DID YOU FEEL SLIGHTLY DIRTY?

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How has Gordcasting House been coping with the bad news (for it) following the election, when its man went down to just 29% and was subsequently prized out of Downing Street? Not that well by the sounds of it.
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The programme obsessed about the Lib Dems &, as I would expect from BH, ignored the Tories - in much the same way that Today has been ignoring the feelings of Tories. Paddy O'Connell right away emphasized the importance of Charles Kennedy's having "sounded alarm at the new coalition" and went on to recall Roy Jenkins: "He left the Labour Party to co-found the SDP and for some that was an act of betrayal, for others a sign of one of the sharpest minds of the political landscape." (I strongly suspect that Paddy thinks that Nick Clegg has committed an act of betrayal too).
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Paddy talked to Jenkin's biographer John Campbell, who thought that though, were he still alive, Jenkins would have been pleased at the "crack in the ice" of "sterile" left-right politics, he would have preferred it if there had been a "progressive" re-alignment of the Left beginning with a Lib-Lab coalition.
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Next, it was off to Birmingham to talk to the Lib Dem deputy leader of the Con-Lib council there, Paul Tilsley. Paddy asked him: "And would you kindly be blunt? In your heart, when you shook hands with the Conservatives, were you scared and did you feel slightly dirty?" What a question! Can you imagine him asking that question (with appropriate amendments) to the Conservative leader of Birmingham City Council - in the unlikely situation of Paddy O'Connell ever talking to such a person? Mr Tilsley was "blunt", bluntly saying "No" to both questions. Sorry Paddy, it wasn't to be.
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His next question began "And you're making cuts." He didn't follow this up, just made it as a statement (just as if he were a Labour Party politician, reminding the voters of something they ought to know) and then moved straight on, without giving Mr Tilsley the right to reply, saying "So let's get to the heart of this matter again. There's a tug between the head and the heart of your party and Charles Kennedy, the popular (word emphasized by Paddy) former leader, has implied that he can't see it working." That was the question. Having broadened the question beyond Brum, Paddy found that Mr Tilsley gave an answer he didn't want. The Lib Dem sighed and brilliantly called the alternative (i.e. the 'rainbow coalition') "the Dagenham solution - it's two stops from Barking." Paddy intervened to say "OK, let me just...forgive me...we would just like on another day your analysis of the national picture, but please stay in Brum because what I want to say is...". At which Mr Tilsley interrupted him and protested (good-naturedly) "But you were trying to get me out of Brum!" "Fair enough", said Paddy, and moved on.
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From the Lib Dems, the programme moved on to Labour and the Miliband Brothers. (It was time for Paddy to look on the bright side, cross his fingers and wish upon a lucky star. ) We heard from "two friends and colleagues of their late father, the Marxist intellectual and international socialist Ralph Miliband, and also from one of his sons." Ah, it wouldn't be BH, would it, without either a Labour politician or a far-Leftist (or two)?! The friends of the old commie were "the activist co-editor of of Red Pepper magazine" Hilary Wainwright and "the historian and writer" Tariq Ali.
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Paddy also went along to that 'Ed Miliband for leader' meeting we saw on the BBC a couple of days ago, making sure we heard the cheers and someone shouting out loudly "We love you Ed". (I don't think it was Paddy O'Connell himself.) He asked Ed a few questions, and here they are in all their challenging glory:
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- "How's it going?"
- "It's early days?"
- "Did you know there's an event here, 'My Dear Brother'?"
- "How will you stand out from the rest of the candidates?"
- "What would Ralph Miliband have made of the candidate?"
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Both Hilary Wainright and Tariq Ali - and the Milibands' mum by the sounds of it - want Labour to stop being Thatcherite opportunists and become a true socialist party again (and we all know what they mean by 'socialist' in this context). The intelligence of the Brothers was praised however.
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Paddy O'Connell sounded happy with these people.

