Gavin Esler on Boris's "silly" and "juvenile" poem

More Boris, and more Gavin Esler...

Here's a question Gavin put to Turkish journalist Guney Yildez on today's Dateline London:

Guney, I just wondered how...He wrote a pretty juvenile poem which won a prize which said things about President Erdogan which, I think, on reflection he might think are rather silly. I mean, does that matter to people in Turkey?

Let's just recall that Boris's winning poem was meant to be juvenile. That's what Douglas Murray of the Spectator specifically asked for - and he didn't ask for it for childish reasons. He was being deadly serious.

newspapers and Gavin Esler on Boris's "silly" and "juvenile" poemnewspapers

More Boris, and more Gavin Esler...

Here's a question Gavin put to Turkish journalist Guney Yildez on today's Dateline London:

Guney, I just wondered how...He wrote a pretty juvenile poem which won a prize which said things about President Erdogan which, I think, on reflection he might think are rather silly. I mean, does that matter to people in Turkey?

Let's just recall that Boris's winning poem was meant to be juvenile. That's what Douglas Murray of the Spectator specifically asked for - and he didn't ask for it for childish reasons. He was being deadly serious. 

It was a sincere protest at the prosecution of a German comedian (in Germany) at the whim of the increasingly despotic and paranoid Erdogan and that German comedian, Jan B�hmermann, had posted his own deliberately juvenile poem to protest against Erdogan's suppression of free speech - which was the very thing that got him prosecuted (as he suspected it might).

I say 'Bravo to Boris!' for standing up for free speech and opposing an Islamist abuser of democracy and his bid to silence critics even beyond his own country's borders.

For Gavin Esler and Evan Davis (and others), however, this seems to be simply about Big Bad Boris gratuitously insulting Johnny Foreigner - and why he's such a dodgy choice for foreign secretary. 

Surely they must know (as senior journalists) that Boris was helping the Spectator to make a serious and increasingly vital point here?


P.S. Dateline London was full of guests saying that Brexit was a terrible thing for the UK.

Steve Richards of the Independent, Benedicte Paviot of France 24 and Suzanne Lynch of the Irish Times all made such points in all three of the programme's discussions (on Turkey, Nice and Mrs May).

Only the Turkish journalist kept his counsel on the matter.

newspapers and "And the financial markets collapse"newspapers

For those, like me (and David Keighley at News-watch), who have shown (at the very least) that some flagship BBC programmes and some BBC reporters/presenters did show a pronounced anti-Brexit bias during the EU referendum campaign, it was startling and sobering to keep hearing from so many people who we like and admire and who usually agree with us about BBC bias (including prominent pro-Leave types) that they thought that the BBC had in fact behaved in an unexpectedly fair way and covered itself in impartial glory. 

One of those people was Peter Hitchens. He wrote again a couple of days ago about "the creditable efforts of the BBC to be impartial, which I absolutely did not expect", having previously written, "I underestimated the BBC, which has, perhaps thanks to years of justified and correct criticism from people such as me, taken its duty of impartiality seriously". Interestingly, he now thinks that the BBC has reverted to type - since the referendum result came through:

Parliament is pro-EU. The Civil Service is pro-EU, the judiciary is pro-EU, the BBC is pro-EU and is now returning to its old bad habits after an admittedly creditable attempt at balance. Its 6am radio news bulletin on Friday said, falsely and dangerously, that the pound had �collapsed� following the result and there will be a lot more of this foolish panic-mongering in days to come.

Saturday's excellent Dateline London gave proof for his closing point. Presenter Maxine Mawhinney began by saying, in doom-mongering fashion: 

Britain leaves the European Union. The Prime Minister stands down. And the financial markets collapse. Plenty to talk about.

Alex Deane, who was on superb form throughout, didn't let that pass without comment: 

No, hang on a minute. Let me answer the question who asked everyone else. The market didn't crash. The FTSE finished higher on Friday than it was last Friday. And it's extraordinary to hear someone from Bloomberg reinforce your false premise that there was a big crash or the pound slumped. The pound is where it was in February.  

The 'someone from Bloomberg' he was talking about was Stephanie Baker. Along with French regular Agnes Poirier, she took the anti-Brexit line. 

The final guest, German regular Thomas Kielinger, took up a position closer to Alex's. He may be a Europhile but he's always been a passionate Anglophile and thinks we'll prosper outside the EU. I found his contribution rather moving. 

All credit to the makers of Dateline London for assembling such an interesting and varied panel. Less credit to Maxine for framing the debate in such a loaded, doom-mongering fashion.

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Alex Deane's appearances on Dateline and a highly sparky Sky News paper review last night have - inevitably - drawn some very ugly comments at places like Digital Spy and on Twitter. Thankfully, Twitter has also deluged him in praise too - quite a few from Labour supporters saying how suprised and pleased they are to agree with him. Alex's response to the ugly comments on Twitter is usually to re-tweet them and add a good-natured joke.

Here's another of Alex's jokes today. It made me smile:

newspapers and On Jo Coxnewspapers

It's proving hard to take in the horrific murder of Jo Cox, isn't it? 

I'm still struggling to find something helpful to say two days later.

I'd never heard of her before she was killed but, like many, I've been in shock at her murder ever since.

I just keep thinking of the hideous way she was murdered and about her poor children - her three-year-old daughter and five-year-old son. Plus how everyone in politics, from whatever side, seems to have liked her.

And then everyone else piles in with their suffocating agendas and I find myself getting lost again. (I don't cope well with piles).

But it's time to at least try to say something, probably - for what it's worth...

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I drove home on Thursday listening to the moving reactions to the murder of Mrs Cox from Labour's Joan Walley and the Conservatives' Andrew Mitchell on Radio 4's PM, sensitively handled by Carolyn Quinn.

Then I watched the BBC One News at Six, which did an excellent job. It (and Nick Robinson, who the programme interviewed) managed to convey the sheer horror of what had happened whilst keeping a cool, cautious manner of reporting. It didn't seek to speculate or score points, and even held back from mentioning the 'Britain first' (or 'Britain First') claims then widely circulating in other parts of the media (and on social media).

I then went online. Some of what I read helped. Quite a lot didn't. There were more touching articles in the online newspapers but also quite a lot of unhelpful speculation. 

One thing is certain though: The agenda-pushing started very early. Almost immediately, in fact.

I felt so annoyed by that agenda-pushing that part of me felt like posting about it at the time, but I thought better of it. It would have felt too much like me agenda-pushing. And it was far too soon anyhow.

Former senior Sky journalist Tim Marshall held back a day or so before registering similar feelings of disgust:

Remainers point to the Leave campaign�s dog whistle politics. Leavers now argue that Remainers are politicising the issue to score cheap points. Some people argued that there was a reluctance to call the attack terrorism. All sides have valid arguments but minutes after the confirmation of the death of Jo Cox was not the time to make them.  

Looking back, Tim certainly had a point. A lot of people just couldn't help themselves. The bees in their own bonnets appear to have trumped everything else, including common decency.

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And so it's gone on: Remainers are still pointing to the Leave campaign's dog whistle politics and Leavers are still arguing that Remainers are politicising the issue to score cheap points.

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I garnered - from comments on other 'anti-BBC sites' - that the BBC had behaved much more cautiously that day than Sky (and many of the newspapers) when it came to airing speculation about the political motives of the killer.

(Not that any of those comments directly said as much. It was just that all their fire was, for a while, squarely aimed at Sky, the Telegraph, the Guardian, etc. 'BBC bias' was largely forgotten for a few hours).

That matched my experience of what I'd just heard and seen that evening. 

Elsewhere things were falling apart though. The Guardian, on one side, was starting to smear the pro-Brexit side. And Breitbart London, on the other side (and then some), was desperately seeking to discredit the idea that the killer might have far-right links.

Agendas were seriously, disgracefully and very vigorously being pushed....

....and both of those media outlets have continued down their respective paths ever since, to their great discredit.

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I won't go into to much detail about Polly Toynbee & Co's contributions at the Guardian, about which they should be ashamed of themselves (and regular readers will know what to expect from them), but Breitbart's coverage (which has spread onto other 'anti-BBC sites') has been at least as shameful.

Breitbart's feverish attempts, while Mrs Cox was still breathing, to promote the 'nothing to see here' line regarding the alleged killer's alleged links to the alleged far-right and promote the counter 'it's all about his mental illness' line have been frankly jaw-dropping and appalling.

