The Aged P

Guardianista ecowarrior George Monbiot, Murdoch-baiting, expenses grabbing Labour MP Tom Watson and the media elite at the poll tax funded, left wing BBC are all, at this very moment almost certainly having deeply significant conversations with their lawyers because Lord McAlpine is hinting at the issue of writs for defamation.

Monbiot and Watson used Twitter to give legs to a BBC Newsnight report suggesting that a senior Tory, closely associated with Margaret Thatcher was implicated in the sexual abuse of boys in a North Wales children’s home in the 1980s.

The Conservative grandee, a party treasurer under Baroness Thatcher, was not identified in the Newsnight programme eight days ago.
But yesterday his lawyers accused the current affairs programme of “taking the coward’s way out” by encouraging people to seek out the accused politician’s name on the internet.

….and Monbiot and Watson were only too happy to oblige.

The BBC is now furiously back pedalling but a comment at the Guido Fawkes blog hits the nail right on the head

At the very least, the BBC are guilty of astonishingly shoddy research, and, potentially more likely, of using the tragedy of the victims of abuse in that care home to overshadow the scandal that is enmeshing the BBC over Savile.

But there was something else about the story that gave it a magical appeal to the left wing media and it’s supportive trolls – the link with Margaret Thatcher….

They hate her and their hatred is unceasing. They hate her for the fact that she broke the power of the left and her policies were endorsed by the electorate in three successive elections. That’s why they will grab at anything – Hillsborough, coalminers, paedophiles – to try to extract some kind of delayed revenge. It’s their crazed obsession and, to me, it is good news…..because the left has only two attitudes towards its opponents. Most of the time they simply despise the Heaths, Majors, Camerons and Cleggs who seek compromise and don’t wish to be branded as “nasty”.

But the ones they hate – the Thatchers, the Powells – they hate through fear….and if someone is feared by the left then to me it means they are doing a good job.

Schadenfreude….mmmmm….tastes so good when applied to the BBC…….

In an interview BBC Today’s John Humphrys had with Labour politician Harriet Harman the subject of Jimmy Savile came up

Mr. Humphrys added that the BBC has been drawn into a ‘witch-hunt’ over the issue.

An interesting turn of phrase – and it probably reflects the opinion of many within the BBC Establishment….remember Paul Merton and Ian Hislop on “Have I Got News For You” last week? When the topic of Savile and the BBC came up they both spent most of the time prattling on about the hypocrisy of the Mail Online and Merton managed to bring Margaret Thatcher into it.

The joke is that Humphrys, Hislop and Merton are paid a great deal of money to publicly skewer politicians, bankers, celebrities etc. who might have strayed from the straight and narrow – it’s all done from the standpoint of a high moral tone. If Savile had been a catholic priest or a tory politician they would have been having a field day. But the fact is they are paid a great deal of money by the BBC and they just can’t bring themselves to bite the hand that feeds them.

Which is why, Mr. Humphrys, we are all enjoying it so much – it’s schadenfreude – the taking of pleasure from the discomfort of others, the laughter generated when the trousers of a particularly pompous and moralising bore fall to the ground in the midst of a hectoring tirade.

And do you know what gives it an extra bit of spice, Mr Humphrys? It’s the fact that it irritates you, it grates on your sensitivities – and it will be bubbling around for a very long time..

It couldn’t happen to a nicer group of pompous, moralising bores…..

Interesting story from Guido Fawkes about how last December a journalist tried to get newspapers interested in an article about the BBC pulling the Savile exposure and highlighting some of the issues raised by it

I was told by several of the papers that taste was a factor in their decision but in at least one case the Leveson Inquiry, which was then at its height, was mentioned as being a problem as well. It’s common knowledge that at that time no paper wanted to take on what could turn out to be a controversial story, so they didn’t.”

Remember at the time the odious quartet of Steve Coogan, Max Mosley, Charlotte Church and Hugh Grant were swaggering from studio to studio being celebrated as heroes by fellow showbiz weasels. Who can doubt that in the febrile atmosphere of the moment, if he had been alive and some of his creepy antics reported he would have joined them in their well rehearsed performances of upright citizens hounded by malignant hacks. Indeed Charlotte Church was at it again a few days ago on the ITV chat show hosted by the oily Jonathon Ross, the man who has transformed insincerity into an art form.

Church, who was really there to push her seventh musical comeback, blathered on about being a timid and retiring soul deeply scarred by a vindictive media . But it all sounded a tad self serving in the wake of the Jimmy Savile scandal.

The fact is these showbiz types need the media to keep their names in the public eye. Hence they are circulating constantly using their latest book, film, play, therap, divorce, rape or arrest as a hook to get their faces in the camera lens. Their publicity drones flood the airwaves with their presence to “maintain the profile”. These dysfunctional , self centred parasites need the oxygen of the media to flourish and survive. Hence the hypocrisy of attitude – they want to control medium by exercising a personal veto on all publicity that is not to their liking.

The Savile /BBC scandal is a timely reminder that the media must not be hamstrung by legislation which restricts their ability to tell us something about the darker side of these glittering stars….

Remember how the soon to be installed CEO of “The New York Times” said he knew nothing about widespread long lived rumours of the sexual abuse of underage children committed by one of the BBC’s biggest stars, some of the abuse taking place on BBC premises?

Even when an item on a BBC current affairs programme investigating these rumours was pulled at the last minute…

Even when the go ahead was given a few days later to air a TV special celebrating the star’s life and saying what a wonderful wonderful guy he was…

Well, the plot thickens….

But yesterday Lord Patten – who said he himself first heard about the Savile allegations less than two weeks ago when he read about them in a newspaper – insisted Mr Thompson had been made aware of the Newsnight investigation last December by director of news Helen Boaden.
When asked to confirm that the former director-general knew about the investigation, he said: ‘Yes’.
His comments were later retracted by the BBC Trust, which said he ‘misspoke’ on the matter.

I wonder if any of those brilliant, sophisticated, right on, politically correct lovers of investigative journalism at the NYT will want to have a quiet word with Mr Thompson next time they are sipping their dry martinis?

hhhhmmmm….former BBC Director General Mark Thompson, soon to take up his new job as CEO of the New York Times has just been asked a rather awkward question – how much did he know about the pulling of a BBC programme that investigated allegations that a top BBC star, Jimmy Savile, who died in 2011, was a serial abuser of underage girls.

Although the BBC pulled the programme their rivals at ITV aired a more extensive exposure a few days ago which has forced the BBC onto the back foot.
Thompson claims he had nothing to do with cancelling the Newsnight piece and was totally unaware of the rumours about Savile that had been circulating around the BBC for many years.

After Savile died on October 29 last year, Newsnight spent six weeks investigating allegations that he abused pupils from Duncroft school in Surrey at the height of his fame in the 1970s.
BBC journalists spoke to ten women who claimed they had been abused or had knowledge of abuse at the school, which shut in 1980.
But the investigation was never aired after Peter Rippon, editor of Newsnight, decided to abandon the broadcast in December, shortly before the BBC broadcast three tributes to Savile over Christmas.
After it was dropped, an angry BBC journalist is said to have cornered Mr Thompson at a Christmas drinks party in London to complain.

Thompson got the job at the NYT because of his reputation as a smooth operator with his finger on the pulse of his organisation – yet he claims to be totally oblivious of the implications for the BBC of the Savile programme being pulled.

That’s OK then…..