Let’s Keep Kicking the Beeb!

Having failed in their efforts to dislodge more bodies and do more damage to the BBC, the right-leaning part of the Fourth Estate has returned for another go. There is even an attempt at moral justification, too: the Murdoch Sun claims to want to see justice for all those abused youngsters. Sadly, the paper never bothers to do any of its own investigating to try and get closure for them.

The paper also tries to smear Labour MP Tom Watson, via the loathsome Toby Young. Watson has emphasised that he did not say who was in power, or the time frame, when there was a “senior aide” at 10 Downing Street involved in the abuse of children. The Watson smear is repeated by the Mail’s appallingly dishonest Quentin Letts (let’s not), wrongly claiming that he identified “one of ... Thatcher’s friends”.

As with the rubbish I observed yesterday from Bozza, Mad Mel and Kavanagh, this latest crop of ranting vindictiveness devalues itself instantly by having to tell whoppers to stand up its arguments and often takes a stance on other issues that shows it to be, shall we say, not of the credible mainstream. This last is superbly highlighted by a piece on ConservativeHome by J-P Floru.

Floru, who is head of programmes at the Adam Smith Institute, that museum of outdated economic thought that has fraudulently appropriated the name of the founder of economics, starts from the premise that the BBC supports the Labour Party and should be sold off. Then he sprays his credibility up the wall by telling his readers that climate change isn’t happening, and isn’t man made.

Also at ConHome, Bruce “Brute” Anderson tries what he pretends is a softer line on the Corporation, but ends up recycling the old canard about reducing it to one TV channel and the kind of radio programming that appeals to your average Tory lush. He, too, is working from the false premise that the Beeb is biased, rather than the more obvious notion that Tory supporters like him might be.

Back at the Mail, desperation means that the preposterously puffed-up Simon Heffer resorts to a rhetorical question in the style of Fox News Channel (fair and balanced my arse) as he thunders “Was the BBC’s blind hatred of Thatcher to blame for Lord McAlpine smear”? He asserts that there is “an anti-Tory culture in certain parts of the BBC” and talks of “institutional leftism”, which means they don’t ask him on enough.

His colleague Max “Hitler” Hastings takes a more emollient tone, telling “The BBC can be brilliant - despite its shambolic army of suits and bean-counters”, but then, he gets to be a regular sofa-sitter on The Andy Marr Show (tm). Compare and contrast, as they say. And he still joins the clamour for drastically slimming down (that means a lot of cuts) the organisation. He too is about self-interest.

And the lot of them muster a pitiful level of honesty. No change there, then.