Bingeing

Like Sue, I binged on politics this morning. It matters, it's fascinating, and it was still raining.

My ears, as ever, were listening out for bias and Paddy O'Connell's Broadcasting House decided to mock Andrea Leadsom for overusing the word 'clear'.

They had a dizzying montage of her saying 'clear' in their introduction and the 'feature proper' mocked her repeated use of 'clear' to the accompaniment of the kind of music I associate with late '50s/early '60s adverts showing women trying out soap powders.

Does she use 'clear' more than other politicians? I'm not at all clear about that. After all, the famous Jeremy Corbyn said 'clear' twice in his Marr interview today and the sainted Theresa May used the dread word three times in her last Marr interview.

Was this an example of some clever biased BBC type (who doesn't like her) spotting her using a word on a few occasions, finding it funny and then wangling it onto a receptive BH?

newspapers and Bingeingnewspapers

Like Sue, I binged on politics this morning. It matters, it's fascinating, and it was still raining.

My ears, as ever, were listening out for bias and Paddy O'Connell's Broadcasting House decided to mock Andrea Leadsom for overusing the word 'clear'.

They had a dizzying montage of her saying 'clear' in their introduction and the 'feature proper' mocked her repeated use of 'clear' to the accompaniment of the kind of music I associate with late '50s/early '60s adverts showing women trying out soap powders.

Does she use 'clear' more than other politicians? I'm not at all clear about that. After all, the famous Jeremy Corbyn said 'clear' twice in his Marr interview today and the sainted Theresa May used the dread word three times in her last Marr interview.

Was this an example of some clever biased BBC type (who doesn't like her) spotting her using a word on a few occasions, finding it funny and then wangling it onto a receptive BH?

Still (much to at least one of our readers' disgust), I have kept crediting Paddy for raising his game, impartiality-wise, in recent years (after his appallingly biased early years), and I'll give him a bit more credit here too - if not for the above!

The programme had been repeatedly pushing both the 'politics is too much for us at the moment' and the 'everyone's feeling down' memes this morning, and Paddy pushed them again during the paper review (and his reviewers followed suit).

Then (like in an old cartoon) a light bulb very clearly switched on inside his head and Paddy began saying that he was pushing this because even some of those who voted Leave were now feeling anxiety because of uncertainty over when Article 50 would be activated. He then pledged to find and put on air people (Leave types presumably) who are still feeling happy. I hope he does.

Meanwhile, over on BBC One...

The Andrew Marr programme's paper review sandwiched poor Tim Loughton MP between former Labour advisor Ayesha Hazarika and CNN's highly-opinionated (and rude) chief international correspondent Christiane Amanpour. 

Mr Loughton is, as you'll doubtless already know, leading Andrea Leadsom's campaign. Ayesha and Christiane aren't fans of Mrs. Leadsom. I bet you can guess what happened? (Poor Tim.)

The picture the programme's website uses to illustrate the programme will give you a flavour of it:

Later came (i) David Davis (on (a) to call for Tony Blair's head and (b) to back Theresa May), (ii) leading Leave/UKIP supporter Arron Banks (backing Mrs. Leadsom) and, finally, (iii) the famous Jeremy Corbyn (backing himself).

On how Andrew Marr dealt with David Davis over Theresa v Andrea, I'll just quote the questions he asked:

Now, you clashed with Theresa May a bit in the old days over civil liberties and other things.

You�re now backing her campaign. We�ve talked a lot about Andrea Leadsom, she�s a fresh face and so forth. Do you think that she is fit to be a British prime minister?

So people talk about the glass cliff, not the glass ceiling. But you take a women into a really difficult position and there�s a cliff and you push her off it. 

And you think she�s just a bit lacking in experience?

I was expecting fireworks with Arron Banks but they never came. Both sides treated each other with cautious respect. Andrew, inevitably, raised the issue of the 'worst poster ever', but he didn't make anywhere near as much of it as, I suspect, Evan Davis or James O'Brien would have done:

Andrew Marr: I guess, if there was one moment or poster which crystallised people�s worries about the Brexit side of the argument it was that Breaking Point poster with the migrants leading up, and Nigel Farage. Do you regret that in any way?

Arron Banks: I wasn�t really involved in that. That was a UKIP matter.

Andrew Marr: Did you think it was a mistake?

Arron Banks: I didn�t think it was a mistake. I think that in terms of the referendum it was very much the economy versus immigration, and I think it put immigration right at the forefront of people�s thoughts. I thought it was not a mistake at all.

As for Jeremy Corbyn, well, I don't think it was a 'toughie' (to put it mildly) but JC took exception to AM's line of questioning from the word go:

Andrew Marr: Now all this started with reaction to the Brexit vote, so a very, very straight forward question if I may to start with. Which way did you vote in that referendum yourself?

Jeremy Corbyn: Remain. I�m surprised you even ask the question.

Andrew Marr: Well I asked it because quite a lot of people around you suggested that you had never been a supporter.

Jeremy Corbyn: Nobody ever suggested I was going to do anything other than vote Remain, and I think you�re very well aware of that.

Despite that, the Bearded One generally seemed very relaxed, chipper even, throughout.  

And an even-more-heavily-bearded individual appeared at the end - the lead singer of Miracle Legion, a group I'd never heard of before (and who sound agreeably REM-like to me): 

newspapers and A marker for 'Marr'newspapers

Continuing with the Andrew Marr theme for a little longer...

