A few days ago I was listening to Radio 4, when an item came on about the International Olympic Committee profiteering over future Olympic Games coverage. Apparently they are selling the rights to various commercial television companies, like BskyB, and making hundreds of millions of pounds on the deal.
The BBC then interviewed one of their “talking heads”, who reported that there would be a limit to what could be done in “our country” as there are certain types of sports coverage which, by Act of Parliament, have to be available to “terrestrial/freeview TV”.
There was then a discussion as to whether the BBC would pay for any extra coverage not covered by this rule. In reply the reporter gushed that the BBC would certainly pay a big premium to have full coverage of the Olympics because of the importance in creating a shared sense of our “country” and of “Britishness”!
I wondered whether that reporter realised that he had admitted, on air, that one of the core purposes and objectives of the BBC is to propagandarise on behalf of “Britishness”?
In the light of this ‘revelation’ I would urge everyone to question which part or parts of the UK is actually covered when expressions such as “Our Nation”, “Our Country”, “The Country”, “National”, “The Nation”, etc. are used. Also please do consider critically what attempts are being made to manipulate our feelings in the forthcoming coverage of Olympic “Team GB”!
Well, I suppose that it is the British Broadcasting Corporation and now seems to have become entwined with the World Service, perhaps it is a cost-cutting exercise. However, as with devolution we have a Radio Scotland, Radio Wales and Radio Ulster but no Radio England. Funny that. As for Britishness, they have to push that so as to include all those who have rolled up here in the last 60+ years clutching the British passport given to them by Labour. We know from the forthcoming Rainbow Olympics that British means you can be any race, culture, nationality, religion from any obscure corner of the globe. If the BBC were suddenly to start promoting Englishness then they would they would have to abandon their Marxist one world stance for as Krishnan Guru-Murthy told David Milliband the likes of them can never be English but only British. The day the BBC takes the side of the ethnic English will be the day that hell freezes over. And even ITV did a programme last week about Eric Liddle and Harold Abrahams, one a Scot and the other a Jew so I am not sure if either could be termed ethnic English, for if we speak of American Jews then presumably we have to talk of English Jews rather than just English, I don't know. Anyhow, the only people they dredged up to speak about the subject were Trevor Macdonald and Kelly Holmes, most strange, as if the London Olympics is all about anybody who is not white, let alone ethnic English.
ReplyDeleteThey played "They've all gone to look for America" on the radio the other day and I suddenly had this mental picture of a suburban street in England and all the front doors wide open. When asked a neighbour said they had all gone to look for England. That's how it feels now, as if we put it down somewhere and somebody stole it so we are confused and keep looking for it. Sometimes, as with the death of Eric Sykes when they showed a clip of Eric and Hattie we think, "oh yes there's England, I'll just go and get it" and then it disappears again like a mirage and it drifts away from us into the past and the encircling one world gloom.
ReplyDeleteI have been doing this for about a year or two, to BBC South and BBC Oxford and ITV Meridian regional TV news. They do indeed refer to 'the country' and the UK, an example being a story of someone from Hampshire injured abroad - they were flown back to 'the UK', not England. But clearly they did come back to England, via Heathrow. They also mention 'the south', but the south of where? They are local broadcasters, they broadcast to England. They are trying to establish a regional identity, but this should not be at the detriment of the nation. I think it may be changing a little, one or two reporters do sometimes mention England now in their reports, (unlike the studio presenters) and I did once receive a personal reply from one who said she had understood me, which was nice to know. Lets all do it, they will notice and I believe take notice.
ReplyDeleteI find the weather forecast confusing sometimes when they talk of the north. When they talk of the south then you know they mean the South of England but when they talk of the north you are not sure if it is the North of England or the north of Great Britain and then is that just the North of Scotland or everywhere from Manchester northwards. At least though they do have to talk about Scotland and the North of England sometimes. This is probably the only time England is mentioned as when they talk of the South West and the Midlands they do not say England, even though to a Scot it could mean Dumfries and Galloway and the Central Belt.
DeleteEnglish not being on the National Census somehow gives it all away.
ReplyDelete[Just like out culture & heritage]
I thought they had put English on last time; but perhaps not. Anyhow, wasn't that the last census they are going to have as they are too frightened of revealing the rapidity with which the indigenous Europeans of Britain are being overtaken by the Afro-asians. We do have a reason to cheer, the fact that the only Wimbledon champion from these islands was English and a Yorkshireman to boot, probably displaying his Danish Viking heritage too if you look at how similar he looked to his Danish buddy with whom he bonded. As for the England-hating Scotsman who was cheered on by his first minister and our gum-chewing (there's dignity for you ) Scottish prime minister who flew the saltire at his front door, many of us English were secretly backing the Swiss man I'm afraid. If Murray did not back England in the Euros (anybody but he said) then why should we back him? If he had said he was British rather than parading his Scottish identity fair enough. As for Cameron, I thought he wanted to preserve the Union and remain the British prime minister? Then why does he parade his Scottishness and back an England-hating Scotsman? It seems to me we have more in common with the Danes, as evidenced by the doubles final, than with the Scots. As for our culture and heritage, remember the pm of Sweden said that all Swedes were immigrants and there was no Swedish culture; that of the New Swedes is much more exciting; and what Swedish culture there is is rubbish. Isn't this Marxist attack on Europeans all too familiar to us?
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