All watching ITV
The angel of the Lord came down
And switched to BBC.
Anyone else remember that? I’m pretty sure that in the playgrounds of my youth it was that way round, though Google gives about 50-50 the angel switching to ITV. I draw no particular conclusions. The only real purpose of this post is to wish everyone a merry Christmas.
Happy Christmas – Santa sends his apologies:
http://tinyurl.com/7q3qfj
Cheers
From my infancy I remember the alternate version, where I was born and raised in East Manchester, as being:
“While shepherds washed their socks by night
All seated in the tub
The angel of the Lord came down
And gave them all a scrub.
– and a Very Merry Christmas to all!
Merry Christmas to Natalie, DV, Ed, Laban, the other bloggers and to the commenters. Keep it comin’.
It would appear that the BBC agrees with Dinnerjacket et al that all Israeli Jews are legitimate targets of Jihadi violence (note the need for quotation marks)
Mr Olmert called on residents of Gaza to stop militants “firing on innocent civilians”, in an interview with the Arab television station Al-Arabiya.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7799593.stm
My favourite today was they showed the clip of Harold Pinter in the speech at the Oscars/BAFTAs where he decried both the US and Tony Blair. Guess which bit the BBC showed?
For evidence, I present Exhibit A • the state. The public sector is sucking the private sector dry. It presents a structural problem just as corrosive as trade union domination or nationalised industries in the 1970s. Two facts: the public sector is roughly the same size as Scotland’s population; and taxpayers will have to fill a £1 trillion black hole in public sector pensions • while private sector pensions have been trashed.
Exhibit B: our dependency culture, another aspect of the client state • 3·5 million working-age people (three times Birmingham’s population) are on out-of-work benefits that place little or no work expectations on them, even though many could do some work. Labour calls this “social justice”. Enough said.
Exhibit C: the conquest of cultural and social organisations by “progressives” • those who subvert our institutions to instill a socialist, “all must have prizes”, centralised ethos. In our schools, the concept that education should focus on the transmission of a body of knowledge; the belief that children learn through structured teaching, not play; the concept that a good exam is not one that everyone passes • all these ideas have been junked.
You may know this already. You might also have also thrown your radio across the room while listening to another “quangocrat” on the Today programme whingeing on about the need for “more resources”. But consider Exhibit D.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-view/3934455/We-must-refight-the-battles-of-the-1970s.html
Oh dear, the BBC takes a hammering in the Mail over its “opinion before facts” philosophy:
Pontificating Mr Peston, self-indulgent bloggers, and why the BBC should stop putting opinion before facts
“…The question the programme asked was: does Robert Peston, the BBC’s tireless and ubiquitous business editor, have too much power? It is a good question. The trouble is that, having asked it, Panorama did not attempt an answer.
What was billed as an objective investigation turned into a celebration of Mr Peston and the BBC, with pictures of the young genius at school and university. We were even shown his audition tape before he joined the Corporation nearly three years ago, and invited to cluck and coo as he demonstrated his peculiar staccato delivery.”
Wonderful appreciation of Harold Pinter’s political views by non-other other than “Red Jim” Naughtie this morning. With those views I felt sure that an announcement of an immediate award of the “Hero of the Today programme, first class” would have followed there being barely a fag paper between those views ascribed to Pinter and the perceived views of the “team ” on Today.
How Jim must wish he was brave enough to “come out” so openly.
BBC headline: “Criminal deportations target met”
BBC in best Pravda/Isvestia “tractor production targets met” mode. Government propaganda. The analysis followed by Migrationwatch and those evil Tories rubbishes the claim but the headline remains. Its apparently a “self-imposed” target. What spin is that? Who else could impose such a target, the Pope?
The largest deported group are West Indian drug mules, who no doubt wanted to go home anyway but unfortunately we caught them. Spinning for all their lives.
While Allah’s faithful chopped off heads with their victims on the ground
Abu Bowen came on down and blamed the jews all round.
Fear not said he I have a task and endless that will be.
To show mankind how nice you are and Blame Christianity.
Andrew: yes, the criminal deportation story led all the BBC bulletins this morning. The BBC breathlessly reporting that the government had announced that they had met one of their own targets. Released on Boxing Day, so you can be sure it wasn’t some supposedly impartial civil servant issuing press release — it came straight from the Labour Party spin machine, to be faithfully reported by the ever compliant BBC. No analysis of course, no questions about how these characters got into the country in the first place, nor how many remain, nor how many have been convicted this year. Merely that the government achieved (or so they say) to actually do something that they said they would, however ridiculously easy that task might have been.
As you say, true Soviet style propaganda. It’s not surprising that Labour have recovered in the polls, the BBC bias simply gets worse.
Shepherds switching to BBC? Well they’ll switch back, muttering “I’ve seen this before”.
A quick look at today’s schedules reveals what must be a record for BBC repeats. Didn’t we used to get some original, even quality programming on the BBC at this time of year? Today we have;
Keeping Up Appearances – 1984
Are You Being Served? – 1978
Dad’s Army – 1974
The Morecambe and Wise Christmas Show – 1971
The Generation Game – 1973
The Two Ronnies
Plus various old films, Eastenders (of course), a few mediocre new films, a bit of sport, repeats of Little Britain on the BBC 3 all day, and repeats all day on BBC 4.
They are really taking the mick. I can we say the only things I would consider watching on BBC today are Wainwright’s walk, and Coast. But I’ve seen them before and fortunately have better things to do.
bodo: Get with the programme – to them its a trendy “retro” Christmas. Which means old rubbish thats cheap to show,which was mostly shite then let alone now, but you can pretend is cutting edge – being retro. Morecombe and Wise for gods sake: Ant and Dec shoved arse-first through a time warp. I’ve never seen the channels so bare of anything watchable. Even freeview’s Dave (no relation, call me Dave) has back to back Top Gear.
Its so bad I’ve put the vinyl on my turntable and listened up to a true retro Christmas.
.
Yes, people did switch to the BBC:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7800091.stm