In fairness to the Corbynistas, I think Len McCluskey was given quite a tough grilling by Andrew Marr this morning and that, in contrast, Lord Kinnock, repeating his plea for Jeremy Corbyn to go, was given an extremely easy ride. 

And (forgetting about the Corbynistas now) the Andrea Leadsom's interview was tough too. 

It began with a bang by quoting something she said three years saying that Brexit would be economically disastrous - clearly following the lead of the pro-Remain, pro-Theresa May Mail on Sunday whose absurdly OTT headline 'Hypocrite!' was an explicit attack on Mrs. Leadsom. Mrs. Leadsom's reply was that, having lead a major piece of research into the EU, the evidence of the EU's failings and unreformability had changed her mind. 

Now if Andrew Marr is to avoid accusations of being an 'Establishment tool', his next interview with Theresa May had better be a very tough one. 

Her own "low-key" behaviour during the referendum debate is open to a similar line of questioning to that which Andrew Marr gave Michael Gove. Was she playing a Machiavellian game?

Plus there are all those question raised by that devastating critique of Mrs. May's record by Jonathan Foreman - the piece pulled by the Telegraph allegedly after pressure from supporters of the Home Secretary.

If Andrew Marr goes soft on her and doesn't hammer away at these kind of concerns then charges of being an 'Establishment tool' might start to stick (even more).

newspapers and Birnam Wood comes to a BBC studionewspapers

Andrew Marr: "My voice is in my sword; thou bloodier villain than terms can give out"

Did you see Andrew Marr's extraordinary interview with Michael Gove? 

A reporter from Buzzfeed did and then tweeted, "I can't remember a more brutal Marr interview. #Gove".

I can't remember a more brutal one either.

Looking at the immediate reaction, admirers of Mr. Gove were appalled while enemies (and former admirers) of Mr. Gove were delighted. 

There have been lots of unkind references in recent days to Mr. Gove being Macbeth, with his wife Sarah cast as Lady Macbeth, Boris as Banquo and David Cameron as King Duncan. 

Well, Andrew Marr seemed to be playing the part of Macduff this morning. His opening words to Mr. Gove could have been, "Turn, hell-hound, turn" and, after the plug for Sunday Morning Live, he might very well have re-entered with Macgove's head.

Of course, the maddest cybernats and Corbynistas weren't having any of it. Here's one example of their kind of tweet this morning: 

Gove getting loads of time to spout his propaganda.  But McCluskey got a load of hassle   #Marr

Anyone watching that interview who still thinks Michael Gove got "loads of time to spout his propaganda" needs to seriously stop smoking whatever they've been smoking. 

This was a sustained assault on Mr. Gove's character and judgement by Andrew Marr and Andrew reacted to Mr. Gove's justifications with expressions of deep scepticism. Very little time was spent on Michael Gove's policy platform.

This counterblast to the usual Twitter crowd says it all:

If Marr had just grilled Corbyn like he did Gove, there'd be 100 petitions for his (Marr's) resignation by now complaining of BBC bias #marr

newspapers and Andy's Final Thoughtnewspapers

Sticking with the Marr programme, I was heartened that the news bulletin noted the anniversary of the Islamist slaughter of 38 tourists - including 30 British tourists - in the Tunisian resort of Sousse but, disturbingly, the bulletin avoided any mention of Islamism.

It merely described the terrorist atrocity as being an event where "a lone gunman went on a rampage".

Is the BBC retreating on reporting that story honestly too?

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Andrew Marr then teamed up with Andrew Neil to deliver a striking joint 'op-ed' on the EU referendum (prior to the paper review).

Neither said anything that hasn't been said elsewhere a thousand times already, but both - especially Andrew Marr - delivered it with feeling, as if it was 'something worth listening to'.

So let's listen to what Andrew Marr said...

His main point was that Britain is "deeply divided" and "not one country". There's a "yawning gap", he said, between "the posher, better-educated, richer" parts of the UK and "the huge swathes of post-industrial, ex-mining and struggling fishing and agricultural Britain".

So much, so gloomy.

Today's campaigners aren't to blame, he continued. We've been declining for the last 50 years. "Under our last 5 prime ministers we became a shopping nation" (thus, by counting back, locating the problem as starting under Mrs Thatcher). London prospered but the political and media class ignored "industrial Wales, the Black Country and struggling coastal towns", which became "ever poorer, ever more desolate".

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(Thank God he didn't mention Morecambe by name when talking of "struggling coastal towns"! 

We're, of course, not struggling in the slightest here in Morecambe, and not remotely desparate. We're on the rise again. 

Please, please, PLEASE come and visit us. I beg you, on bended knees, PLEASE!

We've got lots of excellent new restaurants, a lovely upgraded promenade and stone jetty, the relaunched Art Deco Midland Hotel (as featured in ITV's Poirot), some provocative rusty modernist architecture, a splash park to delight the kids (near to where Blobby Land used to be), new play areas to delight the older kids, several tattoo parlours, the Eric Morecambe statue (on a par with the Angel of the North and Nelson's Column), lots and lots of car parks, a Brexit-supporting Wetherspoons named in honour of Eric Morecambe, and spectacular views - from many angles - of Morecambe Bay, the Lakeland hills and the Pennines. What's not to love?

Mr Marr should holiday here in Morecambe. 