FLAWED-CASTING HOUSE

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Another quick glance backwards...
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The recurrent anti-capitalist strain on Radio 4's Broadcasting House was in evidence again last week, with presenter Paddy O'Connell referring (gratuitously) in passing to Sunday as "an oasis free from stock market speculation". He used this phrase in his introduction to the final election pontifications of those erudite old lefties Anthony Howard and Peter Hennessy (who have been the programme's chief election pundits throughout the whole campaign), who went back down memory lane to Jeremy Thorpe in 1974 before cooing over Jim Callaghan.
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The only other point to make about this (as was made by Deborah at B-BBC at the time) is that Paddy did his usual thing of leaping to Labour's defence. When Mr Howard brought up the now famous 'heated' telephone conversation last week between Clegg and Brown, Paddy stepped in to say "Although that was strongly denied in the briefings that were given..." and then to move the conversation swiftly on: "...but let me just ask you to nail this down then. What does the stopwatch say from history..." This blog is festooned with other (often far worse) examples of the same thing. (Just click on the label Paddy O'Connell at the bottom of this post).
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If you remember back a week, you will recall that the BBC was still banging on obsessively about electoral reform (when they hoped this could wreck the chances of a Conservative-led government in perpetuity). Paddy O'Connell paused last Sunday to mention "one of the big events in Westminster this weekend". What was that seismic event? "The arrival of a crowd chanting for voting reform. They gathered outside one of the multiple meeting of the Liberal Democrats". We heard their chanting. (He was to return to the same (minor) event later in the programme & played us another clip from it!)
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Paddy then went for a walk around London talking to people about the post-election uncertainty. He met newly-retired Labour MP Andrew McKinlay, Charles Kennedy and Michael Crick, a morris-dancing lady, a couple of workmen, a pro-Brown 'ordinary woman' and a psychotherapist called Lucy Beresford, who said that all this election uncertainty unsettles us because it reminds us of the uncertainty of our own date of death. I can truly say I'd never thought of it like that before!!
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Another of Paddy's very selective use of listener e-mails followed. I have also commented on this abuse before. Why are they almost exclusively from left-wing listeners? This one, John Anderson (not John at B-BBC I would wager), said "David Cameron constantly emphasized during the campaign 'Vote Clegg & you might get Brown'. So I did. Now it looks as if I voted Clegg and I might get Cameron." Yes, John, you did and you did. Oh the irony!
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Proportional representation was back on the agenda next as Paddy discussed its varieties with Dr Stuart Wilks-Heeg of what he called the "independent research organisation" Democratic Audit. 'Independent' it and Dr Wilks-Heeg may very well be, but Democratic Audit is a Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust-sponsored offshoot of Charter 88, and so very much the BBC's sort of "independent" organisation (i.e. a left-leaning one).
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A rare Tory on BH appeared for the paper review, albeit the somewhat semi-detached Michael Portillo. The other paper reviewers were Channel 4 News's political correspondent Cathy Newman and left-wing comedian Francesca Martinez.
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Paddy's run-down of the front pages of the Sunday papers began, of course, with the Independent on Sunday (36.43-36.53) before moving on, no less 'of course', to the Observer (36.53-37.09) and talk of Lord Ashcroft. The Sunday Times (37.09-37.28) on the shambles of election day and the Sunday Express (37.37-39.44) on Brown's future brought up the rear. No space for the Sunday Telegraph on the Mail on Sunday.
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The final seven minutes or so of the programme were the latest pages - written during the election - from newly-retired Labour MP & popular diarist Chris Mullin, read by the man himself. Mr Mullin is a very entertaining writer and has a refreshing detachment but he's still a staunch Labour partisan nonetheless and this was a sharply political piece. BH has given a platform to many Labour MPs over the past year, with Conservatives far, far thinner on the ground.
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There was just time for two more listener e-mails before the show ended. The first came from a Mrs Glenys Burgess: "Am I the only one to see the irony in news reporters repeatedly saying 'we need a decision for the markets'? The markets, with their massive self-centred mismanagement, have done more than most to create this situation." I wonder why Paddy picked up on that one! More anti-capitalism! The other was a joke (and not a bad one) from a Gerald Toranto: "When Caroline Lucas won Brighton Pavilion, was I the only one to wonder what the second prize was?"
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If you thought The Andrew Marr Show was biased just try its simultaneously-broadcast Radio 4 counterpart. Broadcasting House is far subtler in its bias but the bias is even more pervasive.
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(That wasn't as "quick" a glance backwards as I thought!)

LABOUR UNITED

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Back to Gordcasting House, and taking things up from where I left off...

Will has already commented that those lefty heavyweights Peter Hennessy and Anthony Howard were back again (for a fourth week) to reminisce and pontificate about elections then and now. This week's archive clips and their judgements thereon can only be summed up as Will summed them up: "Callaghan & Wilson were fab. Home was a grotesque & they couldn't utter Thatcher's name." (Mr Howard sneaked in the word "bogus" to describe Mrs Thatcher's speech on entering Downing Street).
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Will continues "That was followed by a newspaper review. Arch lefty journalist John Sergeant, former Labour parliamentary candidate & BBC face, John O'Farrell & actress Jenny Seagrove. I switched off after the introductions, before hearing that Seagrove may have been as left as the other 3 (inc Paddy). Wiki tells me Jenny is an animal rights activist & vegetarian so probably Green rather than Labour, but still left."
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You will be intrigued, Will, to find this though about Jenny Seagrove. She too is a Labour Party supporter!!
http://www.labour.org.uk/wales/labour_leads_fight_against_bnp_thugs
http://iwc2.labouronline.org/165220/back-the-ban
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Both John Sergeant and John O'Farrell made noises supportive of Gordon Brown.
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Will's final comment says it all: "The BBC obviously really don't feel the need to observe neutrality, do they?"

