The Guardian BBC - more out of control than ever?

Where to start? The Andrew Marr show at the start of the week of local elections kicks off with Dame Helena Kennedy (Lab) Mr Jackie Ashley (Lab), and yet another Graun (Lab) hack - "youthful" Nicholas Watt (who despite having been a career hack straight from uni in 1990, working on papers that have rarely if ever done anything as unpleasant as make a profit) is apparently such a nonentity that he doesn't rate his own Wikipedia page, so TMP cannot easily look up and find out that he the grandson of some Labour peer) the BBC wants to continue to prep for full-blown punditry glory on the sofa. The Guardian-BBC clearly believes it is beyond reach, and on the home stretch.


Poort old Dave Cameron turns up looking for a bit of pre-election puff, and instead has to give an uncomfortable account after his worst week so far, and crashes straight into Marr's "inappropriate Murdoch" ambush. He is of course forced to "believe in a strong BBC with the licence fee funding it"...  Although he actually ended up making a half decent fist of it - possibly the best possible outcome in the trickiest of circumstances. Which suggests he is still surrounded and advised by the wrong people; especially the LDs who are continually undermining, sniping and briefing, and a civil service that remains seriously compromised by 13 years of careful infiltration and indoctrination by the likes of Common Purpose.

David Cameron trying his best

TMP has tried many times to warn the government that propaganda wing of the Labour Party was out of control, and suggested that re-purposing the BBC "back to Reith" was a priority, and instead a clumsy and apparently poorly advised DC managed to fumble his way, and pretty much destroy the Tory swing-vote kingmaker! Nevertheless, Murdoch still had a grenade left for Brown and the at least equally culpable Labour party, but Brown is already deep in history, and the public do not care. Maybe the transparent naivety of the charming posh boy will win a few hearts; we shall see.

Harriet Harman

Within a few minutes, an even more rabid than usual Harriet Harperson, Harridan of the Left and leading challenger for most hypocritical person at Westminster, was on the BBC yet again, this time haranguing Andrew Neil with the proposition that Jeremy Hunt rhymed with himself, and should have gone at the first glimpse of innuendo.

 


Andrew Neil did manage to proposition  tedious Hattie with the point that Lord Sugar was sufficiently disgusted by Ken Livingstone that he handed David Cameron his one moment of light relief in an otherwise dire week.

Three more yawn-filled years of the unpopular and charismatically challenged combo Balls/Milliband should be enough to put it all  straight, but everyone in the coalition REALLY needs to wake up and start doing the right things where the future of the BBC is concerned.

Without even touching on political bias, there is a rich enough list of "ultra vires" adventures (the £40m iPlayer, the >£200m website, BBC Vectra, the Salford Palace of Follies etc), to enable a decent roll of heads after a brief enquiry on value for money. The damage done to the UK independent and commercial sector in all those many areas that are stifled by the BBC is incalculable. All the way back to the original BBC micro!

As for "The Voice" - well shameful doesn't begin to describe the whole story of how this piece of prime tat has been manipulated onto our screen for the aggrandisement of the "celebs" and their record companies.

Nigel Farage on Thursday's BBC1 Question Time (last one before the election) won a lot of Romford support for his common sense remarks - see video alongside. Romford was once Toryland personified, but is plainly not impressed right now. So Nigel, use that 11% opinion poll rating, please change the party name to something more acceptably progressive (how about TMP? Maybe even "the real conservative party"?) and get some of those practical points and commonsense policies at least as well understood as your passion to stick two fingers up at the Euro superstate, while we still can.

 ... although the BBC tried its best to infiltrate  even a Romford QT audience with government hostile sceptics, and also impose Polly (high priestesses of Graun lefties) Toynbee and the very media savvy Labour MP and doyenne of BBC sofas Diane (what about those privately educated kids?) Abbott on them.

The government front man on QT was Chris Grayling, bless him and his good intentions; but Grayling is not known to be a very forceful or impressive presenter in such panel discussions, as he again confirmed. Where's WiIlly Hague hiding these days?

But at the end of the day, in the matter of following up those fateful Guardian "discoveries" that were so nicely timed to settle old scores for Labour with Murdoch for his defection from Labour support, this all seems to be more about keeping a neutered Murdoch & Co. off Guardian-BBC turf than dealing with the fundamental malaise that all the mainstream media - and now especially the BBC - remain far too powerful and influential for the good of the country at any level: social, economic and cultural.

Leveson is just an another costly enquiry about what bears do in the woods, so we despair; and I suspect you may do as well...

Yours, as ever

TMP

PS: We enjoyed this footnote on Nick Watts Linkedin entry: