Tim Davie
The time of Andrew Neil at the BBC was for a time, but not for all time. Good thing too.
Friday, 4 September 2020
Has The Beeb Binned Brillo?
On one issue du jour, the Guardian, and the increasingly desperate and downmarket Telegraph, are in agreement today, and that is the pronouncement by new BBC Director-General Tim Davie on the Corporation’s staff using social media accounts. “If you want to be an opinionated columnist or a partisan campaigner on social media then that is a valid choice, but you should not be working at the BBC”, he told during a speech in Cardiff.
There would be new rules coming in within days on the use of Twitter and other platforms. These would be “rigorously enforced”. One wonders if the people at the Tel took the time to warn another part of the Barclay Brothers’ empire about the new régime, because one BBC stalwart has been pitching in on Twitter very publicly today.
A Tweeter called Lisa had challenged the Co-Op, telling “Hey [Co-Op UK]as a trans person I was please to see your adverts featuring a trans women and celebrating diversity, I visited your stores as a result, but why bother if your going to turn around ignore your members wishes and place adverts and fund transphobia in the Spectator”. They replied.
“Hi Lisa, this advert was placed as part of a package by our media buyers. We are taking up the issue with them with a view to them not using this publication again in the future. Thanks”. This was too much for former Sunday Times editor Andrew Neil, now overseeing the Speccy. He duly went in with both feet in no style at all.
“No need to bother, Co-op. As of today you are henceforth banned from advertising in The Spectator, in perpetuity. We will not have companies like yours use their financial might to try to influence our editorial content, which is entirely a matter for the editor”. There was a small number of bots and trolls backing the Brillo stance. Plus some clowns.
One in the latter category was Annunziata Rees Mogg (crazy name, crazy gal?!?!?) who duly pontificated “According to this Co-op are boycotting [the Spectator]. Perhaps I’ll boycott Co-op because a 4 pack of tinned tomatoes are £5 and its claims of supporting local communities just means ripping off those who can’t drive to a proper supermarket?” If only she really did her own shopping, she’d know what the stuff cost.
But attention continued to be focused on Brillo. It was as if he had not got the memo, and was continuing in the same mode that saw him smear the Observer’s Carole Cadwalladr recently. That one he got away with, but if Davie is to have any credibility as DG, he cannot be allowed to throw his weight around like that on a public Twitter feed.
So one other possibility enters: has he actually left the Corporation’s employ for good? It was, after all, only last weekend when deeply unpleasant former Sun editor Kelvin McFilth suggested that Brillo, along with Brexit Party Oberscheissenführer Nigel “Thirsty” Farage, was being lined up for a new BBC-challenging news broadcaster called GB News.
Perhaps one of the two parties would care to clarify Andrew Neil’s position. He has faced years of criticism for holding down a berth at the BBC while using his Twitter account in what looks to be a highly partisan manner. If no-one will come clean about his status, and he isn’t being reined in, observers can reach only one conclusion - that he’s been binned.
The time of Andrew Neil at the BBC was for a time, but not for all time. Good thing too.
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The time of Andrew Neil at the BBC was for a time, but not for all time. Good thing too.
And the bias of Maitlis now officially confirmed? Sorry, of course, that is the right sort ofbias!
ReplyDeleteEh?
DeleteWon't he be scampering off to head one of those Fox News-type monstrosities we're apparently going to get foisted on us soon?
ReplyDeleteI asked about this yesterday, and it appears the Andrew Neil is not an actual BBC employee,but he is a contractor.
ReplyDeleteSo while working for the BBC is technically not an employee
Therefore can get around these new rules
"If a contract is exclusive then one is deemed an employee under IR35. If one can work for other organs one is not caught. Some very clever lawyers in employment law."
I am not sure if the "hated" Gary Linekar is also a contractor or BBC staff member, but if he is a contractor like Neil, then you can bet the "defundthebbc" mob will say that Linekar will have to follow the BBC rules even though he is not an employee but Neil will be given loads of leeway
Neil's problem is that he has the look and sound of someone who can feel the noose tightening on his fat tory neck.
ReplyDeleteAndy Neil complains about the Co-op using its financial position to influence the editorial position of the Spectator? Perhaps he ought to have a word with Murdoch, the Barclay Bros and Rothermere using their wealth to influence UK governments over the decades affecting far, far far more people than the readership of the Spectator.
ReplyDeleteDidn't the deeply unpleasant Neil claim that the writers at the Spectator control the editorial content, in the sense that they are free to write any kind of contrarian claptrap for clicks? And that the editorial team do not control the content? So how, you may ask, would Co-Op's pulling of advertising threaten that policy or influence editorial in any way? Something is not right.
ReplyDelete@17:31
ReplyDeleteYou're lying again. Maitlis said "Dominic Cummings broke the rules, the country can see that and it's shocked the government cannot." A statement of fact is not biassed.
Durham police described Cummings' reported actions as a "breach of the regulations that would have warranted police intervention".
I'll admit that Maitlis may have slightly exaggerated and could have added that "lying racist cunts who refuse to recognise reality unless it conforms to their prejudices can't see that".
No
ReplyDelete"BBC chief asks Andrew Neil, scourge of woke brigade, to return"
Our Free Press
@00:29
ReplyDeleteThank you for proving the point that Nazis always accuse their adversaries of lying when they themselves are lying:
"But it remained for the Jews, with their unqualified capacity for falsehood, and their fighting comrades, the Marxists, to impute responsibility for the downfall precisely to the man who alone had shown a superhuman will and energy in his effort to prevent the catastrophe which he had foreseen and to save the nation from that hour of complete overthrow and shame. By placing responsibility for the loss of the world war on the shoulders of Ludendorff they took away the weapon of moral right from the only adversary dangerous enough to be likely to succeed in bringing the betrayers of the Fatherland to Justice.
All this was inspired by the principle—which is quite true within itself—that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods."