With nearly all votes counted, Ms Hyde-Smith had taken 53.9% of the vote in the staunchly Republican state compared to 46.1% for Mr Espy.

That’s quite a decisive win considering traditionally the mid term elections trend against the incumbent President’s party. Plus the overwhelming disdain for President Trump from almost all the media, showbiz and the establishment “conservative” punditocracy

Naturally the BBC was disappointed. Taking the lead from their friends at NYT, WaPo and CNN they had orgasmed over what was claimed to be Hyde-Smith’s macaca moment….

The race narrowed after Ms Hyde-Smith, who is white, was recorded saying she would happily attend a public hanging. The comments evoked the lynching of African-Americans in a state scarred by a history of racial violence.

Of course the beeb failed to point out that state officials who turned a blind eye to Jim Crow, the KKK and the lynchings were almost entirely Democrats. But why spoil a good narrative with historical facts….

To be fair the beeb did refer to Espy’s “ethical issues”

The Democrat has himself come under scrutiny for his 2011 lobbying work in the Ivory Coast, whose former leader Laurent Gbagbo is on trial at the International Criminal Court. Mr Espy was agriculture secretary under President Bill Clinton, but resigned under a cloud of corruption allegations, on which he was later acquitted.

Nevertheless, although forced through gritted teeth to declare the Trump supported Hyde-Smith’s win as decisive, the BBC had to weasel something out of it

Yet Democrats and their candidate Mike Espy may well claim some sort of moral victory. In a state widely regarded as a Republican stronghold they made this run-off election a genuine battle.

Trump 1 Macaca 0

Very good news…..

I suspect that some of the drivers of this escapade were

1. Police and BBC guilt over covering up the Jimmy Savile stuff for so long
2. Sir Cliff’s insistence that his sexuality is a private matter
3. Sir Cliff’s very unfashionable public stance as a Christian

Points 2 & 3 do not appear to fit easily into the world view of the 21st century BBC…..indeed the beeb seems positively antagonistic to such sentiments as discretion about sexuality and declarations of Christian faith.

Hence an almost fanatical determination to use the naming of Sir Cliff as a suspect in an underage sexual abuse investigation and the resultant police search as a golden opportunity to publicly humiliate the man.

Naturally the BBC and the rest of the media are bloviating about “press freedom” and “the public’s right to know.

Pure bollocks.

The BBC didn’t post the report discreetly on the TV equivalent of page 15 – it was not only given a front page splash but also subsequently entered for a “scoop of the year” competition. They probably saw it as an opportunity to humiliate someone whose slightly old fashioned views just didn’t resonate with their own “liberated”, progressive outlook.

Strangely my Facebook timeline (usually full of anti Trump, anti Brexit, pro Corbyn bloviations) is almost silent over the judge’s damning indictment. Imagine. however, the cacophony from certain quarters if it had been the Mail or The Sun “wot done it”….

According to Guido Tony Blair has finally grasped that a return to front line politics is a definite no no

 I can’t come into front-line politics. There’s just too much hostility, and also there are elements of the media who would literally move to destroy mode if I tried to do that

But he is still convinced he has his finger on the pulse of the British people

Blair says there are millions of “politically homeless” people in Britain

You don’t have to be a genius, of course, to realise his idea of the politically homeless does not refer to the Sunderlands and Dudleys and those millions of other working class voters who used the referendum to give a V sign to all the great and the good.

Clearly he means people like him – pro EU, metropolitan, internationally minded, virtue signaling and well salaried members of the chattering classes….Blairite, Lib Dem and oh so Green

So he intends to work behind the scenes, using his wealth and contacts to help  build a platform for these folk to exchange ideas and share a vision and comfort each other through the post referendum, post Trump dark days

Problem is there already exists a ready made platform for such people that is also run by them – and it’s taxpayer funded…

The BBC……

Celebs pimping their latest book, film, album, play or tour on TV chat shows….

It’s as inevitable as a starving public sector worker sobbing over Tory “cuts” in a  BBCQT audience – or the presence of some unfunny left wing privately educated “comedian” on HIGNFY.

The reasoning is quite straightforward, of course. It’s a relatively cheap format and certainly not labour intensive. Most of the preparatory planning is driven by publicists, agents and PR drones hustling for a bit of action. The set, once constructed, can be wheeled out time and time again and you can bet your boots that there will be zero tension filled moments. The stage will be swirling with ersatz bonhomie, fixed smiles and false laughter and the celeb will be treated as a veritable genius of comedy or music or whatever.

It’s Polyfilla TV, padding out premium broadcasting space and making life simpler for the schedulers..hence the ubiquitous presence of chat shows on every channel….but especially the BBC.

