Bbc

Thursday

James Delingpole

James Delingpole: ‘The Truth About Immigration’ is anything but

Immigration. Were you aware that this has become a bit of a problem these past ten years? I wasn’t, obviously, because like all credulous idiots I get my news from a single trusted source, the BBC, and as a result I’ve known for some time now that immigration is great, regardless of what the facts and figures are. I know, for example, that all those warnings by evil right-wing MPs about a potential ‘flood’ which might ‘swamp’ Britain were dangerously inflammatory ‘dog-whistle’ politics; that eastern Europeans have a work ethic that puts our native population to shame; that all the cleverest think tanks tell us that immigration represents a boon

Michael Tanner

Overrated Strauss vs underrated Gluck

This is the first of my more-or-less monthly columns, the idea of which is to report on operatic events other than those that take place at the two major London venues, with occasional trips to those areas (i.e., everywhere other than London) where the annual government grant for the arts is £4.80 per head, while in London it is £69.00. This fact was widely reported a few weeks ago, but while I thought for an hour or two that it might lead to a revolution, there was no widespread articulate reaction to it of any kind, nor, so far as I know, any indication that this gross inequity would be

Charles Moore Charles Moore

Mugabe envy in Scotland

Who owns Scotland? The people who most commonly ask this question believe that the land has been wrested from ordinary Scots by evil lairds and rich foreigners (by which they chiefly mean the English). Now the Scottish government is bringing out a report on how to correct this alleged injustice. It may recommend extending community ‘right to buy’ powers and allowing tenants to buy their holdings even if the owners do not want to sell.  This would have the unintended effect of ending all new tenancies. But the SNP’s misunderstanding of the situation is even more radical than that. It believes that big Scottish landowners are rich because they own

Wednesday

Ed West

The BBC isn’t Left-wing as such, it’s elitist

The BBC made a ‘terrible mistake’ in not reflecting public concern about immigration, Nick Robinson has said. This is the latest case of BBC self-flagellation. (Now I think about it, a sort of Maoist-themed programme in which Beeb executives denounced themselves would make great TV.) BBC bias is a subject I know a bit about, having written a pamphlet on it last year. I thought that, while the BBC is a much-loved institution, it must carry at least some of the blame for the mistakes most people feel were made over immigration under New Labour. Especially in 2000-01, when Conservative politicians were making some quite modest criticisms of rising numbers,

Tuesday

Monday

Fraser Nelson

Fisking George Osborne’s ‘hard truths’ speech

Today, George Osborne used a speech to administer what he called ‘hard truths’ about the economy. But in some cases, the truth was even harder than he let on. Here is a Fisk of his speech… 1. Size matters — ‘Government is going to have to be permanently smaller – and so too is the welfare system.’  This phrase — ‘permanently smaller’ — is designed to appeal to Conservatives. But in isolation, it’s pretty meaningless: smaller than what? The Brown peak? The below graph tells the story. The size of the British government (in red) used to be around average for a developed country (in blue). Gordon Brown’s massive achievement was the Europeanisation of

Thursday

Steerpike

The Pollard penny drops for Lord Patten

When the Pollard Report into the BBC Jimmy Savile abuse affair was published in December 2012, BBC Trust Chairman Lord Patten confidently told a press conference: ‘As far as we’re concerned the report is an excellent account of what happened. We’re totally in support of the recommendations, and that as far as I am concerned is that.’  But that has not been that. Readers will recall that Helen Boaden’s testimony, relating to a conversation that she had with Mark Thompson about the Newsnight investigation into Jimmy Savile, was omitted from the report. It should be noted that Mr Thompson has ‘slightly different recollections’ of this conversation than does Ms. Boaden, and that

