After yet more evidence that BBC host Andrew Neil continues to abuse the Corporation’s social media guidelines has come another of his exercises in creative behaviour, as he has attempted - unsuccessfully - to suggest that the dice was loaded against the Leave side in the 2016 EU referendum. Sadly for The Great Man, this has been a campaign that has progressed not necessarily to his advantage.
To advance his cause, Neil took to that social media whose BBC guidelines he is so fond of ignoring, and waded right in: “The Establishment was in favour of Remain. Which bit do you have in mind?” That, of course, depends on how one defines the term “establishment”. If it were to include the Fourth Estate, the loudest and indeed most strident voices there, the Sun and Daily Mail, were for Leave. As were the Telegraph and Express.
So it should have been no surprise to see one response making the obvious request “Walk us through the evidence to support this statement please” - and including a photo of a young Jacob Rees Mogg, part of the Establishment and not a remain supporter.
What say Brillo? Well, he was up for it at first, responding “Let’s make it easy. Tell me one establishment institution that wasn’t in favour of Remain. Walk me through them. Go on”. Then James O’Brien appeared to burst his balloon. “The Spectator. Published by you, an ‘impartial’ BBC politics presenter, in return for money from the Ritz-owning Barclay Brothers. You’re right. That was really easy”. And the rest of the Leave-backing press.
This reality was not to his liking. So he changed the question. “The Times - News International - was Remain. The Mail on Sunday - [Associated Newspapers] - was Remain. The idea that Northern & Shell is establishment is best joke of the week. Give me non-media establishment that was Leave. Or go home”. But the Express is part of the media establishment, and this cannot be waved away by sneering dismissal.
But Neil was sure he was on to a winner, and so pitched his new question once more. “Still waiting for anyone to tell me of a non-media establishment institution that supported Leave”. Sadly for him, Adrian Schiller saw him coming.
“If ‘The Establishment’ means an interconnected web of the powerful and influential then that obviously includes press barons, political figures, financiers, businesses, and you. They don’t suddenly get ‘disestablished’ because they flog populism. Enough with your faux innocence … these ‘establishment’ figures necessarily use ‘media’ to get their message out. Something you may be familiar with”. Ouch!
And Peter Jukes had another part of the Establishment in mind. “Oh. Changed the question. You asked for ‘one’. But how about all those fake ‘institutions’ and think tanks funded by dark money? Lots of those. But yes, most objective and rational institutions backed remain, for now very obvious reasons”. The IEA, CPS, ASI, TPA and all the faux-popular groups they spawned. All have wormed their way into the Establishment.
Moreover, that’s before we get to the lawbreaking, which the BBC has been so keen to brush under the carpet. So perhaps they won’t mind this breach of those guidelines.
Except that their selective enforcement makes the Beeb look seriously bad. Again.
Enjoy your visit to Zelo Street? You can help this truly independent blog carry on talking truth to power, while retaining its sense of humour, by adding to its Just Giving page at
Neil's far right bone head mentality can be summed up by one of his actions as a Murdoch employee.
ReplyDeleteAfter the 1989 Hillsborough disaster, his fellow Murdoch employee shill, MacKoward, published a pack of far right lies in the Scum far right propaganda rag. The headline was The Truth.
Shortly afterwards, Neil, then at Murdoch's far right Sunday Times published a similar pack of lies with exactly the same headline. The only difference, typically, was the latter used longer weasel words.
Since then, MacKoward has been exposed for the gutless media sewer rat he is, though it took the victim families and their supporters to do it. Needless to say, corporate media mostly ignored the issue until it was forced to face it by an independent inquiry. Even then media ran away from the implications of rampant moral corruption in its "industry". Its employees and propaganda clerks are still running.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in the employment and treatment of the equally cowardly Neil and HIS Hillsborough lies. The BBC continue to employ him - as they do others - despite his record of far right propaganda and outright thuggery. In fact The fellow is a disgrace to what's left of human decency in this country and so is the BBC and its politics.
WHY HAS NEIL NEVER BEEN HELD TO ACCOUNT FOR HIS HILLSBOROUGH LIES?
Did Andrew Neil ever apologise for his long-running campaign at The Times to prove HIV was not the cause of AIDS. Neil was promoting this crackpot theory using the paper long after settled science had proven the link with the virus. As people might say 'fake news'.
ReplyDeleteHe also had no problems using David Irving to translate Goebbels's diaries for the paper, even though Irving's links to the far-right and his slapdash and biased approach to research were already well known.