newspapers and John Simpson sounds offnewspapers

This week's New Statesman is a post-referendum 'special edition'. 

Among its contributors are three senior BBC journalists/presenters - Andrew Marr, Nicky Campbell and John Simpson. 

Andrew Marr's piece - "How a monumental establishment cock-up led to our biggest act of democracy" - is an expansion of his 'editorial' on last week's Marr programme. He even quotes Chesterton's poem containing the famous lines, "For we are the people of England, that never have spoken yet." The 'new' thing here is his latest prediction for where we're heading politically:

My guess is that parliamentary chaos and an overwhelming sense of drift at the centre of politics will propel us into an election later this year or early next year. If so, that will mean that, tactically, the Brexiteers, who don�t want to trigger Article 50 just yet, must do so before the people are asked for their view again. [He seems to be presuming that the people are likely to give a different answer]. 

And, of course, if it turns out that George Osborne�s blood-curdling warnings about jobs and investment turn out to be even half accurate, then those same cheerful gentlemen will have many personal apologies to make to people who do lose their jobs, or see prices rise and their pensions fall. There is plenty of anger still to come.

Nicky Campbell's piece shamelessly sings the BBC's own praises. He claims that everyone at Radio 5 Live wasn't remotely surprised by the result of the referendum. Why? Because of what's been happening during phone-ins. Up until 23 June, the fervour was coming from the Leave side. After 23 June the other side became fervent too. The Radio 5 debates have been great. "We pride ourselves on reaching far beyond the confines of metropolitan England," he says. (Self-praise is no praise, Nicky). 

Both Andrew Marr and Nicky Campbell are careful not to sound like the kind of BBC types that 'people like us' are meant to imagine. John Simpson - that great, veteran 'voice of the BBC' - doesn't give such concerns even a moment's consideration and it's not hard to guess how he voted in the EU referendum.

I think I need to quote at some length here (though it's only a fairly small part of a long piece): 

Forty-one years later, the sheer nastiness and mendacity of the 2016 campaign was, by contrast, stunning. So was the careless way many people wandered into the voting booths to vote on the entire future of their country. �Oh yes, I voted Leave,� a specialist at a big NHS hospital told me. �Well, I couldn�t make my mind up, it was all so complicated, so I plumped for No because I thought it�d make life more interesting.�

An opinion poll carried out immediately after the result was announced indicated that seven out of ten Leave voters hadn�t thought the referendum mattered very much. In comparison to 1975, we seemed to sleepwalk our way to a decision that could have the utmost consequences for the lives and prosperity of our children and our children�s children. �I hate the f***ing old people of this country for what they�ve done,� an engineering student at a notably gloomy street party in Oxford said to me afterwards. Another explained in some detail how the funding of six graduate students he knew would be cut off almost immediately. All of them, he said, would now apply to US universities for jobs there.

We didn�t appear unduly shaken by the murder of a young and immensely promising MP by someone apparently stirred up by the issue. �Britain first� or �Put Britain first�, he is alleged to have shouted as he shot and stabbed Jo Cox to death. To him, it seems, she was a traitor for wanting to remain in Europe.

In the two centuries since 1812, only eight MPs have been murdered � six of them by Irish republican fanatics, one by a lunatic. Jo Cox seems to have been the first MP to be killed for personal, reasoned views. Did this change the campaign? A week later, she seemed almost to have been forgotten. When the news of his victory came through, Nigel Farage had put the memory of her murder aside to such an extent that he could say the referendum result was a revolution achieved �without a shot being fired�. He apologised later, but perhaps it showed how far from the forefront of his mind the atrocity had been.

We know where such views 'come from', politically-speaking, don't we? They come from a standpoint similar to that of Mr. Simpson's near lookalike, Lord Chris Patten. They also come from a standpoint that many if not most of Andrew Marr, Nicky Campbell and John Simpson's BBC colleagues are likely to share. 

John Simpson surely is 'the voice of the BBC'.

newspapers and Is it cool to use the term �Inshallah� ?newspapers

There�s a bit of a thing going on about Nicky Campbell using the term �Inshallah� when he signed off on last Sunday�s TBQs.