And so should Polly Toynbee, if she can even bear to tear herself away from her beloved Tuscany. I'd happily let her call me a bigot. I'd even buy her an �8.50 ham-and-pineapple pizza at Frankie and Benny's to make her feel as if she was back at home in her former Italian villa).

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Mr Marr then talked of the "waves of migration and globalised culture" that "washed among us, eroding our sense of self". The change of "colour and language" left "older people bemused and cut off", he said.

The influx of "eager, white, hard-working" East Europeans "alarmed" the poor parts of the country. The "self-confidently multi-ethnic, liberal, urban class" was "having such a good time they barely noticed".

He went on: "London spoke a lot but didn't listen. Well, it's heard now. This has been the rebellion of the diminished against the cocky, the ignored against the shapers of modern times, and the struggling against the strutting."

His concluding passage, delivered with a rhetoric flourish, said: "We are still today a lucky country, able to fashion our own future and with a wonderful history. But we are also divided, full of bad feelings and in choppy seas, still searching around for a rudder."

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I might have been brainwashed by BBC bias here, but I can't find much to disagree with there...

...though the language suggests a typical 'liberal' struggling to be 'honest' in the face of a massive 'shock'. 

And the polls have long suggested that concerns about mass immigration extend well beyond "older people". 

Plus, naturally, I thought he was describing his own circle - including much of the BBC - in his description of the "cocky", "liberal" urban class, and wished he'd admitted as much.

But you probably can't have everything, can you? (Can you?)

newspapers and On Laura Knewspapers

Laura K was there all night for BBC One's referendum coverage. 

Like David, who 'live blogged' the results on a comments thread below, I felt as if she looked - especially as the night went on - as if she'd been crying prior to her every single contribution. Either that or she was extremely tired. 

Knowing what I know about the unrelenting hatred for her from the Corbynistas, I gulped when her BBC One news bulletin reports in the immediate wake of the BBC's official calling of the referendum for Leave included some somewhat sarcastic-sounding criticisms of Jeremy Corbyn's underwhelming role in the campaign. I knew exactly what that would result in (and, checking Twitter, it did result in that very thing). 

(From my experience, 'somewhat sarcastic-sounding' is her default tone of voice when presenting reports for BBC bulletins). 

And the poor thing was a paper reviewer on this morning's Andrew Marr show. 

I gulped again when she, of all people, was invited to talk about the attempted coup against Jeremy Corbyn and was struck by how - in relating the story of the sacking of Hilary Benn - she kept on calling the Blairite Mr Benn "Hilary" whilst slipping into calling Mr Corbyn "Corbyn", and how she kept on stoking the story in a way the Corbynistas emphatically wouldn't have liked.

I didn't think that would help her either.

Trying to stand back and blog impartially about this, was Laura wrong to make criticism of Mr Corbyn one of the angles in her initial BBC One reports? And was she wrong to call Mr Benn "Hilary" so often whilst slipping into calling Mr Corbyn "Corbyn" (as if she was some kind of Blairite insider)?

On the first one I will give her the benefit of the doubt. The Labour leader's role in the referendum was equivocal, to put it mildly. The subsequent post-referendum spate of resignations from the shadow cabinet have shown that Laura K was onto something (though Corbynista diehards are free to air conspiracy theories that Laura K was 'in on' the conspiracy and helped give it a fair wind via the BBC).

On her repeated use of "Hilary" for Hilary Benn and her parallel slip in calling Jeremy Corbyn "Corbyn", well, I think that calls for an 'Hmmmm!' at the very least.

I certainly think it's beyond dispute that she's not biased in favour of the Bearded One.


P.S. And the plot thickens. The aforementioned Laura K has been at the forefront of this afternoon's major breaking news story concerning claims from Labour "sources" and documents leaked to the BBC, that JC's office "deliberately sabotaged" the EU Remain campaign.

That isn't going to help her either with the Corbynistas! (though I can't imagine the Blairites and Brownites disapproving, of course!)...

...though it might earn Jeremy Corbyn some grudging admiration from some Leave supporters, if true!!

newspapers and Reacting to 'Marr'newspapers

Do I really have anything intelligent and original to say about this morning's Andrew Marr programme? Probably not. But, as a seasoned blogger, I feel it's my professional duty unto Almighty God to speak my brains regardless. So here I go...

Before the programme even began I'd already spotted Andrew Marr's preview on BBC Breakfast:

Good morning. Well, eleven days to go till the referendum and I've decided to devote the programme almost entirely to the Prime Minister and the leader of the rebel insurgency Nigel Farage. They will be dominating the programme. A lot to ask them of course.

Was that biased? Some people on social media felt it was, though I couldn't work out whether they were classing AM's "leader of the rebel insurgency" bit as being biased towards Nigel Farage or biased against Nigel Farage. (Did they think Andrew was casting the sainted Nigel as a heroic leader of a Star Wars-style rebel alliance against the evil Empire, or as a wicked Taliban-style 'militant' instead?) What way do you read it? Or was it merely a harmless joke? 

The other thing I spotted was a surprising number of people on Twitter said they were placing bets that Nigel Farage would be interrupted much more than David Cameron. (One man said he'd placed a �10 bet that Nige would be interrupted three times more often than Dave). 

