Friday Night's Telly

Trapped in a room where the TV was tuned to the BBC News, I noticed a man in a scarf standing in front of the White House proclaiming that President Trump had gone completely loopy.  Apart from his awful attitude to WOMEN, his dyed hair, the rigged election which denied Hillary’s term, Russian collusion in state affairs, he was now claiming to be about to open a dialogue with North Korea.  The reporter had spoken to Oprah Winfrey who had dismissed the plan as just another hair-brained stunt by a complete loser who was totally unfit to be President of the United States.  After all, she had said, if there had been even a grain of hope of achieving anything with North Korea, Trump would have already been awarded a Noble Peace Prize by an awestruck world establishment.  That just HADN’T HAPPENED!  So there!  He’ll be claiming the American economy is booming next. On the other hand, the reporter continued, “some Americans are saying” (and then the transmission faded out and we seemed to lose the man in a scarf and cut back to the studio).  Seamlessly, other news continued.  Apparently, wearing a headscarf can empower otherwise empty-headed women on the catwalk.  Quite what they would do with their new power wasn’t clear.  And then the National Lottery results – this seems to be a new game where the listener tries to work out what the announcer with the speech impediment is saying.

I admit to a little exaggeration and invention for effect but I do despair for the BBC.  Can they get any worse?  David Gould writing to the Sunday Times offers little hope:

“If anything can be accused of dividing the UK, it is the BBC. Left wing, contemptuous of Brexit, obsessed with gender and identity politics, the BBC increasingly broadcasts to a nation it believes should exist, rather than the one that does.

The diversity it so obsesses about is lacking at every level of its decision making. It is no good if a committee is balanced on gender or ethnicity if all those people are social liberals who think Tories are dangerous barbarians.”