And after all their desperate 'debunkings' of the mounting evidence that the alleged killer might actually, allegedly, have a far-right distant past and even a far-right recent past - plus his responses in court, "'Death to traitors, freedom for Britain'" -, they've still kept on grimly trying to assert that 'it's all about his mental illness' and that it's everyone else who's biased and behaving shamefully.

It may well be. Or it may not be. The suspect's alleged motivation is for the law to decide now. Accusing others of pre-judging while furiously pre-judging yourself just isn't good though.

And quite a lot of people on our 'wing' on the blogosphere have been doing it just as much of that as those on the opposite 'wing' of the blogosphere. They should all be ashamed of themselves. (Not that any of them will be).

(And Louise Mensch hasn't exactly done herself proud either, railing against the Left for speculating and pre-judging whilst simultaneously speculating and pre-judging herself).

Plus now a surprising large number of the commenters below the line at Breitbart are indulging and furthering disgracing themselves (and their blog) by group-hugging themselves in a crazy 'false flag' conspiracy theory that the EU/Remain murdered Jo Cox to derail the pro-Brexit campaign.

(I'm not joking, I'm afraid. They really have been saying that in large numbers over there.)

It needs to immediately stop - as this piece by Iain Martin makes clear (please click on the link!)

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As for the BBC, I also watched Thursday and Friday nights' editions of Newsnight and found both of them, taken together, absolutely exemplary. They were duly cautious about things they ought to have been cautious about, and kept sounding those cautions whilst giving voice to various non-controversial and controversial points-of-view from various angles. Their reports were honest and fair. And if Thursday's edition gave more of a platform to those who wanted to push the 'dog whistle politics' line, Friday's edition gave more of a platform to those (including Danny Finkelstein and Douglas Murray) who eloquently dismissed such charges. I was relieved and heartened by Newsnight's behaviour.

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The one BBC reporter who struck me as seriously letting the BBC down was Mark Easton. His blog was barely distinguishable in content from those articles and tweets from those partisan pro-Remain types who have absolutely disgraced themselves in the past couple of days (like Polly Toynbee):

The phrases "political class", "the establishment" and "the metropolitan elite" are almost routinely deployed to undermine respect for our democratic representatives, for Parliament and for public servants.
Anti-politics is now a recognised force, particularly online.
Social media can be the most antisocial place. Good manners and decency are drowned in a sea of bile and hostility.
The EU referendum campaign has seen the normal rules of political engagement suspended, traditional party lines washed away as supposedly honourable members trade insults and foster contempt.
Facts and expertise are dismissed as self-serving fictions, the cry of "liar!" echoing from both camps.
And with immigration the dominant theme of the referendum debate, there have been moments when the "respect for other cultures" the prime minister wishes to promote has been replaced by statements that sound more like inflammatory xenophobia.
There are, of course, very real concerns about the impact of immigration on our country.
But the rhetoric has shifted from concerns about the phenomenon to the threat from "foreigners".
I have heard it repeatedly from voters on the streets in recent weeks.
It is certainly unedifying and, perhaps, dangerously subversive.

Not that Mark Easton's liberal bias on immigration has ever exactly been well concealed, but here he's being blatant in focusing his criticism on the rhetoric of one side of the present EU argument, and in linking "xenophobia" and the word "unedifying" to the views of "voters on the streets". He's taken us right back to exactly the kind of ultra-biased BBC worldview that various 'repentant' BBC types have kept assuring is now a thing of the past.

He even uses a word I doubt he's ever used before in a BBC article - at least without putting it in heavily inverted commas. He calls such views "perhaps, dangerously subversive".

When was the last time you ever heard/read a BBC reporter describing any contemporary strand of British opinion as "subversive"? I'm betting - like me - you've never heard it before. It's not the BBC way, is it? And, if I may be so bold, m'lud, he's talking about us.

I've not watched the BBC One News at Ten or much else on the News Channel so I don't know if it's true, as I've read elsewhere, that Mark Easton was the BBC journalist most eager to report the 'Britain first' claims - i.e. to push the political angle to the murderous attack. It wouldn't surprise me in the least if that was the case though.

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Today's I've watched Dateline London and listened to Any Questions. 