One of the things I was looking out for was to see if Andrew Marr mentioned the Sunday Times's rather incendiary headline about the government and the EU allegedly colluding to keep 'hush-hush' the possibility of up to 1.5 million Turks being giving free visa access to the UK until after the EU referendum. Andrew did indeed mention it during his run-through of the newspaper front pages. To the astonishment of many Brexiteers and the reporter at the Sunday Times (Tim Shipman), however, he didn't then follow that up by bringing it up with David Cameron (despite raising the Turkey issue with the PM more generally):

I have to say I found that omission a bit of a head-scratcher myself.

The paper review was unlike any other Marr programme paper review I've ever seen. Andrew Marr seemed stressed and tetchy, and Labour's Dame Baroness Helena Kennedy - one of Andy's most regular sofa guests - got surprisingly tetchy with him after he stopped her from talking at length over everyone else ("It's soooo unfair!", she thcreamed and thcreamed), and he got a bit stroppy with her too. (Trouble in paradise!)

And neither of their unhappy moods was enhanced by the contributions of former George W. Bush speechwriter David Frum and Dia Chakravarty of the TaxPayers' Alliance. Mr. Frum kept going all 'non-committal' when pressed to commit himself on Donald/Hillary or Brexit, while Dia was at all times fully 'committal' - far too 'committal' for Dame Baroness Helena Kennedy (though, to my mind, I found her excellent throughout).

As for the 'big interviews', well, I have to say that I didn't find them particularly imbalanced. 

Using stats, I made it 15 interruptions in just over 14 minutes for Nigel Farage and 28 interruptions in 21 minutes for David Cameron. Using my old 'interruption coefficient' system, that's an IC of 1.1 for Nige and 1.4 for Dave - meaning that Dave was interrupted more frequently than Nige (in proportion to the length of the interview). Not much more, but more nonetheless. 

That said think I Andrew Marr took a sharper, more focused line with the UKIP leader than with the Tory leader, pressing Nigel Farage on the HIV/immigrant issue with particular force. But he also had a few zingers at the PM, such as:

David Cameron: I have given my self-denying ordinance which I gave about ten days ago and it remains for the next thirteen...

Andrew Marr: You sent out Amber Rudd to do it for you! 

and:

People believe that you are overstating the case. And if you look at the audience in that ITV debate, for instance, they were sort of glassy eyed. They weren�t listening to you. And the reason they weren�t listening to you is perhaps because the warnings have been too extreme, too specific - all that stuff about house prices falling by 18% and so forth coming from the Treasury which can�t forecast very much ahead. And people are no longer listening. They simply don�t believe you.

Moving on...

All those legions of militant Corbynistas who absolutely clog the #bbcbias hashtag on Twitter with their endless rage against the BBC for not massively reporting the #toryelectionfraud affair might have been mollified by the fact that Andrew Marr did raise it with the Tory leader today. Admittedly not for long and half-heartedly, but it was raised, as they keep demanding, and Mr Cameron was forced to talk about if (briefly). So there! 

Not that the aforementioned Corbynistas even seemed to notice. They just kept on tweeting and complaining that 'Tory' #Marr hadn't mentioned it at all - as usual. Thus: #bbcbias. Hmm.

Plus Alison Balsom played Bach on the trumpet.

And talking of Alison...

newspapers and Au revoir newspapers

For my final post before I officially begin my two-week holiday in Raqqa, here's a Bank Holiday Monday smorgasbord...

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Today

I was going to begin it with John Humphrys's interview with Jackie Walker, but Sue and Sarah AB have absolutely nailed it already. 

"Bungled" is le mot juste. My original thoughts were to outline JH's interviewing here with phrases like "gumming" and "whacking her with a moth-eaten feather duster" but "bungled" is a much more precise way of putting it.

JH was simultaneously woefully under-prepared and distressingly OTT. She walked all over him - much to the delight of her fans on Twitter (the usual crowd).

Now Ms. Walker, without refusing to apologise for her false and obnoxious comments (indeed by openly revelling in them), is now back in the Corbynista fold. In contrast, suspended Labour MP Naz Shah, who has apologised and apologised and apologised (and won a good deal of respect from most quarters for so doing), is still suspended.

Go figure!

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Start the Week

This morning's Start the Week from the Hay Festival had me completely hooked. 

Its theme (perfect for a sunny bank holiday morning) was 'Spooks, war and genocide', and I found myself thinking rather more deeply about the issues raised than I might normally do. 

Now, I could share some of those new, deep thoughts with you (and say how fascinating former British soldier Harry Parker's novel sounds) but, instead, I'll just narrow things down to the programme's main point of disagreement: the question of how to get the balance right between the needs of national security and human rights (an issue I've never quite managed to satisfactorily resolve inside my own muddled head). 

The two poles of this vital argument were represented by Michael Hayden, the former director of the US National Security Agency who George W. Bush made Director of National Intelligence and then director of the CIA, and Philippe Sands, the  human rights lawyer who wants to see Mr. Bush tried. They engaged with each other thoughtfully and respectfully, both acknowledging the complexity of the issues involved. And both of them came across well. 

Disappointingly, presenter Tom Sutcliffe - representing the BBC here - marred things a bit by getting excessively hot-under-the-collar with Mr. Hayden on a couple of occasions over the Bush administration's use of 'enhanced interrogation techniques'. If Mr. Sands could remain calm and friendly towards the highly thoughtful Mr, Hayden, then surely Tom ought to have tried to keep his cool too. Plus he stopped Mr. Hayden in his tracks as soon as he began suggesting that President Obama was not only a continuation but, in some ways, an amplification of President Bush on some key national security issues. 