Was it supposed to be affectionate but slightly ironic? Or was it another example of Islam infiltrating our cultural norms? In other words, does it demonstrate the BBC�s normalisation of Islam in the UK.

Putting into context by taking Nicky Campbell�s and TBQ�s past performances into account, it�s truly hard to say,

Remember, not everyone can be an obsessive BBC geek. Some of us know more than enough about a given BBC employee�s political affiliations and preferences. We trawl their Tweets and document their impartiality lapses, be they overt, covert, subtle, subliminal or imaginary. We might spot something genuinely worrying, or, on the other hand we might get over excited about something that turns out to be nothing.

Nicky Campbell has been eviscerated (and the contents analysed) by connoisseurs of BBC bias over the years, particularly as regards his radio 5 shows, which I�m afraid I�ve never heard. My radio doesn�t go there.

Lookie here. And, on this very blog, there are 12 items tagged Nicky Campbell! (only one was mine)

Personally, I do watch TBQs, not only for the pantomime but also to keep an eye on what�s going on. Watching one�s back. In my opinion Nicky Campbell does tend to over-apply moral equivalence. Not that he tolerates radicalism or violence, but let�s call it an almost rigid adherence to the non-value-judgmentalist, multicultural ethos preached by the BBC. 

On that occasion Campbell�s use of that term may have been tinged with irony, but at the same time, in that particular context there is certainly an element of deference to Islam. Which some of us find sycophantic and -  I don't know - disconcerting. 

As we know, the BBC is used to pleading �we must be doing it right because we get criticism from �both� sides�, so maybe Campbell�s gratuitous use of this expression with an infinitesimal touch of irony is pure mischief-making. A way of hedging his bets and leaving enough mystique in its wake to please the Muslims while simultaneously heading off the inevitable cries of bias from the likes of us. Or maybe it�s none of that; just creeping Islamisation.

Meanwhile the normalisation of Islam in the UK grows apace, and if it makes some of us feel uneasy, we must suck it up.  Happy Ramadan.

newspapers and Rupert in the lions' dennewspapers

If you're thinking of watching Nicky Campbell's The Big Questions tomorrow (and may the Lord have mercy on your soul if you are!), The Times Literary Supplement blog has a piece about it by one of the people who will be appearing on it: Christian writer Rupert Shortt.

I say "appearing on it", but the piece make its clear that the episode of TBQ to be broadcast tomorrow was actually recorded last Sunday, so he's already "appeared" on it. Rupert is describing his experiences on a programme the BBC hasn't yet broadcast. 

I had absolutely no idea TBQ was pre-recorded a week in advance. When you watch the Marr show and see Nicky's plug near the end of it, you see Nicky, his guests and his studio audience as if 'live', ready and waiting to spring into action five minutes later, just-as-live on BBC One. I'd also assumed there were 'live'. Not a bit of it it seems. Another little bit of BBC artifice, apparently.

Anyhow, I'm gathering from Rupert's piece that he found himself in the lions' den, so to speak. That wouldn't have been a surprise to regular TBQ viewers, but it seems to have been a big surprise to Rupert himself (bless him!):

Though promised �an in-depth encounter with more time than usual� by a Corporation researcher, I was largely relegated to the role of spectator. Apart from bowling me a googly (�Aren�t religions by definition exclusionary?� � a question almost impossible to answer in a nutshell), Campbell gave me no opportunity to speak at all. Instead, the baton was passed again and again to the shouters and mud-slingers, especially on the atheist side. One of the more constructive non-believers was kind enough to note the oddness of all this in a message to me afterwards. �Nicky is very uneven-handed in terms of the people he turns to�, this person wrote.

None of that, in fact, will surprise regular (or even occasional) TBQ viewers, and "shouters and mud-slingers" sums up much of the programme's regular invitations list to a tee.

It's all par for the course, frankly.

(P.S. The rest of Rupert's piece argues various religious points that I don't agree with {being a non-believer}, but enjoy hearing {being a very-slightly-regretful non-believer}, and I see his point about how his way of thinking gets repeatedly marginalised by the overwhelmingly secular BBC which confines religion to pigeon holes like Songs of Praise and Thought For The Day {his examples}.

...and Sunday, Sunday Morning Service, Prayer for the Day, Choral Evensong. Beyond Belief, etc {my extra examples}).