GORDCASTING HOUSE

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Steve Munslow
Might be worth listening to Broadcasting House tomorrow morning. I just heard a preview at the beginnng of Loose Ends:
"Politics - and we'll ask if ill-informed voters have a right to be heard". Yes, literally. I can't think what might have inspired this.
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Was Steve right in his suspicions about 'Broadcasting House'?
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Well, presenter Paddy O'Connell didn't directly broach Mrs Duffy specifically, though he had only recently given the answer to the question "How long had Cyril Smith been MP for Rochdale?" (The answer was 20 years).
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Paddy's "we'll ask if ill-informed voters have a right to be heard" question was put like this:
"Well, do you or I have to right to air views, if heaven forbid, they're uninformed or out of date with the latest estimates of the IFS. Should be do our homework before we open our mouths?" Seemingly without irony, he said "Text us at once to tell us what you think." (Surely he must have been joking?!)
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He discussed it with two people, former Question Time editor and Conservative Party presentation chief Nick Pasani and an ex-philosophy professor Jamie Whyte, who now writes for The Times, who thinks "people don't have a right to their opinions" or "a right to be heard" and doesn't think "the BBC or anybody else has the obligation to give you airtime."
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Paddy, as ever in this sort of debate, only ever questioned from one side of the argument, whichever guest he was talking to. And as soon as you read his second question you'll know exactly who he had in mind:
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1. To NP: "Nick, you've made a career out of giving people airtime. Should we...should you have?"

2. To NP: "And is it, if I hear an opinion and know that it's right, what's the right percentage of deficit versus GDP, or is resonance, I see a pensioner and she reminds me of me?"

Mr Pisani answered this question as if Paddy had directly asked about Mrs Duffy, so he knew what/who Paddy was getting at.
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3. To JW: "And to you James Whyte, do you sympathise with that view? It's about emotional intelligence, I don't have to get to the nitty-gritty, I just have to trust."

4. To NP: "And Nick do you admit that it doesn't matter if it's informed then, it's about spectacle? Sometimes its fine to bleat without actually backing up what you're going on about?"
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5. To NP: "How important to debate have been moments when voters speak from the heart maybe not from the textbook?"

When Nick mentioned a woman on this week's question time who harangued the politicians, saying "you lot work for us, listen to our opinions", Paddy intervened to ask:

6. To NP: "But it was style over substance her contribution?"
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(The Olympian Mr Whyte added that it was also "absurd". He thinks "there is a serious problem with the fact that so many people vote". He wants a "randomised" electorate! Talking of philosophers, Plato was regarded by Karl Popper as an enemy of democracy - with very good reason. Is Mr Whyte a Platonist too? He's fully entitled to his view, of course, and fully entitled to give it on the BBC - under my way of thinking!).

7. To JW: "James Whyte, do you have views and opinions which you can't back up with facts yourself, personally in your life?"

8. To NP: "We are told this is a time for leadership, the country needs horrible decisions taken economically. To you first Nick Pasani, is the problem that if we have a consumer culture of politics where it is not appropriate to be rude to voters, where ultimately I am selling my pitch as a politician, am I able to lead?" (A good question though, despite the left-wing assumptions underlying it).

9. To JW: "James Whyte, when you go into the booth do you know the right percentage of deficit to GDP. Have you done your homework on this big economic question?"

So yes, Stewart was right about who inspired the Broadcasting House question. It was indeed Mrs Duffy - ill-informed, bleating Mrs Duffy.

HORS D'OEUVRES

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Sunday morning on Radio 4 means Broadcasting House (aka Gordcasting House). As a taster, here's a comment from the B-BBC blogsite:

Steve Munslow
Might be worth listening to Broadcasting House tomorrow morning. I just heard a preview at the beginnng of Loose Ends:
"Politics - and we'll ask if ill-informed voters have a right to be heard". Yes, literally. I can't think what might have inspired this.

Sunday morning on BBC 1 means Andrew Marr. This week it's David Cameron. Last week, following Marr's past record and basing it on my breakdown of his latest interviews with Gordon Brown and Nick Clegg, I made the following predictions:
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1. That much more time will be spent this week on serious policy subjects.
2. That there will be many more subjects discussed, allowing Marr to swoop, attack then fly off onto something different, thus denying Mr Cameron the chance to expand on his explanations.
3. That Marr will spend most time discussing spending cuts - the topic he didn't discuss with Messers Brown and Clegg - banging away at exactly how much will be cut, where will it be cut from, how many jobs will be lost, etc.
4. That this interview will result in a higher interruption coefficient than the ones for Brown (1) and Clegg (1.4).
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It's entirely in Andrew Marr's hands to prove me wrong on all four counts.
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I could add a couple more of course:
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5. That Marr will bring up Cameron's posh background & 6. return to the subject of Lord Ashcroft, but I suspect that this time he won't be that shameless!
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MORE DOG WHISTLES

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Paddy O'Connell, and his election pundits on Broadcasting House - Peter Hennessy and Anthony Howard - looked back into the archive to examine a couple of examples of what Paddy called 'covert or overt racism' in previous elections. Cue Enoch Powell's Rivers of Blood speech (to a conservative political meeting, we were told) and Patrick Gordon Walker, the Labour MP defeated by the Conservatives after a racist campaign in Smethick in 1964. Prof Hennessy thinks 'dog whistle' politics has taken the place of 'overt racism'.
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Another dog whistle may have been blown here.

GORD-CASTING HOUSE

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Time to begin catching up.
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Back to Sunday and Radio 4's Broadcasting House. The left-liberal bias of this programme has been a weekly theme of this blog. One topic this week was the private sector v. the public sector. Presenter Paddy O'Connell began by spending some time at a demonstration by public sector workers before staging a debate between a businesswoman and a teacher. As anyone who listens to BH (or has read my reviews of it) could have guessed, Paddy sided with the latter. One of his questions ran like this: "It seems to many people that it was capitalism and it was greed and it was breaking the rules that got us into this trouble as bankers flogged debt that they didn't understand around the place. Do you accept that who led us into this was a great deal of private enterprise?" Does Paddy really think that banking accounts for a 'great deal' of the private sector?
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Soon after he introduced us to the two people who are going to be his guides throughout the general election. They are the former New Statesman editor/Observer columnist Anthony Howard and the constitutional expert Peter Hennessy. I always enjoy listening to both of them but they are both self-confessed men of the Left. Mr Howard began by doubting the idea that the Conservatives had a good start and Prof Hennessy dismissed the NI debate as a 'distraction' and forecast problems for the Conservatives over Europe. Shouldn't the programme have a broader spectrum of political opinion?
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When Paddy quipped (at least I hope it was a quip!) "Can we hear it for Gordon Brown, Laura Tenison?" and the paper review moved onto Gordon Brown's smile, and Laura (a business woman who had earlier attacked Conservative education plans) talked of how it showed "the human face" of Gordon Brown, I note that it was Merril Stevenson of The Economist who pointed out that there is another photo of Brown's smile that shows it was probably fake (though she didn't put it that way) rather than Paddy O'Connell.
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MORE BS

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Last week's Broadcasting House featured a report on trade unions from a socialist historian. This week we got an 'alternative budget statement' from 'ethical champion' Ed Mayo (yes, not Egg Mayo), head of Cooperatives UK, and a member of countless other 'third sector' - ie left-wing - organisations (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Mayo).
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Mr Mayo does not approve of 'consumerism'.
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Later BH attended the launch of a new feminist organisation, UK Feminista. One old-time feminist reminded us how bad Mrs Thatcher was before we heard from left-wing Hannah Pool of The Guardian.

At least Paddy O'Connell read out the Sunday Times's revelations about the two Labour ex-ministers during his programme's paper review.

PADDY HAS NO TIME FOR CERTAIN STORIES

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Talking of Broadcasting House, I've recorded a fair few instances now of pro-Labour bias on the part of the programme's presenter Paddy O'Connell. This one from today's edition is less clear-cut perhaps.
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The story of the day, the Labour cabinet ministers 'stung' by The Sunday Times and Dispatches, was missed out from Paddy's opening presentation at the start of the programme's paper review. I thought 'aye, aye, there he goes again!' But the issue did come up.
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Paddy said, "Alain de Botton, all papers are picking up from a joint Channel 4/Dispatches investigation. You want to review it. Go ahead." He didn't sound too enthusiastic though.
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Before any further discussion could begin, Paddy intervened to say, "And I will just put before our listener what the MPs have said. Patricia Hewitt said she made it plain she'd only work in this way after she was no longer an MP and Stephen Byers wrote an e-mail saying he'd overstated his case, but you've stated yours and you've reviewed the paper for us there so let's leave that if you don't mind, just for the sake of time at this point."