Much as I like Tom Sutcliffe (especially for Round Britain Quiz), I have to say that his own biases were showing through there. He should have kept calm and trusted his listeners. We're quite capable of making our own minds up (or at least trying to), thank you, without having some BBC/Guardian voice vigorously 'virtue signalling' at us.

I haven't so far mentioned that journalist Janine di Giovanni was also a guest on Start the Week there, did I? Apologies. A case of #everydaysexism probably.

Speaking of which...

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Woman's Hour


Also surprisingly fascinating was today's Woman's Hour. Yes, the subject was extremely niche - high-profile media types worrying about (women journalists) getting on (or not getting on) in the media - but it was also curiously thought-provoking, and it got better as it went on. 

Lots more deep thoughts flowed in my head as a result which, again, I won't bother you with. So what will I do instead? Well, I'll simply transcribe the start of the bit about the (in)famous Katie Hopkins, starring 'token male in the lionesses' den' Nick Ferrari from LBC (who you'll be relieved to hear survived the ordeal unscathed). It's quite revealing, I think, about the BBC mindset:

Emma Barnett (Woman's Hour presenter): The digital landscape is changed hopefully. It has also meant that, commercially...you mentioned commercial earlier, Camilla - what sells, what doesn't...we may have got to position where people are more extreme to get hits. So let me bring in somebody who, if you're talking about female polemicists in the modern day: Katie Hopkins. I want to understand. Does she fit in as a polemicist, someone like that? Or is she part of the kind-of internet culture provocateur? Nick, I'll ask you. What would you make of somebody like Katie Hopkins? Is she evening up the score for female polemicists? 

Nick Ferrari: I don't know whether she's evening out the score but obviously she's got a role to play. Yes, she's a voice. She's a voice who has a certain audience. It has a certain resonance. There are people out there who follow her. It might be totally opposite as I see heads shaking just about all around me at this table... 

Emma Barnett: A lot of heads shaking on this programme! 

Nick Ferrari: There's a lot of...they're even shaking in the control room. I've lost the whole...I've lost everybody...I've lost the whole of the BBC on this one!! 

Emma Barnett: Welcome to Woman's Hour, Nick Ferrari!

Indeed, Emma! 

(It was Nick's first appearance). 

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The World at One

For today's The World at One it was back to the Hay Festival. The main news story of the day, however, was the latest batch of Albanian economic migrants getting rescued in the English Channel. 

Interestingly, from yesterday's BBC One news bulletins onwards, the BBC hasn't hidden the fact that these escapees from Calais are Albanians. They haven't exactly gone overboard, however, in stressing the 'economic migrant' point and what that suggests: that there are obviously a lot of economic migrants from (non-war-torn) Albania (or now-peaceful Kosovo) in the camps at Calais. 

Why haven't we heard about them before? And, given that it eventually was revealed that Albanians (and others from the Balkans) also made up a surprisingly large number of those trying to get into Germany last summer, why haven't we heard much (if any) discussion on the BBC as to why that's the case? Just why are so many of these people from the Balkans trying to get here? (They aren't Syrian refugees. They aren't unaccompanied children.) It's a very under-reported (almost unreported) story, isn't it? 

Richard Galpin's report featured two interviewees: very briefly UKIP's Henry Bolton, ("UKIP's candidate to be Police and Crime Commissioner in Kent - a job he didn't get", as Richard introduced him") and, at much greater length, Damian Green PM ("former Home Office minister"). Mr. Green described the people crossing the channel as "refugees" - and wasn't picked up on that. 

We also got the reflections of Salman Rushdie on the subject. (Salman was with Martha Kearney at the Hay Festival.) He waxed literary and somewhat nebulous on matters political. He extolled the wonderful things about immigration for the UK but then conceded that there's probably been too much, too quick recently. That's worrying for him not so much in its own right but more because it's leading to the rise of the far-right across Europe. 

He did tell us an interesting story though about his final abandonment of his Muslim faith as a 14-year-old though. His coup-de-grace was to eat a ham sandwich. (By coincidence, I'd just eaten a ham sandwich before listening to him this lunchtime). 

The closing discussion between a historian, a neuroscientist and a novelist, focused to a surprising extent on the BBC's favourite subject: Mr. Donald Trump. (Boo!)

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Top Gear


How you doin'? 

Well, thanks for asking but I've nothing much to say about Top Gear (though, in true blogger style, that isn't going to stop me). 

I didn't watch it but I've read lots about its disappointing ratings, its largely unenthusiastic critical reviews and its less-than-wildly-enthusiastic public response  - with the exception of Matt LeBlanc, who everyone seems to have found likeable.

('So boring it barely exists': readers review the new Top Gear was the Guardian's less-than-Friendly headline.)

The BBC News website, as is its way, had the news of those ratings as one of the top five stories on its homepage earlier this afternoon. Oddly, they've now dropped it down to their Also in the news section! (O the embarrassment!) 

Despite not being entirely able to disguise the fact that Top Gear's return was something of a flop, the BBC article tried to be as Panglossian about it as it can be, casting that 4.4 million figure in the best possible light, quoting Chris Evans's tweets rather than all those negative tweets everyone else is citing, and describing those reviews as "mixed", #bbcbias.