Kate Chisholm

Just imagine what BBC schedules might look like in Christmas Future

Is it time to scrap the licence fee? That’s a question we’re going to hear more and more about in the next couple of years. Why should the BBC retain its archaic monopoly over the airwaves? Why not abolish the royal charter that grants the BBC the right to collect the fee (worth £3.6 billion a year) when it comes up for renewal in 2017? A change is long overdue, throwing open the broadcasting market, giving the independent production companies more opportunities to succeed and enabling the new digital online stations to expand, build audiences, create more original audio experiences. Or is it? Just imagine what would happen to radio

James Delingpole James Delingpole

Jeremy Clarkson brings Yuletide joy to the Delingpole household

So I’m looking at the seasonal TV schedules trying to find something — anything — to watch. Britain and the Sea? Probably very well done, but David Dimbleby is such a dangerously feline, OE-manqué, Flashmanesque, living-embodiment-of-the-BBC closet pinko that reviewing it would feel wrong, somehow, like chipping into a fund to buy Chris Huhne an eighth home. The Doctor Who Christmas Special? But it always makes me want to kill myself. I hate the idea that a Dalek garlanded in tinsel might burst into the Cratchit household with a fat goose dangling from its exterminator gun while the White Witch’s frozen heart melts and all the crippled children are released

Saturday

Melanie McDonagh

Jimmy Carter talks sense about the late Nelson Mandela

Rod Liddle’s observation about the death of Nelson Mandela, cut off, alas, at the age of 95, hardly needs supplementing but I was struck by one aspect of the blanket coverage, viz, its quasi-religious character. The Mirror, the day after the sad event, observed that Mr Mandela was as near as we get in this fallen world to a saint. And this morning, the Today programme brought the thing to its logical conclusion when one presenter, Justin Webb posed the question (1.15): given the moral example of Nelson Mandela, ‘why is the world not a better place?’ So it was over for an answer to former US president Jimmy Carter,

Thursday

Rod Liddle

Nelson Mandela dies, aged 95

Look; I’m sorry Nelson Mandela is dead. It happens quite often to people in their 90s who have been very ill, even famous people, but I’m sure that doesn’t lessen the sadness for many of us. I never met the man but, on balance, I came to the conclusion that he was a force for good rather than ill. I think I came to that rather banal and broad brush conclusion twenty years ago, or maybe fifteen. So, I’m sorry he’s dead, I wish it were otherwise. But for Christ’s sake BBC, give it a bloody break for five minutes, will you? It’s as if the poor bugger now has

Steerpike Steerpike

James Harding’s right: the BBC must do some ‘accountability journalism’, but on the Savile scandal report

Director of BBC News James Harding made a fascinating speech on Wednesday, setting out his mission statement for the Corporation’s newsroom: ‘Let’s start with holding people to account. In the offices of our local radio stations and regional TV operations – the places where the BBC does so much of its best work – we should play to that particular strength: accountability journalism.’ Mr S lives and breathes ‘accountability journalism’; it’s his eau-de-vie. But Harding seems to have a different understanding of the term than your humble correspondent. You would never know it from BBC News (or, for that matter, Auntie’s in-house journal The Guardian); but Nick Pollard, who was paid the tidy

Friday

Fraser Nelson

BBC vs newspapers – who wields the power?

David Yelland, a former Sun editor turned a PR director, is today giving a lecture to Hacked Off’s parent group lamenting what he sees as the absence of proper press regulation. He was invited on the Today programme to talk about it, and they kindly invited me on afterwards. Here’s the audio: listen to ‘David Yelland: Journalism in the UK is ‘lions led by donkeys’’ on Audioboo

Thursday

Mishal Husain

Mishal Husain’s diary: Sachin, women secret agents, shipbuilding .. and telling the time.