What raises my suspicions here is that the programme's paper review has a somewhat rambling structure and time pressures are not usually insisted upon so soon after a topic has been brought up or before the topic has been discussed by the whole panel. Moreover the paper review went on for four more minutes and spend much of it discussing the fashions of the 1970s. Amusingly Zandra Rhodes's final contribution was this: "...against the headline that's in The Sunday Times which says 'Gordon's doing Sweet BA because of his pay-off from Unite's cash.'" That brought another response from Paddy, this time saying "right, well we certainly haven't got time to go there!" Funny that!
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(For everything else I have on Paddy O'Connell, please click the label at the bottom.)
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MOORE ABOUT ASHCROFT

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As a brief coda to my last post, Paddy O' Connell asked his paper reviewers to discuss Lord Ashcroft.
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Rugby-legend Brian Moore took up his request, saying "There are only two points I want to make. On the point of democracy I don't think believe that anyone should be part of any executive unless they are fully incorporated in every way in this country to make laws over us and...." Well, we didn't get to hear his second point because Paddy interrupted him, clearly finding him to be straying onto generalities that would also apply to Labour and the Lib Dems instead of just the hated Tories, saying "But what about the papers Brian? What do the papers say specifically?" Brian dutifully returned to Lord Ashcroft.
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AMBUSHING THE TORIES

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There was a rare Conservative politician on this morning's Broadcasting House.
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The subject was yah-boo behaviour at Prime Minister's Question Time, and Andrew Robathan MP was invited on to talk to Paddy O'Connell because he had loudly heckled Vince Cable on Wednesday.
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Vince was sounding forth to Harriet Harman on the subject of a certain wicked Conservative lord and donor, and Andrew was all the while shouting 'What about Michael Brown?' (and variants) over and over again. Mr Robathan is not ashamed of having done so. I heard him doing so at the time (via Wednesday's Daily Politics) and thought 'What an idiot!', but as the BBC guy who talks over PMQs explained who Michael Brown is to the watching public (by way of explaining why Dr Cable was being heckled so loudly), Mr Robathan's shouting was shown to have worked - not such an idiot after all.
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Still, Broadcasting House played the clip to Mr Robathan twice ("I wonder if you know how it came over on the radio") in a blatant attempt to embarrass him. Of course, out of context it still sounds terrible and many listeners to BH will have come away thinking 'What an idiot!' as a result (which was surely what the programme was aiming at achieving), despite the MP's pragmatic justifications and his adeptness at dropping in just who Michael Brown is and why he is embarrassing for the Lib Dems.
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It also, of course, forced into the unsuspecting BH listener's ear not only Mr R's heckling but also Dr Cable's savaging of Lord Ashcroft. How cunning of BH!
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Conservatives behave badly at PMQs. So do Labour.
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One trap, into which Mr Robathan fell by agreeing to take part in this stunt, was followed by another as Paddy prepared us for another clip, saying to Mr R "Let's just agree that this is childish. This is another attempt to get a question out and once the Speaker's asked for silence it's greeted with a round of shushing. Let's listen and see if we both agree we can call this childish." The clip was played - but not enough of it for the unsuspecting listen to hear what that question was. I remember what it was. It was a planted question from a Labour MP, an attack on the Tories of such incredible stupidity that its repetition, as requested by Harriet Harman (who hadn't heard it, she said), would have been a crime against the public's intelligence. Take that fact out of the equation and the shushing from those wicked, childish Tories must have sounded...well...childish. Clip played, Paddy said "Do you find that sort of a bit childish?"
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A classic BBC Tory ambush.
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Broadcasting House also invited another Tory onto its paper review. That Tory was Christine Hamilton. With my cynical hat on again, I can't help thinking that they thought of inviting her on to remind listeners of 'Tory sleaze'. They could have invited her on because they think she's great entertainment (which she is), but with a few weeks to go before a general election and a programme that's shown itself not to be averse in recent months (on even earlier in the same edition) to spinning things against the Conservatives, I wouldn't be surprised it they had other reasons to invite her on. Who's next? Jonathan Aitken? Jeffrey Archer?
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UPDATE 16.45 pm
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The BH website itself confirms my suspicions about this edition of the programme. Note the rhetorical question, and the use of the word 'defend':

Was this Wednesday's Prime Minister Questions a particularly bad example of
Commons' heckling? One of those who took part in the barracking, Conservative MP
Andrew Robothan, joins us to defend himself.

THAT WAS A PARTY POLITICAL BROADCASTING HOUSE ON BEHALF OF...