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Marr


Catching up with yesterday's stuff, The Andrew Marr Show has received lots of comment as usual. I'm still recovering from Amanda Platell's semi-pornographic on-air flirting with Yanis 'Spock' Varoufakis - by far the most graphic flirting I've ever seen on the Marr show (even including all of Andrew's own sterling efforts while interviewing glamorous Hollywood actresses). I felt that the programme's producers missed a trick by not providing the paper review with a Barry White soundtrack.

As David P noted in the comments (after vomiting), Mr. Varoufakis was on fine form throughout. He may have been a complete flop as Greek finance minister, but he's great entertainment - and worrying 'right' about quite a lot of things (though I didn't buy his anti-Brexit point). He's what the Greek's might call 'a phenomenon'.

Doc Fox and Tony BLiar followed.

The Corbynistas on Twitter weren't at all happy at the good doc's appearance (some even blamed the 'Tory' BBC' for inviting him on, saying he's always on)...,but that was as nothing compared to how they reacted when the hated Tony came on. Liam was quickly forgotten, and all Hell broke loose.

Channelling the spirit of the blessed Boris, I'd said that was happened on Twitter at the point of the hated Mr. Blair's arrival was comparable to how Euripides's Bacchae reacted to King Pentheus after he banned their worship of the beloved (Jeremy Corbyn) Dionysus. They went into a wild frenzy and wanted to tear him apart. And Andy Marr went the way of Actaeon at the hands of these hermaphrodite maenads too, purely through association. (The world of 'BBC bias' gets madder and madder).

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The World This Weekend


My 'big thing' yesterday, if I'd had the time to post about it, was going to be Mark Mardell's latest EU referendum special on The World This Weekend. 

Our Mark had wangled another BBC jaunt (at our expense no doubt), this time to Berlin. He liked Berlin...which is nice.

There all-and-sundry sent us a postcard saying how much they want us to stay in the EU. They love us and wouldn't be too mean to us if we leave the EU but they so want us to stay and they will be mean enough to make us regret leaving.

All voices sang from the same Lutheran hymn sheet...except for the lady from what Mark called the "hard-right" AfD, who rather fancied seeing what would happen if we left.

'Will you punish the UK?' was Mark Mardell's question throughout.

His two studio guests, back in Blighty, were Sir Vince Cable and Gisela Stuart. That was fair enough. Gisela got a little less time than Sir Vince but Sir Vince was interrupted, while Gisela wasn't. Also fair enough.

I saw a detailed comment elsewhere, however, saying that Mark Mardell cut Gisela Stuart off, that there was hardly any time for Gisela, that unelected/kicked-out Sir Vince got an easy ride, that Mark Mardell ignored the main issue of the day "which was the immigration figures", and that there was "a long, biased report featuring only pro EU bigwigs and foreign students"...

...which reminded me of the danger I face, as a blogger, when it comes to the fraught question of confirmation bias.

That commenter spotted that Sir Vince got more time than Gisela but didn't recall that Sir Vince also got interrupted, unlike Gisela. He also didn't notice that Mark Mardell did raise those immigration figures during that interview (if only once). Nor did the commenter remember MM's interview with that striking AfD lady (despite remembering the pro-EU/pro-UK students who appeared for less than 30 seconds). And Gisela Stuart, if you listen back, didn't get cut off by Mark Mardell for reasons of bias. MM was clearly chafing at Sir Vince for time reasons in advance of his Berlin report and when Gisela begun replying to Sir Vince MM had already begun his link to the report. He immediately said he'd return to Gisela and Sir Vince later, which he did (and which is something else that commenter didn't remember).

This isn't a sneer at that commenter. It's a reminder and a possible mea culpa. We all hear what we hear. We only seem, however, to remember parts of what we hear on occasions. Something in us makes us forget the bits that don't confirm our point of view. And we also mishear things, perhaps for the same reason. We're all at risk of doing it. It's human nature. We probably all need to re-check what we've heard. Here endeth the lesson.

This feature struck me as being strikingly pro-EU-biased nonetheless. Please feel free to debunk me if you think I'm hardly any more reliable than the commenter above. I could be wrong.

I don't think I am though. This kind of thing has marked Mark Mardell's The World This Weekend for months.

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Farming Today


Talking about the BBC's EU referendum coverage, it would be wrong (and downright silly) not to acknowledge that certain BBC programmes really have been 'getting it about right'.

I've been fairly studiously monitoring Radio 4's Farming Today - one of the few BBC programmes the Sunday Telegraph's Christopher Booker thinks is beyond reproach - for some time.

And I agree with Christopher. I think Farming Today's EU referendum coverage has been beyond reproach.

Try Friday's edition, perhaps, for a taster.

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Countryfile


Countryfile on BBC One also did an EU referendum feature, courtesy of Tom Heap, this week.

Countryfile is a programme that matters. It has a big audience (bigger last night than the much-hyped Top Gear). Being Tom Heap, about whom we've written before, I expected heavy bias. I don't think I found it.

The structuring was very BBC. First came a section starring pro-Remain David Cameron, with two pro-Brexit voices as 'vox pops'. Then came a section starring pro-Leave Boris Johnson, with two pro-Remain voices as 'vox pops'.

I watched the Dave/Boris interviews closely. I spotted that Boris got more questioning from Tom than Dave and that Dave was photographed holding a lamb while Boris just stood in front of a stream, but I also note that people on Twitter then claimed that Tom - despite all that questioning - seemed to like Boris more. You see what you see. I sniffed hard and smelled a bit of pro-Remain bias. Others sniffed and found pro-Brexit bias. And all of us mainstream political types on Twitter, one way or the other, were utterly overwhelmed by the usual deluge of furious-sounding Corbynistas complaining that it was the 'Tory' BBC featuring nothing but Tories, making crude jokes about Mr. Cameron and pig farms, and wondering why Jeremy Corbyn wasn't appearing.