And it’s the Beeb which must provide us with a particular problem. Over the weeks the celebs tramp though BBC Breakfast, The One Show, Graham Norton and several others all with something to sell. Tickets, books – they are marketing a product, they are ADVERTISING…..

Such a dirty word on the advert free Beeb – yet their publicist or the studio or the record company or the publisher are plumping these celebs in front of the cameras and onto our screens to make money. What’s more, with their appearance fees the celebs are being paid to encourage us to buy more stuff – paid out of the poll tax levy taken out of our pockets and pursed via the TV licence fee.

No wonder they’re all grinning like imbeciles and slapping each other on the back – it’s trebles all round courtesy of the taxpayer.

So here’s a suggestion to balance the scales just a little. From the moment the chat show airs all  payments to the celeb from sales of tickets, records, book etc. should be taxed at, say, 5% and, at the end of the financial year, the total should be re-distributed to TV licence payers as a bonus for putting up with these self-important grinning morons for another year….

Simples…

The proverbial Martian who was observing Earth and listened to “Any Questions” on BBC Radio or watched BBC Question Time on TV could be forgiven for assuming that, ever since 2010 the British people have been groaning under the boots of a fascist/capitalist/fatcat banker clique and are crying out for a left wing messiah who will lead them to the promised land of rainbows, unicorns and money trees – and (quelle surprise), welcome hundreds of thousands of “refugees” with open arms

Outside in the real world, of course, that particular type of infantilism fails to resonate.

So – why the discrepancy? Alison Pearson, who recently appeared on one of the panels, thinks she might have the answer

After the recording, the show’s excellent host, Jonathan Dimbleby, sighed heavily and told me it was a constant problem. He and the whole AQ team found it immensely frustrating that Tories simply did not show up on the night to add their voices. The producer said it would cost £5,000 a week to pay someone to assemble a politically balanced audience

Maybe – but one anecdote in the comments painted a slightly darker picture

I applied to join the Question Time audience four times using different details each time. Three times I expressed conservative views and voting and I heard nothing. One time I expressed socialist views and voting, and was invited to take part. Only an anecdote, but perhaps it reflects a wider issue. Question Time’s audience is never balanced. Any Questions is always loaded by lefties who use forums or rely on union shop stewards to urge each other on to go along. But I suppose these people feel at home because the current affairs output of the BBC aligns so closely with their political stance

BBC being rather selective? That can’t possibly be true…can it?

Russell Brand – sliced and diced during BBC Question Time by a member of the audience (who was obviously a UKIP supporter)……

It had all been going so well for Brand – he had been interrupting with impunity, shouting over the women on the panel, shrieking simplistic slogans buttered by vulgarities.
‘Stand for Parliament then!’ the old man boomed. Russell looked as though he had been rabbit-punched. ‘Stand!’ repeated the man. ‘Do it!’
‘I’m scared I’d become one of them,’ mewed Brand. He meant become one of the Westminster crowd. The audience scoffed at this pathetic excuse, perhaps suspecting that multi-millionaire Brand would hate to be an MP because he’d have to declare his income and would soon be exposed as a political fraud……….The fight went out of Brand. A balloon shrivelled

Brand had prepared for the show by memorising a few pithy phrases (Farage as a “pound shop Enoch Powell” was clearly contrived but nevertheless a neat barb) and, on a series of cards, had written down a series of Unite bullet points. Add to the mix those trusty old BBCQT crowd pleasers ”bankers” (BOO) “the city” (HISS) “tax dodgers” (SNARL) and orgasms of ecstasy were rippling through many in the “balanced” audience.

Everything was working to script.

But Russell had made a fatal mistake. He had forgotten that BBCQT is a two way show. Unlike his own routines or the regular chat shows or HIGNFY the audience is not there as a congregation of sycophants whose sole purpose is to massage showbiz egos with rapturous applause. It’s there to come back at the panel with awkward ripostes – and that’s where the script gets blown out of the window.

Brand was obviously shaken by that man’s contemptuous put down and, for the rest of the programme, appeared visibly shrunken.

But why the hell does it take an anonymous face in a crowd to show up Brand as a stuttering, stumbling knownothing with less grasp of political and economic reality than an earwig of average intelligence?

It’s because, on television, he’s been given an easy ride with softball interviews, indulged like some sort of precocious infant actor from a remake of “Annie”….Paxman, anyone?

That hasn’t always been the case with other inarticulate peddlers of political  infantilism. BNP’s Nick Griffin was mercilessly dismantled on one BBCQT show and the assault was so savage that both himself and his party slipped mercifully into oblivion.