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Not even the BBC could ignore Observer columnist Andrew Rawnsley's revelations about the sheer unpleasantness of Gordon Brown. They can, of course, try to take the sting out of it though.
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Paddy O'Connell on 'Broadcasting House' (Radio 4 at the same time as Marr) interrupted Lance Price, who was telling us about Brown's behaviour towards secretaries, typists and drivers, to say "I should say that, as I've read it this morning, the book says he's also got a softer side, being incredibly solicitous at times of family emergency and bereavement".
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He then tried to dismiss it all: "I wonder if the fair-minded listener thinks here's a book, here's a new look newspaper, here are the chattering classes chattering".
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After the next piece (on the Irish economy), O'Connell read out an e-mail from "Simon Gough, who's our listener", saying "This is a media obsession. The electorate are more interested in politics than in personality". That was the only e-mail he read out.
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The programme's paper review ignored the story completely. The guests must have been told not to talk about it. Or, given what a left-wing bunch they were, they chose not to talk about it.
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The section on the Irish economy took the form of an interview with Irish finance minister Martin Mansergh. It was prefaced by remarks from O'Connell that are absolutely in keeping with the BBC's narrative on this story.
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I've noted here before - in fact every time I've heard the BBC report on the strong actions taken by the Irish government to tackle their economic disaster - that they frame the debate in such a way as to present the Irish government and its actions in the worst possible light. Several of these reports have only featured critical voices and voices from the Left, especially the trade unions. Why? Because the Irish government's resolute cutting of public spending and its urgency are not something that the BBC (or the Labour Party) wants to present in a good light. Paddy said that the Irish government "has already instituted a package of tax rises and of spending cuts that union leaders say is a charter for exploitation. One said 'take one job at any price or emigrate'."

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The interview went so badly that at first I really did think it was a spoof! Mr Mansergh, however, mustn't be used to being interviewed by the likes of the BBC. He even got told off by Paddy O'Connell. Paddy brought up the conflict between our economists over the issue of when to start cutting in earnest. When Mr Mansergh said, "Yes I read read the Financial Times this morning..." and began laughing, for some reason, O'Connell interrupted and said in a very disapproving tone of voice "Yes, and you're laughing. It's no laughing matter, is it?" "No it isn't", replied Mr Mansergh contritely. "Let's just run through the cuts that you made...", Paddy said and moved on to do just that.
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This whole edition of the programme stank with bias. After reading out that e-mail about the listener's request for serious discussion of policy (i.e. leave off Brown), O'Connell brought up David Cameron's Woman's Hour interview with Jenny Murray and the Conservative leader's statement that 'a broader conservation at home' is the best kind of conversation. This was followed by an actual spoof on what Cameron had said - though not a very funny one - from Helen Lederer and Howard Ward.
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And this wasn't the only dig at the Tories. More subtle (and interesting) was the programme's Who Do You Think You Archive section, which featured transsexual Nina Smith (formerly Nigel Smith), who wanted to hear a clip from the 1970 Conservative Party conference where Nina, then Nigel, spoke out against the Conservatives' proposal to lift the arms embargo on South Africa. This reminded BH listeners of the Conservatives' past transgressions over apartheid. Nigel Smith left the Conservative Party in 1972.
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Then came the paper review. We had Susannah Clapp, doyenne of left-wing critics at The Observer (who attacked Boris Johnson), Kathy Lette, an avowed Labour supporter and all-round self-parody of a mouthy Australian feminist comedienne ("I think Cameron's a charisma wrap in a vacuum, so I'm glad Labour is doing well", she said) and, finally, left-wing journalist and novelist John Lanchester, who also had a dig at the Tories. What a balanced crowd that what! A Labour election rally couldn't have contained more lefties!!
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FEBRUARY FOOLS' DAY

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At exactly the same time as the two (or, with Andrew Marr, three) Lefties were reviewing the papers on The Andrew Marr Show, Radio 4's Broadcasting House was giving us its treatment of the elderly care story, first looking at the political squabble over the issue in a report from Norman Smith that cast the Tories in the worst light (what a surprise!).
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Then the programme turned to the issue itself with an essay on the subject by Philippa Stroud of the centre-right think tank The Centre for Social Justice, which argued that inheritance of wealth and property is no sin.
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Do you believe me? Or am I pulling that annoying stunt yet again where, in the spirit of April Fools' Day, I mislead you into thinking that the BBC has surprisingly gone against all its left-wing instincts when it in fact hasn't?
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Yes, I'm afraid that's exactly what I've done again. (I promise not to do it again, or it could become very tiresome!!)
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Philippa Stroud did not appear on the programme, not did anyone else from a centre-right think tank. Instead the essay on Broadcasting House was given by Richard Reeves of the centre-left think Demos, and he argued against the 'madness' of our favourable attitudes towards inheritance.
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No balancing voice was heard.
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I'm at the stage now where I don't really expect one anymore.
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FRAUDCASTING HOUSE