I’ve worked for the BBC for years and have been listening to the Today programme all my adult life, but joining it as a presenter feels like exploring a new frontier. Being on top of your brief is one thing; the mechanics of a three-hour live radio programme quite another. Take the junctions leading up to the ‘pips’ at the start of each hour. From television, I’ve been accustomed to directors counting presenters down to these junctions while they ad-lib on air — the idea being to stop talking as the voice in your ear says ‘zero’. But radio presenters are pretty much on their own, watching the clock and

Wednesday

Charles Moore

The Paul Flowers scandal exposes the rotten heart of the Labour movement

There has naturally been plenty of unfavorable comment on how the Revd Paul Flowers, the ‘crystal Methodist’, was allowed by the Financial Services Authority to become chairman of the Co-op Bank. But the story does not reflect very well on the media either. If you look at Robert Peston’s BBC blog on the subject, for instance, there is a lot of ‘I am told’ and ‘according to the Manchester Evening News’. Is there no one in the BBC’s enormous staff who could have done a bit of work years ago on the Revd Mr Flowers? Isn’t it even more extraordinary that the media did not pick up Mr Flowers’s ignorant

Thursday

Charles Moore

Charles Moore: State broadcasting allows fascism — and we’re paying the fees for it

There has not been much good news out of Greece since the eurozone powers decided to crush the country, but it is heartening that the state broadcasting company, ERT, has been closed down. All such broadcasting systems, including the BBC, are attempts to impose certain political and cultural norms upon the population, and force them to pay for them. ‘This is how fascism works,’ protested one ERT ex-employee, as the riot police evicted her colleagues — who were trying to keep the service running — ‘slyly and in darkness’. She has got it back to front. Fascism (or communism) can prevail only if a state broadcasting system exists. Now that

James Delingpole James Delingpole

James Delingpole: Is the fight against environmentalism the new Cold War?

Gosh it isn’t half irksome when someone who went to the same school as you but is considerably younger than you ends up doing dramatically better than you. But hats off to Dominic Sandbrook: his new series Cold War Britain (BBC2, Tuesday) is an absolute delight. Sandbrook has that rare gift of making things you thought you knew pretty well already seem startling and fresh. Take Churchill’s Fulton, Missouri speech. ‘Ah,’ I said expertly to the Fawn, a good five minutes before the programme reproduced the famous recording, ‘From Stettin in the Baltic…’ But what Sandbrook does is both put it in context and give it a human dimension that

Wednesday

Charles Moore

The Tories should pledge to cut the BBC’s licence fee

There has not been much good news out of Greece since the eurozone powers decided to crush the country, but it is heartening that the state broadcasting company, ERT, has been closed down. All such broadcasting systems, including the BBC, are attempts to impose certain political and cultural norms upon the population, and force them to pay for them. ‘This is how fascism works,’ protested one ERT ex-employee, as the riot police evicted her colleagues — who were trying to keep the service running — ‘slyly and in darkness’. She has got it back to front. Fascism (or communism) can prevail only if a state broadcasting system exists. Now that the conservative dominated Greek government has stopped it and won its parliamentary vote of confidence, I hope that

Monday

Ed West

Should state education be abolished?

These days I find myself so drifting away from the bounds of acceptable opinion that I don’t even shout at Radio 4 for being biased, because I don’t even understand the basis of what the arguments are about. Take this morning’s schools feature (occasioned by Sir John Major’s comments about the ‘truly shocking’ dominance of a privately educated elite in public life), in which Harry Mount argued in favour and Owen Jones against the motion that grammar schools lead to more social mobility than comprehensives. listen to ‘Owen Jones and Harry Mount on social mobility’ on Audioboo

Steerpike Steerpike

Scandal ridden BBC admits camera trickery

Our Parliamentarian of the Year awards continue to makes the news. I’m reliably informed that this item in Dominic Lawson’s Mail column is the result of a jolly exchange at last Thursday’s lunch: ‘There are two television programmes which I watch regularly: Newsnight and University Challenge — both presented by Jeremy Paxman. But which Jeremy Paxman? On Newsnight he wears a beard.  On University Challenge he is clean-shaven.  I am unsettled by the divergent appearances of the presenter in my life — though I know it is because the current series of University Challenge was filmed before he abandoned his razor. At a lunch last week I asked Jeremy if it