Dateline focused on the Mark Easton/Polly Toynbee angle. Fortunately leading Brexit campaigner Alex Deane was on and argued robustly - and admirably (to my mind) - against that angle - and against the combined onslaught of Marc Roche and Stephanie Baker and BBC presenter Gavin Esler - and, albeit much less strongly, Brian O'Connell (who tried to strike a middle way between them and, unusually, found himself in the line of fire for so doing).

Alex took it in good spirit though:

It's well worth catching up with, if your blood pressure will stand it. It will make you think.

And talking of threats to your blood pressure...

Any Questions, in reaction to the killing of Mrs Cox, was an audience-free studio discussion. It featured Polly Toynbee and Max Hastings (both Remain), and Claire Fox and Peter Oborne (both Leave). It's also well worth listening to.

Polly, as ever, was the biggest threat to my blood pressure. She railed about the wickedness of one side of the EU referendum debate but I note she didn't answer Claire Fox's point about the demonisation of Nigel Farage, UKIP and UKIP supporters from her side.

I had that in mind especially because of a point from Sarah AB at Harry's Place regarding Alex Massie's original piece at the Spectator all-but-smearing Mr Farage with a charge of culpability for the murder of Jo Cox: How would the likes of Mr Massie (and Polly Toynbee) feel if Nigel Farage was assassinated by a far-left extremist, 'as a result of' all the hatred aimed at him?

Jonathan Dimbleby controlled the discussion fairly, though his own contributions clearly placed him as not being on Claire Fox and Peter Oborne's side (and he embarrassed Max Hastings too). Though he wasn't too biased, I'd put him as clearly 'pro-Establishment' and 'pro-Remain' on this evidence (unsurprisingly).

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Sorry. I know this isn't a post that gets anywhere close to doing justice to any of the issues at hand, but it's all I can manage. Whether 'something' is better than 'nothing' I'll let you judge. 

newspapers and The Age of Aquarius passesnewspapers

It seems I was also premature (around four weeks ago) in giving credit to Dateline London for markedly improving in recent months as regards balance on its panels. Since then it's slipped back sharply into its old ways, with both last week's edition and this week's edition being especially unbalanced over the issues of EU referendum and immigration. 

Last week we had two Guardian writers, Polly Toynbee and Nesrine Malik, plus Greg Katz of the Associated Press and the BBC's Dmitry Shishkin; this week we had Greek leftist Maria Margaronis and Portuguese leftist Eunice Goes, plus Stryker McGuire and Ned Temko. 

The discussions on that subject - and more generally on immigration - from these overwhelmingly left-leaning panels have been something to behold: an absolute outpouring of mutual agreement about why Brexit would be a bad thing and why immigration is a good thing. This week's discussion even involved two guests (Maria Margaronis and Stryker McGuire) explicitly stating that they all agree on the issues (with presenter Shaun Ley rightly distancing himself from that comment!) 

The panels could hardly have been more unbalanced.

For a flavour of the discussion, here's a BBC-on-BBC exchange from last week's edition between Dmitry Shiskin, digital development editor for BBC World Service (a panellist) and Gavin Esler (presenting) (beginning at 11:00):

Dmitry Shiskin: Well, this topic is very close to me personally because I came to this country 16 years ago, having got a work permit from the BBC because Britain couldn't find a Russian speaker to do the Russian broadcasts. So that's one example. Another example would be a Russian physicist working at Manchester University becoming a Nobel Peace Prize...Nobel Physics Prize winner. He wouldn't have come to the country a few years ago because the Highly Skilled Migrant Programme was closed by that time. So I think you're right in terms of saying, yes, highly skilled are needed everywhere but the question is: How many Brits are living abroad and how many of them are qualified to stay in Spain for example? 

Gavin Esler: Well, one of our colleagues from El Pais, the Spanish paper, told me that..estimates differ, but he says that Spanish estimates are that 800,000 British people are living in Spain, many of whom are older and are, as he put it, seen as "a drain on our health service". 

Dmitry Shiskin: Wouldn't have qualified. And the second point is that I come from a very humanist approach to this. I think modern society should be about the flow of ideas and the flow of people and everything else, and potentially we can talk tactics but strategically. I think the world is a connected place...

Is that impartial? 

