It's good to have standards. Just...not more than one at a a time.

If Jeremy Clarkson must apologise to Gordon Brown, then Margaret Thatcher is owed an apology too

I have followed this for a while. Time to weigh in.

Uniquely funded; uniquely run.

At the very least, on top of some very questionable personal agendas masquerading as policy, there does seem to be a multiplicity of standards (certainly more than two) at the institution I am required to co-fund.

What is most worrying is the mindset in 'the bubble'. This programme, (which I have to say I have followed and enjoyed enormously over the years, and indeed found most of the two above named protagonists pretty funny when they don't descend into left-leaning 'right-on' ad hominems to an easy to whip up crowd), is 'live' is it not? Or at least topical to a few days.

Did it not occur to any involved that, especially with Ms. Brand present, that what they deem acceptable and 'edgy' might to others be as offensive, if not more so in its mass broadcast form, as something that may have been said in private but got a set of collective PC knickers in a twist and various folk running to teacher? I'd like to think if it had been 'Have I Got News For You', Ms. Brand at least might have found herself on a rather uncomfortable end of the others' wit, as did the unfortunate original presenter.

It's like there is a cloak of immunity over the gilded ones who grace our public airwaves, so long as they conform to, or better yet enhance the groupthink. From Gaza to gobby comics, I am getting a bit tired of being included in what the BBC and its invited, restricted-membership 'in-crowd' thinks I think (or at least thinks I should), and presumes to represent or claim on my behalf.

Actually, for all that actually happens tangibly in reaction, there might well be.

This is not the service promised. I want my refund.

ps:

Not that I am within the sound of Bow Bells, but I wonder if there are certain senior ladies from the politico-media establishment elite who have taken it upon themselves to be 'guardians of our thinking' (and I am sure Ms. Brand will be on board with the sentiment if not the targets) who, in this new phrasing-cautious era, might be referred to as 'a bit of a Jay Hunt'?

pps:

On a more serious, or at least less trivial note, this latest episode really represents another concerning metaphor for the culture of image vs. reality, and process vs. result that is being foisted upon us by our elected, and often totally unrepresentative (and very definitely unelected) 'masters' and 'mistresses' (or whatever the heck collective term they can come up with and deem now required over a taxpayer-funded outreach weekend).

A person who does not believe themselves at fault and says so can find the full force of the law thrown at them. A totally unrepentant felon briefly mouths some weasel words and the legal system rewards them with limitless concessions.

Sorry is no longer the hardest word; it is now, in some quarters, without value, at least to those of us not interested in just the words but also the deeds, and refuse to engage with the silly semantic games that so entertain, and seemingly satisfy too many who should know better, and betray their positions by indulging so easily in them.

Being seen to be something, or not, is now of more value than actually doing anything, or not. A slippery path across the board, with no good outcome for any of us, complicit or not.

Addendum - I have often wondered what racism/being racist is; it seems at best a rather moving/evolving entity. Just been led to this: racismtest.com - not going to go near it, at least online, for all sorts of reasons, but interesting that it's there.

Row, row, row the boat...

The Brown devaluation

Convention thinking?

For the last few days I have been reading and watching such as the BBC dutifully trot out, much as they did the 'bad form on a boat', the odd notion that there is a 'convention' that certain things are 'not done'.

Such as mentioning, by way of some balance to the 'nothing to see here, and if there was it's all O....k' mantras (issued by the government and parroted from press release by 'journalists' and 'editors' who are clearly too busy with budget cuts to worry about 'reporting' facts - host and guests on the Andrew Marr show still in blissful, if ironic agreement as to Mrs. Palin's grasp of things as evidenced by her 'thinking Africa was a country'. I suspect some guests the BBC could have invited...selected on at whim and less keen toe the party line might have pointed out to a news editor how this notion came about and was so enthusiastically embraced by those who think it's OK even if it didn't happen... 'as it's something she might have said') all sides of the argument, possibly including non-partisan notions from those involved who might understand economics and care about country before career.

I knew the politico-media establishment was an old-boys (and young Blair/Brown babes) inter-marrying club, and I now know it is about as corrupt as it's possible to get, but it astounds me that the level of in-breeding has led to such arrogance as to presume that their stupid attempts at fobbing the public with such blatant and irrelevant distractions to the evidence of our own eyes is going to work. It's either a fact or not. It's either what is or isn't. It is either right or wrong. It's either parliamentary process or it isn't. Not some school playground 'thing' that gets conjured up when one party says so... especially as it is most likely dropped like a hot potato when they are on the wrong end of the logic subsequently.

Maybe it's just like the last days of the Reich and those in denial are simply partying like it's 1945 in the Bunkers. Or they know something we don't about how getting the 'right' vote result can and will be engineered.

Maybe the plan is to add a few more million 'lesson-learning' Civil servants, quango-crats and BBC researchers/commissioning editors to the payroll to ensure that if obvious questions do get asked, and essential statements do get made, no one who needs to know outside the bubble actually gets to hear them raised. Or if they do, the author's credibility is first 'shaped' to put anything they do say in a special kind of 'context'.

It's one thing to be sold down the river. But it's insult to injury to be funding through tax or fee the acceleration to the rapids (instead of investing in lifebelts) by adding more opinion-heavy, over-influential dead-weights as ballast, to make the productive population's efforts at paddling against the tide even more difficult.

Daily Mail - For years he made fun of the absurd, gold-plated public sector jobs in the Guardian. As unemployment in the REAL world heads for 3m, Littlejohn's patience runs out

Newsnight -

Gaurdian - In a crisis calling for big ideas, Osborne is woefully lacking