Partial to the BBC?

It’s a nice idea, forcing the state broadcaster to be impartial during the referendum campaigns, but how would that work in practice? Seriously, how would you do it? Labour party officials actually complained to the BBC about its ‘blatant’ right-wing bias, while those on the right see the Beeb as one step removed from outright communism. But most neutral observers – or as neutral as you can get – would have to conclude that overall, try as it might, Lord Reith’s gang naturally lean to the left. It is the inclination of instinct for most ‘creatives’ and it shows, over and over again in its output.

Bending over backwards to achieve diversity in the face of all logic, they recently tried to recruit a disabled weather presenter regardless of any actual aptitude to present or understand the weather – the affliction was to be the most important part of their CV. Nobody at the BBC’s HR department, apparently, anticipated the reaction they experienced; presumably they believe everybody thinks as they do and who can blame them? As a great institution they care about representing their audience and imagine them to lack robustness if confronted with ugly reality. This is a problem with many public bodies’ policy makers, introducing quotas for ethnic and other minority groups into recruitment, which inevitably causes resentment from those in the majority group passed over for selection or promotion in favour of somebody less suited to the job.

While pragmatism and with it a certain brusqueness and the possibility that a few may take it upon themselves to take offence is a feature of so-called right-wing discourse, the left care so much about not causing offence that they stray into caricature… with hilarious consequences. Well, hilarious if you are ‘normal’ but a cause of great anguish to the dashing knights of the court of King Equality. So while they trumpet diversity they take care to try not to draw attention to it and in so doing make it the biggest part of the story. It’s the black man in an ID parade syndrome, it’s Gordon Brown’s ‘bigoted woman’ and it is at the heart of genuine tragedies such as Rotherham.

Time and again the BBC reports careful spending as ‘austerity’, efficiency savings as ‘deep cuts’ and any attempt to introduce rigour into the education system as ‘controversial’ or ‘far-reaching’ or ‘brave’ when to many listeners it is simply high time something was done. For my part I don’t believe the BBC is deliberately left-wing in its output, it just echoes the sentiments of its staff. So when it comes to the EU, where the purported intelligentsia are fully wedded to the whole shebang it is little wonder that they report shenanigans from Brussels with a certain matter-of-fact acceptance which many listeners hear as cosy agreement; there is bias in receiving as well as giving.

It's all a big conspiracy!!!

Asking the BBC to be impartial is like asking miners to love Margaret Thatcher. She could be resurrected, return to save the planet, give everybody a gold Rolls Royce, a £100k p.a. pension and life and love everlasting and they would still want to spit in her face. Intransigence is a feature of the left and it’s not likely to change; Labour members even jeer their own leadership candidates if the party line isn’t toed and they dare to voice concerns about the cost of the state. So, I don’t blame the BBC for its natural lefty bias, but I do blame the left in general for a society too in thrall to the power of the state. Be your own man in the coming referendum, however 'impartial' the BBC tries to be.