I see someone has complained about yesterday's programme already:

newspapers and It's the End of the Age of Aquariusnewspapers

Alas, alas! It didn't turn out to be the dawning of the Age of Aquarius after all. Today's Dateline London reverted to its old ways. 

All four of its invited guests (Abdel Bari Atwan, Agnes Poirier, Michael Goldfarb and Yasmin Alibhai Brown) were left-wingers (of various hues). Again.

So, yielding to despair perhaps, I now think I must say: "I don't think I'll ever live to see the day when the programme invites four right-wingers to make up its panel. Bari's big, bushy moustache, even more than Hell, will have to freeze over before that ever happens."

That said, I still enjoyed it. Here's why (if you care):

The discussion about Brazil, the World Cup, those doctors, the WHO and the Zika virus found the programme's two most annoying guests, YAB and Bari, squaring up to each other (which was entertaining if not edifying). YAB gently mocked Bari for being a conspiracy theorist. Bari's friend Gavin Esler then gently mocked her back when she (without realising it) began sounding like a conspiracy theorist for the other side of the argument. What larks!

And, being Dateline, the closing segment was all about that ghastly Donald Trump and how poor Hillary might best deal with him in debates. (I think I've caught its general tone by describing it like that). 

In a week where concerns about possible serious legal problems for Hillary hit centre stage for a wee while (even - to some, small degree - in the BBC's reporting, briefly), those legal difficulties weren't even mentioned in passing. It was all about that nasty, nasty Mr. Trump and how Hillary might perform against him in debate. Agnes P was bullish about Hillary's abilities; the rest less so. 

Oddly, the usually loquacious Bari kept quiet for the most part during the traditional BBC Ten Minute Hate against the Republican presidential hopeful until entering late on, oddly, to compare The Donald to Hillary. The odd thing is that he did so favourably to The Donald. Bari's point? He's got personality; she hasn't. 

What was that all about? Bari's admiration for strong, male rulers with impressive heads of hair/impressive moustaches might, perhaps, have been coming out again...

...but, of course, being Bari, it's also perfectly possible that he sees Mr. Trump as less solidly pro-Israel (seeming) than Mrs. Clinton. 

The most interesting section for me, however, was the central section on Libya and the Mediterranean migrant crisis. 

Everyone agreed (and who can blame them?) that regime change there (courtesy of Mr. Cameron and M. Sarkozy, with backseat driving from Mr. Obama) was a big mistake. 

Bari blamed the West for everything. YAB blamed the West too. Agnes raised her elegant French eyebrows towards both of them, whilst conceding they might have a point. And Michael Goldfarb (ever the defender of President Obama) defended President Obama. 

So far so predictable, but...

(1) Bari told us that 3 million Libyans are now refugees in Egypt and Tunisia. As the internet has told told me that Libya has a small 6 million-or-so population, that's a heck of a lot of Libyans fleeing next door. I didn't know that (if it's true). 

(b) Yasmin Alibhai Brown pre-declared that she was going to give an "emotional" rant - and duly did so, railing against wicked West for failing to help the bulk of the Libyan population which, she said, was fleeing en masse across the Med out of Libya. Her fellow guests - and even Gavin Esler - forcefully point out to her, in response, that very few Libyans were actually crossing the Med. (They were moving sideways, so to speak, into Egypt and Tunisia.) It's mostly sub-Saharan/Horn of African people who are making that crossing, they said. YAB, looking as if she realised she'd been well-and-truly fisked, gave up on her point (and, for some strange reason, that made me smile.)

(c) Michael Goldfarb, in trying to counter YAB's fallacious assertions about those crossing the Med from Libya, instead put the 'they are desperate, poor Africans seeking a better life' point about those sub-Saharan/Horn of African folk. That morning's Today (just after 7.30), to its credit, had shown, however, that Michael G is wrong. Those huge numbers of sub-Saharan/Horn of African folk aren't, by and large, the poor of their respective countries. They are the much-better-off of those countries (those with enough money - a lot of money! - to make the journey). Some of them are coming, said the Today 'experts', just to experience the thrill of the bright lights of Western Europe....and to his credit, Gavin Esler very briefly alluded to part of that point in response on Dateline today (without embarrassing Mr. Goldfarb).

And that's that. (Not the best way to end a post perhaps, but it's all I've got).