So why not Brand?

The answer, my friend, is obvious. His infantile pseudo revolutionary rhetoric, his friend of the downtrodden posturing, his carefully choreographed presence at left wing protests fits comfortably with the mindset of the middle class metropolitan poseurs who dominate the worlds of the media and the arts. They despise the “fatcats” of industry and commerce, the men and women who run the systems that generate the wealth that funds the cultural sector either directly by paying the wages which enables their employees to purchase the tickets or indirectly via the taxes that subsidise elements of the media (BBC) and whole swathes of grant funded artistic ventures.

If only once, on television, an interviewer or a fellow panellist had just turned round at the end of one of Brand’s unintelligible diatribes, looked him squarely in the eye and and said “What a load of bollocks” and asked him to explain his commercial activities in Hollywood, his association with nice little tax avoidance schemes in the UK and his regular forays into the Ritz and Claridges.

But he’s a luvvie – and luvvies never eat their own…unless they’re called Angus Deayton

Classic anti Farage tweaking via the Telegraph’s James Kirkup in a snarky piece about the forthcoming Farage/Clegg debates – Kirkup uses that pic of Farage perspiring during his UKIP conference speech alongside a standard stock photo of Clegg looking steady and serious…..par for the course, I suppose.

Young Kirkup claims that the format is nearing some sort of agreement

LBC, the radio station that hosts Mr Clegg’s weekly phone-in, will stage a debate expected to have fewer rules and restrictions than the BBC. The debate – also before a live audience – will be hosted by Nick Ferrari, a more combative broadcaster than Dimbleby, who is expected to allow more “lively” exchanges.

So far, so good….Ferrari won’t take any prisoners but, unlike anyone at the BBC (except maybe Andrew Neil) he does tend to resonate with white van drivers and their wives, a constituency that is not renowned for going starry eyed over beards and sandals.

But warning bells did start to ring in my head when I read about the TV debate

The two men will be given an hour to argue about the merits of Britain’s membership of the European Union, moderated by David Dimbleby.

Ah, Dimbleby, the Grand Panjandrum of BBC Question Time who inevitably intervenes when he feels a member of the BBCQT panel is simply not up to his own intellectual level. Pompous, smooth and trousering sackfuls of taxpayers’ money via the licence fee he is the epitome of BBC smugness, socially and culturally closer to Clegg than Farage. When you also hear that the audience will be carefully selected to demonstrate “balance” red lights should be flashing in the Farage camp because we just know the BBCQT definition of “balance” from week after week of handpicked rent-a-quote lefty androids who always seem to get chosen when Dimbleby’s eyes scour the audience for his “random” selection…..and isn’t it strange that they often seem to be allowed a few additional comments just in case the message didn’t get through.

During the 2008 and 2012 US Presidential elections the TV debates were organised and “moderated” by the big networks, all dominated by the same liberal/left viewpoint  as our own BBC. The Republican establishment is now coming under increasing pressure from the Tea Party movement to demand a less Democrat friendly structure to the 2016 debates.

I certainly hope that Farage and UKIP also box very cannily with the BBC. It is an organisation that is institutionally inimical to almost everything UKIP stands for.

When you sup with the Beeb you need a very long spoon…..

I watched the BBC’s take on the “Great Train Robbers” last night. The Telegraph dubbed it polished which it certainly was. But I can’t help agreeing with one of the comments.

For my money this show was more style than substance. Yes the filming, sets and score were immaculate but where was the script and believability? It sounded more like a 50’s Pinewood studio crime caper. The dialogue between the crooks was dire as if any of them ever spoke to each other in comic voice bubble language. As a consequence I found it very difficult to believe in them and it failed to add any depth to the plot and characters.

It was an excellent example of the geezer caper genre, but more “Italian Job” than “Get Carter” with the snappy one liners and lack of  atmospheric menace – and the production values were not always 100%….snow and leafless trees in August?

Presenting Bruce Reynolds as framing the blag as a symbolic strike against “The Establishment” was a laughable attempt to over egg the whole affair with retro sixties mythology. They were South London thieves, greedy, violent and preferring others to work hard so that they could then rob them of the fruits of their labour.

Robin Hoods they were not.

But then the romantic affair between media luvvies and violent criminals dates back to that very era of the sixties when the colour supplements began to glamourise the Krays.

Dan Hodges, I think, hit the nail on the head. During the “caper” the train driver, Jack Mills, and some of the postal staff were savagely beaten. Others were terrorised into compliance. But, of course, they weren’t chirpy geezers who were dreaming of opening a club or buying a villa in Spain. They were just ordinary anonymous faces who did the boring jobs that keep our society ticking over.

