee on Standards in Public Life, where the government was spending money and ministers were being deployed by the civil service to conduct the campaign. In the general election and local election, there is a very strong tradition that that

Why is the BBC’s latest ‘documentary’ on China fronted by someone who doesn’t know anything about China?

The BBC’s latest pretty young face is Billie JD Porter. The 23-year-old is entirely lovable. With her brown roots proudly showing, that unmistakably London accent, and a chirpy personality, Billie is the latest in a string of young presenters who the corporation hopes will win back the younger generation. The result? Secrets of China, a three-part documentary series that barely scratches the surface of the country, let alone uncovers its ‘secrets’. Of the Chinese language, she knows little – she can say ‘boyfriend’, ‘beer’, and ‘thank you’. Of the culture, she knows even less. Billie frequently treats the project as a gap yah – using her subjects as the butt of her jokes. You might as well send any

Steerpike

David Attenborough ‘turned away’ from Lord Hall’s BBC speech

With the BBC facing the prospect of cuts as a result of the government’s charter renewal, there has never been a more important time for the corporation to keep its biggest assets on side. So Mr S was curious to hear of an incident involving Sir David Attenborough which occurred at a BBC event this morning. As Lord Hall prepared to reveal details about cuts to the BBC along with the Beeb’s plans to work with UK’s arts and science institutions, journalists and supporters gathered at the Science Museum to hear the speech. Alas when Sir David Attenborough arrived he had no such luck. The former director of programming for BBC Television was prevented by security from entering the hall through a side door,

Lifting the veil

Finally I realise why women are so pissed off. It all goes back to the first codified laws — circa 2,400 bc — when rules like this were invented by men: ‘If a woman speaks out of turn then her teeth will be smashed by a brick.’ Before that, apparently, women lived on a pretty equal footing with their future male oppressors. Indeed, in arguably the first civilisation — a hive-like collection of houses in central Anatolia called Çatalhöyük dating back to 7,500 bc, when mankind was just beginning to emerge from the Stone Age and living with semi-domesticated animals — not a single man was expected to put out

Paul Mason comes to Alex Salmond’s defence over BBC bias

With Alex Salmond currently engaged in a war of words with Nick Robinson over the BBC’s ‘disgraceful’ coverage of the Scottish referendum, there is one former Beeb employee he can turn to in his time of need. Step forward Paul Mason. Mason — who worked as Newsnight‘s economics editor before defecting to Channel 4 — joined Salmond on stage at the Edinburgh book festival to plant a few blows in the direction of his ex-employer. Despite pleas from Nicola Sturgeon for the BBC to enhance its presence in Scotland with a BBC Scotland TV channel, the PostCapitalism: A Guide to Our Future author said the BBC’s unionist values were part and parcel of

The BBC’s music man

To Radio 2 to meet Bob Shennan, controller of the BBC’s most popular radio station (the station attracts one third of all listening hours) and now also head of the newish monolith that is BBC Music. Why corral all of the Corporation’s music output on radio and TV into one enormous sub-division (on a par with BBC News, BBC Drama and BBC Sport)? Isn’t this just another cost-cutting compromise, a way of saving money by smoothing out the BBC’s output (its first production was that weird mish-mash of God Only Knows by a constellation of stars)? How will specialist stations like Radio 3 and BBC4 survive if swallowed up in

Summer listening

Just back from a few nights in Sweden to find the perfect programme on Radio 3. It was one of those interval shorts that are always such a nightly bonus during the Proms season. That 20-minute space between concert halves is the perfect length for listening. On Sunday night it was Kate Clanchy’s turn to fill in between Sibelius symphonies and what better topic than The Summer House (produced by Julian May), or rather the stuga, mokki, sommerhus or dacha beloved of Scandinavians and Russians, where Sibelius would retreat to write those symphonies redolent of dark woods and deep waters. Here the hassle and routine of city life are abandoned

MPs enjoy a summer of freebies

With MPs being awarded a 10 per cent pay rise this summer, politicians have been left having to defend their annual salary of £74,00o from sceptics who point out that the boost comes at a time when their constituents face tough cuts. Still, Mr S wonders whether that number is too small an estimate after one takes into account all the freebies they can receive. According to the latest register of interests, MPs have been managing to enjoy a summer of freebies in between their constituency work. After John Bercow boasted last year that he had watched 65 of Roger Federer’s matches, he looks on course to achieve a similar number for 2015. According to the

Sick and tired

When the link between tobacco and lung cancer was first established in the early 1950s, one obvious question arose: should doctors tell people not to smoke? These days, of course, the answer seems equally obvious — but at the time, medical opinion was divided. According to the highly distinguished Dr Erich Geiringer in a letter to the Lancet, ‘the best advice a doctor can give …to many non-smokers’ was that ‘they should get a pipe and dissolve their …body-destroying frustrations into blue smoke’. Less radically, Sidney Russ, a London University professor, pointed out that if doctors started nagging their patients about smoking, then logically they might as well nag them

Having an Aga doesn’t make you posh

‘I already hate Sam. He’s too chavvy.’ Can you imagine the outrage that would kick off if someone said that about a contestant on a reality TV programme? But that’s essentially what happened to Flora Shedden, a 19-year-old candidate on this year’s Great British Bake Off who was accused of being ‘too posh’ on social media. So what triggered all of this? Simply forgetting to turn on her oven because ‘at home we’ve got an Aga, and I’m so used to having it on all the time.’ This one statement triggered a stream of abuse on social media, with many commenters hoping that she’d leave the competition first. For what crime?

The perfect storm: a right-on charity run by a right-on woman and a right-on BBC executive

The BBC’s Creative Director, Alan Yentob, seems to have spent the last week or so dashing from studio to studio in an attempt to influence the corporation’s broadcasters from saying nasty stuff about a charity of which he was, until it imploded, chairman. The incompetently-managed Kids Company is now mercifully defunct. Yentob has subsequently admitted to having contacted Newsnight before the programme broadcast an investigation into the charity. He also harangued BBC correspondent Lucy Manning and stood in the cubicle watching as Today attempted to cover the story. If anyone else in the BBC had demonstrated such a magnificently brazen conflict of interest, they’d be out. But as a former