Complaints from all sides. And, maybe, here they have a point.

I was, however, being in holiday mood, mainly focusing on the lighter stuff. I was concentrating on Dave in his casual jeans, Boris in his traditional farmer's outfit and Anita Rani in her wetsuit - and on the stunning photography from the Countryfile crew of Snowdonia, especially the beautiful shots of Snowdon, Llanberis, the lake of Llyn Padam, ruined Dolbadarn Castle and the mountains guarding glorious Llanberis Pass. I think that's one of the most 'romantic' spots in the UK (only Morecambe Bay beats it for views) and Countryfile really did it proud.

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BBC News at Six

Talking of the BBC's EU referendum coverage...

Our latest stats regarding BBC One's News at Six coverage, specifically monitoring which side's angle comes first in either the headlines or the whole bulletin now shows (not including Monday 30/5, which I've not watched yet), and following on from our last update, now read:

21 for Remain

7 for Leave

Two of the latest batch are, unusually, hard to call, so they haven't been included them the tally (either being neutral or too hard to decide upon). I'll list them among the others below, so please feel free (if you're more certain than I am) to allocate them to one side or the other:

22/5 Referendum battle lines are drawn over the Health Service and the chances of Turkey joining the EU. With controversy over what future migration levels might be David Cameron clashes with one of his own ministers on whether Britain could veto Turkish membership. The head of NHS England says the Health Service would be effected in a UK exit caused an economic slowdown. We'll be exploring the latest arguments from the two sides, with less than five weeks to go.

23/5 Voting to leave the EU would trigger a year-long recession. A bleak forecast from the Treasury. A warning from both David Cameron and George Osborne: at least half a million jobs could go

24/5 David Cameron: I think there's some very strong retail arguments about the cost of a holiday...
Newsreader: Now it's air fares on the line in the EU referendum debate. Claim and counter-claim. How do voters react?

25/5 A top economic group says quitting the EU could mean two extra years of austerity. Leave campaigners say it's propaganda.

26/5 Immigration takes centre-stage in the referendum debate as the annual figures show the numbers are up. The difference between those coming in and those leaving was over 300,000. More than half were from the EU.
Boris Johnson: That is pushing up our population growth. It's putting huge pressure on housing, on services such as the NHS and, of course, on school places and everything else.
Newsreader: We'll be getting the reaction from voters about these new figures.

27/5 Lurid and misleading. An influential group of MPs slams the claims being made by politicians on both sides of the EU referendum debate. The Treasury Select Committee says the public is rightly fed up about bogus and confusing arguments made by the Leave and Remain campaigns.
Andrew Tyrie: What we've got is an arms race of claim and counter-claim. It's not just confusing the public; it's impoverishing the political debate.
He called for an amnesty on misleading claims made by politicians. But is it likely?

28/5 Young people are being urged to register to vote in next month's European Union election. The former Labour leader Ed Miliband said millions of them are yet to register, just days before the deadline. Well, meanwhile the Employment minister Priti Patel has said Britain faces a brighter economic future outside the EU.

29/5 Downing Street says Leave campaigners in the EU referendum are trying to distract voters from the real economic cost of leaving the European Union. It comes after two senior Conservatives told the Prime Minister he must admit he can't cut immigration while Britain remains in the EU.

That's a pretty clear 3:1 ratio in favour of Remain.

The extent to which that reflects the relative fire power of the two campaigns rather than blatant BBC is open to question. The imbalance is clear and striking though.

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Newsnight

As for Newsnight, it's a while since I updated you (and a full update will be posted when I get back), but we left our count of pro-Remain, pro-Leave guests,, as of 17 April, as: 

36 Pro-Remain

22 Pro-Leave

7 Questionable  

Well, here's what's happened since:

18/4

Joint interview: Daniel Hannan, Conservative (LEAVE); Liz Truss, Labour (REMAIN); Juergen Maier, CEO, Siemens UK (REMAIN); Nicola Horlick, CEO, Money & Co. (REMAIN); Gerard Lyons, economics adviser to Boris Johnson (LEAVE); Farzana Baduel, Curzon PR (LEAVE)

19/4

Interview: Pascal Lamy, former EU trade commissioner  (REMAIN);

Interview: David Owen, former UK Foreign Secretary (LEAVE)

20/4

Joint interview: Suzanne Evans, Vote Leave (LEAVE); Anne Applebaum, The Washington Post (REMAIN)

22/4

Joint interview: Liam Fox, Conservative (LEAVE); Louis Susman, former US ambassador to UK (REMAIN)

25/4

Joint interview: Penny Mordaunt, Conservative (LEAVE); Alan Johnson, Labour (REMAIN); Richard Walton, former counter-terrorism chief at the Met (LEAVE); Colonel Richard Kemp, former Joint Intelligence Committee (LEAVE); Robert Wainwright, director, Europol (REMAIN); Shami Chakrabarti, human rights lawyer (REMAIN)

28/4

Interview: Andrea Leadsom, Conservative (LEAVE)

9/5

Interview: Liam Fox, Conservative (LEAVE)

Interview: Yanis Varoufakis. former Greek Finance Minister (REMAIN) 

10/5

Joint interview: Kwasi Kwateng, Conservative (LEAVE); David Hanson, Labour (REMAIN); Dr Rohini Deshmukh, GP (LEAVE????); Harriet Sargeant, Centre for Policy Studies (LEAVE); Jonathan Portes, NIESR (REMAIN?????); Rev. Alyson Buxton, Rector of Boston (REMAIN????)