Tonight, the BBC will present the first of a two-part docudrama on the robbery. One, called the “Copper’s Tale”, focuses on the efforts of the police to catch the perpetrators of the crime. The second, “The Robber’s Tale”, shows things from the perspective of Biggs and his colleagues. I presume it was done that way in the interests of balance. I also suspect there will not be a third episode “The Railway Worker’s Tale”.

Amen to that, say I….

Hey you licence paying suckers – yes, you over there worried about your job, your bills and the fact you are being priced out of the housing market. You can relax because the BBC is at last responding to your cri de coeur.

The Beeb feels your pain and knows exactly what you want.

So they are paying a hundred women from all over the world to assemble at Broadcasting House on Friday October 25th

We’ll ask them to tell us where they think the world’s women are today, and to set out their goals for the future.

That’s right…air fares, hotel bills, plenty of food and drink over the weekend.

Plus fee payments, of course…..making it, at a conservative estimate, half a million pounds at least – courtesy of the ever generous taxpayer.

Who are these women?

They hail from all over the world, and from walks of life. They do all kinds of things: they make music, save lives, raise children, run businesses, write, preach, act and tell jokes. 

Here’s a taster

Salwa Abu Libdeh Palestinian TV journalist

Madawi Al-Rasheed Saudi academic, gender expert @MadawiDr

Nadia Al-Sakkaf Editor, Yemen Times @theyementimes

Sreymom Ang Cambodian fashion designer

Joyce Aoko Aruga Student teacher, Kenya

And who do we have from Britain? Here’s a sample

Anna Arrowsmith English porn film director @annaarrowsmith

Sarah Walker (No picture) Head of the English Collective of Prostitutes

Kate Smurthwaite British stand-up comedian and activist @cruella1

Jacqui Smith Former UK Home Secretary @smithjj62

Oh and I almost forgot….

Cherie Blair British barrister and philanthropist @CherieBlairFndn

Cherie Blair…..philanthropist…..lol…

Don’t get me wrong. Some of the 100 women listed are worthy of respect and have achieved a great deal against immense odds. But too many are failed politicians, international bureaucrats, scribblers or obscure inhabitants of The Guardian Arts pages. If they want to meet together to produce a bland concoction of anodyne declarations that are heavy on good intentions but empty of substance then that’s fine. But let someone pay for it out of their own bank account – not out of the taxpayer’s pocket.

No…this is yet another example of the profligacy of the BBC. Pumping out middle class therapy for the chattering classes paid for you and me via the BBC Poll Tax.

You’ll be able to follow every development on BBC TV, radio and online.

No thanks – I’ll be busy rubbing bleach into my eyes. It’ll be far less painful…..

Seeing the significantly unamusing Marl Steel introduced on last week’s HIGNFY as a “left wing comedian” was the last straw. OK so Hislop suddenly came on fire re Leveson/Press Control and there was a joke about Mehdi Hasan – but notice Steel and Merton didn’t join in.

As Will Self has said the prospect of Merton and Hislop sounding off against bankers and assorted “fatcats”  is a bit rich when you consider they get paid several thousands of taxpayers money per programme and both must be raking in very generous six figure incomes (and using perfectly “legal” tax avoiding strategies).

Add  the regiment of left wing “comedians” who pop up on HIGNFY and scores of other panel shows and you have an overwhelming barrage of left groupthink moulded along Guardian/BBC lines bombarding us practically every evening.

So, time to pitch a new “concept” panel show to BBC/ITV/Ch4. Usual studio set up, long bench, MC in the middle, arselicking fawning audience laughing at every remark as if THEY ARE, LIKE, JUST THE FUNNIEST EVAH….

But, with a different panel..

MELANIE PHILLIPS

DOUGLAS MURRAY

DAVID STARKEY

DANIEL HANNAN

All chaired by NIGEL FARAGE…

It would be called MTL….Mock The Left…because the constant target would be the beloved icons of the left…Atheists, the EU, the UN, Barack Obama, Greenpeace, Hamas, Hollywood. Kirsty Wark etc. Points would be given for biggest Lie, the worst example of Hypocrisy and the most barefaced manifestation of Outrageous Outrage emanating from the North London chattering classes. A permanent feature of each show would be three balloons bearing the faces of Polly Toynbee, John Prescott and George Monbiot. Every week each balloon would be pricked to great cheers from the audience after a particularly pompous and self opinionated quote from the appropriate individual.

The show would end with a classic pseuds corner extract from the arts pages of The Guardian and the paper would then be burned and stuffed down a toilet to great cheers from the audience…

OK BBC/ITV/Ch4……I’m waiting for your call…..