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As well as the BBC's Nigel Wrench remembering the release of Nelly Mandela and Steve Punt doing a 'funny' turn on the subject of 'talking Britain down' (in the wake of Lord Mandelson's diatribe against George Osborne), this morning's Broadcasting House also discussed the issue of purity and politics in the wake of the DPP's announcement of the prosecution for fraud of three Labour MPs and a Tory peer. That's not quite how presenter Paddy O'Connell put it though: "Three MPs and one Tory peer must decide if they'll use parliamentary privelege as part of their defence against allegations, which they deny." Can you spot the missing word in Paddy's sentence? (Clue: it rhymes with neighbour).
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The issue was discussed with the crossbench philosopher-baroness (and liberal) Onora O'Neill and with Labour-supporting Sir Gerry Robinson. Both wanted us to 'move on' from the Great Expenses Scandal, as Paddy noted. That seemed fine by him, but when Baroness O'Neill said we should also 'move on' over the issue of bankers Paddy seemed a little taken aback, and (clearly thinking on the spot) could only ask in response whether they (the bankers) should listen more. He's clearly not prepared to 'move on' on that subject any time soon, by the sounds of it. BH in recent months has been full of anti-banker humour.
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BLAIRCASTING HOUSE

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Julie (pictured right) at Julie's Think Tank (http://puschiii.wordpress.com/), a new blog dedicated to opposing Blair-bashing, especially anti-Blair media bias, will have been gratified and relieved by this morning's Broadcasting House with Paddy O'Connell, where Tony Blair was lauded at some length by one of his most devout supporters Tim Allan, deputy spin doctor to Alastair Campbell. Paddy handled him gently.
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The BBC may have hated the Iraq War but they loved/love New Labour. Their early uncritical adulation of Tony Blair (so like their attitude to Barack Obama now) was replaced by a deep ambivalence - which is still much in evidence today. In 2003 they shifted their support to the anti-war Lib Dems and the anti-Blair Gordon Brown.
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(P.S. This post was not just an excuse to publish the above photo of Julie.)
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DON'T STOP THERE, PADDY!

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Here's Paddy O'Connell beginning the paper review on this morning's Broadcasting House. You'll see there's a difference in how he reports the anti-Conservative comments and the pro-Conservative comment:

The papers are not much impressed by what politicians have said about the causes of the shocking violence (in Edlington, Doncaster). 'The Mirror' furiously rejects David Cameron's attempts to relate the crimes to claims of a more general breakdown in family life. "Everyone wants a happy family", it says, "but life isn't like that." 'The Observer' sees the Conservative policy as either "big rhetoric or little ideas and a black hole in the middle", but Janet Daley in 'The Sunday Telegraph' is more supportive.

And that's all we hear of Janet Daley's views - nothing!!

FROM THE SECRET REALM OF THE HISTORIC BOURGEOIS

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Talking of Broadcasting House, today's edition featured a section on offshore accounts and tax. Presenter Paddy O'Connell went for a walk along along the Thames embankment with William Brittain-Catlin, author of Offshore: The Dark Side of the Global Economy. He's not keen on either offshore banking or the global economy, which makes him perfect to appear on the BBC! "Global finance is alienating in an essential way" , he said. "There's a kind of asocial, amoral side to global finance." He supports the government's new legislation on offshore banking.
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Mr Brittain-Catlin has, elsewhere, described the Cayman Islands as a "slave to global capitalism", and talks of the "rotten excesses" of the capitalist system, arguing that globalisation comes about from the "secret realm" of "the historic bourgeois". I think we can guess where he's coming from!
http://www.zoominfo.com/people/Brittain-Catlin_William_44675726.aspx
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/feb/05/offshore-tax-havens
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You won't perhaps be surprised to hear that this chap also used to be a BBC producer! I suspect plenty of present BBC producers hold not dissimilar views!

OH MY GOD, I'VE HAD ENOUGH-Y,/THEY'VE GIVEN A PRIZE TO CAROL DUFFY.

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This morning's Broadcasting House has given it's annual Cultural Figure of the Year award to our nation's poetess laureate, Ms Carol Ann Duffy (pictured below). Here's a sample of the great lady's work (all drawn from her third offering as Britain's Bard(ess), The Twelve Days of Christmas 2009):
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Two turtle doves
that Shakespeare loved -
turr turr, turr turr -
endangered now
by herbicide
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(That would have made a spotty teenager proud!)
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The first gold ring was gold indeed -
banker's profits fired in greed.
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And there's more...
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I bought a magic goose from a jolly farmer,
This goose laid Barack Obama.
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I bought a poisoned goose from a crook (sick, whiffing).
This foul goose laid Nick Griffin.
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She's a satirist to put Dryden or Pope to shame, isn't she? And, like them, she has the gift of the killer rhyming couplet, as in this coruscating attack on the corrupt, crony-packed, gerrymandered modern House of Lords:
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Lords don't leap.
They sleep.
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(That'll give Lords Snape and Taylor, & the noble Baroness Uddin a few sleepless nights!)
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There's plenty more where this came from, but finally here's Carol Ann on Copenhagen:
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On the twelfth day in Copenhagen
was global warming stopped in its tracks
by Brown and Barack and Hu Jintao?
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(Ted Hughes is surely looking down in awe! What profundity!)
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Ms Duffy's work in popular in schools and with this government and the BBC - and you can understand why. It's crap. And it's left-wing.
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THE WRIGHT MEN TO ATTACK TORY TOFFS

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At the same time that Andrew Marr was doing the unexpected on BBC1, Paddy O'Connell and friends were doing the very-much-expected on Radio 4's Broadcasting House. The issue of Tory Toffs was very much on the agenda, and Labour MP Tony Wright's son Ben Wright (of the BBC) was not about to let it rest.
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I will copy and paste something from the B-BBC website:
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freddo41:
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"This morning’s Broadcasting
House decided to deal with Gordon Brown’s ‘Eton’ attack on the Tories by sending
a reporter to find out if Labour backbenchers agree with this plan of attack.
Guess what? They did!
So we had a collection of Labour MPs putting flesh on
the bones of the original attack.
The reporter’s conclusion? That this
approach may have failed at Crewe and Nantwich but this time it could work. So
all very positive.
And the reporter? Ben Wright, son of veteran Labour MP
Tony Wright.
How very cosy."

It certainly was cosy. Ben talked to Labour MPs John Grogan, Martin Linton and Gordon Prentice. All three were, as freddo41 says, supportive of the Labour 'attack line'. Prentice bashed the Tories and said "It's the old country set writ large" and brought up that Bullingdon Club photograph. (What about Ed Ball's Oxford photograph?) Linton personally attacked Zak Goldsmith, as well as the Tories in general. Does every Labour MP really approve of this shabby, hypocritical tactic? That's what we'd gather from Tony Wright's son's report.

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This was preceded by BBC reporter Rajini Vaidyanathan chatting to presenter Paddy O'Connell about how Gordon Brown was "seen to have landed a killer blow on David Cameron with his talk of the playing fields of Eton" Which raises the obvious question, "Seen by who? By Labour, the Guardian, the BBC?" She also said that Dave has "spent much of his time as leader re-branding the party, showing that it's not just for toffs". He may well have re-branded the party, but "showing that it's not just for toffs" was no part of that re-branding. Did the Conservative Party of Mrs Thatcher, John Major, William Hague and Michael Howard really have the image of being a party of toffs, as Rajini implies? I'd have thought not, except in the mind of an amnesiac, leftie Beebette. *

HATE MAIL

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Broadcasting House today was not without its laughs and presenter Paddy O'Connell was mostly on fine form - and it read out in full Shelley's wonderful Oxymandias. It was not beyond criticism however. (Sorry Paddy, I may be feeling benign today, but there are limits!).
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During his benign interview with Labour health minister Mike O'Brien, in the wake of Dr Foster's report on poor hospital standards, Paddy intervened to proclaim the glory of our beloved National Health Service (may it live forever): "Absolutely. And let me go further than you have. Millions of treatments are carried out with great skill, professionalism, and people are very happy. And our listener will want us to say that." Another ritual proclamation of love for the divinely-inspired N.H.S. The N.H.S. may do great things, and I have experienced a few of them, but I've also recently heard a few horror stories from my friends in recent weeks that suggest that rank incompetence and rudeness are surprisingly common within the organisation and causing considerable distress. So Paddy, don't presume to speak for your listener.
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The paper review featured actress Diana Rigg (Emma Peel), who launched a scathing attack on The Daily Mail (so scathing Paddy had to interrupt to stop it for legal reasons), and snotty, snooty Modernist art critic Ben Lewis, who joined in the attack, calling it "The Hate Mail" and going on to say, "I'm not a big fan of The Daily Mail. I don't think it's a force for goodness in Britain. I think it's a stain on our national character". (Jeez!!) The third guest was Labour lord Chris Smith. Ah, the joys of hearing the liberal-left in full cry!!