AE on Telly News (NEW CONCEPTS)

[Mick Harper]

Countryfile (BBC-1) ran a much needed recruitment film for rural right-wing extremists who often suffer from feelings of isolation, far from the big city marches and demonstrations. Anyway, lads, now you know they exist, what they're called and where they meet you can tell your mates -- not many watch Countryfile, I'll be bound. Bring your own boots but, please, no sheets.

[Mick Harper]

Naga Munchetty -- Latest

The BBC is suffering from institutional liberalism, according to latest reports. In future, hair splitting decisions must be referred immediately to the Director-General's office for a ruling. And now over to one of the luvvies who signed the petition, Krishnan Guru-Murthy. Thanks, John, I have with me here at the Conservative Party Conference Craig Oliver who used to be a senior manager of BBC News and David Cameron's Director of Communications but don't worry, I've checked and he's going to say all the right things. Craig, are you outraged? Yes, Krish, in spades.

[Wile E. Coyote]

Yes the answer is simple, it's a new two stage decision.

Firstly it goes off to the Complaints unit. They take their decision.

Secondly it is sent off to the BBC Values Compatibility unit, to ensure that the Complaints unit decision is consistent with the values that the BBC is currently seeking to engender.

Where the complaints unit get it wrong, in that the decision does not meet the values test, the decision is reversed and investigators in the complaints section are forced to undertake retraining or fired.

Wiley has cracked it.

[Mick Harper]

You missed the AE error. Everybody kept saying "The BBC is committed to anti-racism". Last time I read the Charter it specifically said the BBC has to be politically neutral.

[Grant]

But surely the point is there are a set of opinions which are above politics -- anti racism; anti anti semitism; anti climate change denial. If you don't hold these views you are simply no longer a human being. You are effectively what in olden times was called an Outlaw. Eventually you will be able to just kill these people

[Mick Harper]

You are quite right. I was expressing an AE point rather than a societal one. But that is the AE point. The BBC is not aware that anti-racism is an -ism, an ideology, a political viewpoint. Racism is against the law, or mostly so, so the BBC cannot be racist. It can be, even has to be, anti-racists but, to obey its Charter, it really ought not to be anti-racist. If you listen carefully to the Naga Munchetty piece (and even more the attempt by her colleague to skirt the issue) you will sort of see what I mean but even I flounder slightly. But that's what we are here for.

[Ishmael]

[Mick Harper]

It's always brilliant when Hatty says it, careful ignoral when I say it. Not that I'm bitter or anything. No, I'm pleased for her. She needs re-assurance. She's not a tough old bird like me. I'm all right with it. Not even worth mentioning. Must get on.

[Hatty]

My post wasn't intended as a new idea, just as confirmation of Mick's 'hillfort' thesis. The farmer also confirmed the TME view of hillforts as a series of pragmatic pit-stops, established organically as it were (rather than specially selected, important sites as many 'alternative' historians seem to believe).

Occasionally hillforts are called hill-top enclosures which sounds more accurate but is counter-intuitive -- why drive animals uphill at the end of their journey? No-one considers the question put by Mick, 'Where did the dung go?'

[Mick Harper]

Two great two-hour Second World War epics on the telly this weekend. The King's Choice (BBC-4) covered King Haakon of Norway's peregrinations in May 1940 after the German invasion. I can't say how accurate it was though it did pull its punches when it came to Britain's invasion of Norway the day before Germany's. It illustrated an important question facing small nations when invaded by immeasurably larger ones: surrender quickly and avoid bloodshed or put up a fight and avoid dishonour.

Six Baltic countries were faced with this dilemma at the time. Four of them -- Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia and Denmark gave in without a fight; one, Norway, put up a fight, and one, Finland, did the unthinkable and survived. Don't ask me what's best.

[Mick Harper]

The other one was Nazi Titanic (History Channel). In 1940 Goebbels was looking to a) beat the British plutocrats and b) beat the Hollywood Judaeo-plutocrats. He decided on a mega-blockbuster about the sinking of the Titanic showing how it was all a money-making scheme by the British ruling elite and featured Lord Bruce Ismay barking out orders to over-pliant subordinates. So far, so true. But by the time it was finished, in 1942-3, the whole thing could be viewed as a metaphor of the sinking of a state under the barking orders of Lord Bruce Hitler and distribution plans had to be shelved.

But that was not the end. Goebbels allowed it to be shown everywhere except Germany on the grounds it was a triff film (he was an artist as well as a patriot) and a decade later the Brits used it for a lot of footage in their Titanic film A Night to Remember, with Kenneth More in the Jack Dawson role but with tin legs or something ... it's been years. Anyway the prog is very instructive, as much for artistic temperament as German power politics, should you come across it.

[Mick Harper]

Listening to comedy, how often do you expect a joke to come along? Well, whatever it is, forget it, and listen to Ed Reardon's Week (BBC Radio 4 or it may be R4Ex, I haven't quite sussed this 'radio'). Every line is funny. It's quite spectacular.

[Mick Harper]

Thank God my sister's left. I had to pretend I was watching Doc Martin for her sake in case she thought I was a moron.

Sister: This is an old one.
Brother: No, they just seem like that.

[Hatty]

BBC4 programme on Van Meegeren, the Dutch forger famous for flogging a 'Vermeer' to Goering, is an absorbing tale even for non-art lovers. Chimes with a lot of our findings.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00095j6

[Mick Harper]

I'm only a little way into it -- some of us can't sit around all day watching television -- but every time the presenter pointed out some Vermeer brilliance or other I shouted out, "How come you can see it but nobody else could when Vermeers cost two guilders?" and every time he pointed out an obvious van Meegeren solecism I shouted out, "How come you can see it but the world's foremost Vermeer experts couldn't?" I had to stop then because the other people in the TV day room wanted me to shut up.