12/5

Interview: Lord Lamont, Conservative (LEAVE)

Interview: Michel Sapin. French Finance Minister (REMAIN)

16/5
Joint interview: Douglas Carswell, UKIP (LEAVE); Amber Rudd, Conservative (REMAIN); Dr Dia Chakravarty, Taxpayers' Alliance (LEAVE; Tara Palmeri, Politico (LEAVE?????); Sir Stephen Wall, former UK diplomat (REMAIN); Minette Batters, NFU (REMAIN)

17/5
Interview: John McDonnell, Labour (REMAIN)

18/5
Interview: Liz Truss, Conservative (REMAIN)

Interview: Suzanne Evans, Vote Leave (LEAVE))

20/5

Joint interview: Peter Oborne, Daily Mail (LEAVE); Polly Mackenzie. former Lib Dem advisor (REMAIN) 

23/5

Joint interview: Andrea Leadsom, Conservative (LEAVE): Chuka Umunna, Labour (REMAIN); Charles Crawford, former diplomat (LEAVE); Ngaire Woods, Oxford University (REMAIN); Kathrine Kleveland, Leader of the Norwegian 'NO to EU' party (LEAVE); Peter Sutherland, international businessman and former Attorney General of Ireland (REMAIN)

25/5
Interview: Alan Sugar, businessman (REMAIN)

26/5 
Interview: Theresa Villiers, Conservative (LEAVE)
Interview: Nicola Sturgeon, SNP (REMAIN)

27/5
Interview: Chris Patten, former BBC Trust chairman (REMAIN)
Interview: Jacob Rees-Mogg, Conservative (LEAVE)

That raises our running total to:

60 Pro-Remain

44 Pro-Leave

12 Questionable  

As for the sub-trend of regarding who gets most of all of the solo appearances (i.e. not in joint interviews), well, that continues as well. I make the totals for that:

Remain - 25

Leave - 14

Both have balanced out more in recent weeks, though Remain still has a clear advantage.

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Newsnight (again)

In the meantime, however, a new feature was added to Newsnight's coverage - a series of personal reflections from non-politicians. I've been monitoring that too. Here's how that's going:

20/4

My Decision video: Dreda Say Mitchell, writer (LEAVE)

28/4

My Decision video: Michael Morpurgo, writer (REMAIN)

4/5

My Decision video: Sir Tom Hunter, entrepreneur and philanthropist  (UNDECIDED)

9/5

My Decision video: Tracey Emin, artist (REMAIN)

My Decision video: John Timpson, businessman (LEAVE)

19/5

My Decision video: Gillian Duffy, 'that bigoted woman' (LEAVE)

24/5
My Decision video: Hilary Alexander, former Telegraph fashion writer (LEAVE)

27/5
My Decision video: Charles Moore, former Telegraph editor (LEAVE)

That's working out (so far) as: 

Pro-Remain; 2

Pro-Leave: 5

Undecided - 1

...which, as you can see, is trending firmly in the other direction to the earlier stats and, thus, somewhat complicating matters.

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Twitter

Some good news. Jon Donnison has stopped tweeting anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian stuff. His Twitter feed has gone from inflammatory to innocuous this year. That's progress.

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Talking of Twitter, the main hashtag on Twitter regarding 'BBC bias' at the moment is #toryelectionfraud #BBCbias. The Corbynistas have gone from nowhere (except Media Lens) a few years back to pretty much 'owning' the 'BBC bias' market on Twitter. Even the cybernats are being put into the shade by the Corbynistas.

A small, utterly unrepresentative social media echo chamber, always righteously banging on about BBC bias without just cause?

Strangely (and apologies for not mentioning this earlier), I'd been seeing this joint hashtag for ages in the run up to the elections this May. I'd particularly noticed that they were furious at Laura Kuenssberg (as they are about most things) for failing to tweet about it. Then on the day after polling day this year, Laura K did tweet about #toryelectionfraud and the BBC One News at Six mentioned #toryelectionfraud and the BBC's Twitter feed mentioned #toryelectionfraud. 

In the interests of disinterested, honest blogging, I could see their point. I don't know what to make of it though.

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newspapers and Unusual things on 'Marr', and that 'Sunday Express' lead story about Turkey and the EUnewspapers

This morning's Andrew Marr programme did a couple of unusual things during its paper review: 

The clip mentioned in the second tweet there was of Boris a few years back saying that Turkey should be let into the EU and that it's not right that they should be excluded, especially just because they are Muslims.

Both of those things did happen and both of them are unusual. 

Somewhat more usual, however, was Andrew Marr doing a spot of impromptu editorialising and describing the Sunday Express's take on the possibility of huge numbers of Turks moving through the EU to the UK as "much more extreme".

That same headline really isn't getting 'a good press' from the BBC today. Roger Johnson on BBC Breakfast earlier felt the need to add "Of course Turkey is some way to joining the EU yet" after reading it out, and BBC Middle East correspondent Quentin Somerville gave it the full BBC Twitter treatment (albeit pithily), echoing the head of CAABU: