Bad Start to the Week

It seems that the BBC will be ‘Starting the Week’ tomorrow morning with a particularly objectionable duo on the guest list. Not only Peter Kosminsky of ‘The Promise’ notoriety, but also a singer / songwriter unknown to most people outside the Guardian/BBC clique called Sarah Gillespie (Who?)
I’ll leave it to Harry’s Place to expand on why her inclusion on Start the Week to discuss ‘the arts and politics’ is both puzzling and worrying.

For anyone who doesn’t want to click on the link, here’s what Harry’s Place tells us about Ms. Gillespie.

  • She is a supporter and musical associate of Gilad Atzmon, the Jewish-Israeli saxophonist who has taken self-loathing to new heights. His Israel-bashing writings are so extreme that even some of the most notorious anti-Israel activists have dissociated themselves from him.
  • She has expressed solidarity with holocaust denier Paul Eisen,
  • and has accused Mark Thompson of bias towards Israel.

The article ends by asking ‘what is the BBC’s reasoning?’

If Mark Thompson’s reasoning has something to do with “confronting people with the other”, I should think we’ve had just about enough anti-Israel and antisemitic flavoured programming already. It’s high time we had a glimpse of some real “other”, but I won’t be holding my breath.

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13 Responses to Bad Start to the Week

  1. ian says:

    I’ve just realised why the BBC doesn’t like Christianity – it’s because of that kike who founded it.

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  2. john in cheshire says:

    Christians are Jews Mk2; that’s why there is an affinity between them. muslims are followers of the anti-christ. atheists are just plain wrong. As a Christian, I will support my faith first, Jews second. muslims must be opposed because they are a destructive force and atheists have a tendency to ally themselves with all that is bad (not sure why, but I suspect it’s a childish form of rebellion that they never grow out of), hence their liking of islam.

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  3. jbg says:

    You forgot Rory Bremner. Start the Week Full House!

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  4. cjhartnett says:

    Thanks for the warning Sue.
    Far better to tool ourselves in advance and be ready to  see our worst fears confirmed, yet hope for something better.
    I too am a Christian, but know that I`d have no Bible and no salvation or hope , had the Jews not created the original faith from which mine is an offshoot.
    I also know that the Jewish nation remains the touchstone and the only barometer for how things are-and where they`re going.
    Israel remains the only hope that we`ve got-and I`m delighted that it is in their hands. No other nation-no other people-know God as well as they do.
    As for the self-loathers and cringing apologists that end up as Allahs little helpers…I`ll leave that with God, but not be silent about it all.
    Oh heck…Rory Bremner and his recent case of ADHD…that`s free parking for HIM tomorrow then!

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  5. D B says:

    I found myself at a rather tedious dinner party at some village or other in East Sussesx a few years ago when one of the highly pretentious hosts put on a CD of this, like, great jazz guy Gilad Atzmon, ok yah, that they’d seen the previous week at this amaze local venue, yah. Without going into too much detail, the rest of the evening became somewhat firey and I was asked to never again darken the doorstep of these people I’d never met before. Nicked a bottle of brandy on the way out, though.

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  6. sue says:

    I felt it was my duty to listen to the aforementioned.
    I have to say that the casual listener wouldn’t have found much to startle them on listening in this morning. Sarah Gillespie spoke intelligently and sounded genuine.
    When they played an extract from her album, however, her ‘Joni Mitchell meets Lily Allen’ style sounded derivative and contrived. Apparently one has to listen several times before getting the full effect, so I’ll assume that’s where I went wrong.
    Her Shami Chakrabarti Blues sounds fascinating as does her forthcoming War on Trevor, not to be confused with Allan is Great. (I’m being sarky now)

    The major alarm bell moment came from our old friend Kosminsky, who was at pains to tell us that he always strove for the truth, without adding that he meant his own idea of a very selective truth as opposed to the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
    Even Andrew Marr could have challenged him on the findings of his “eleven year research” for The Promise. “The British veterans started off sympathising with the Jews, but soon changed and sided with the Arabs.” Marr must have known that Kosminsky was being economical with the truth. Of course many of the British veterans of the fighting in Palestine would have sided with the Arabs after finding themselves the targets of Jewish bullets and bombs.
    But  no mention of why this happened? No mention of the way the British treated the Jews to cause such a situation? No mention of the British turning concentration camp survivors and would-be immigrants to Israel away and beating them back onto the boats as they arrived?

    What strikes me is the almost ingratiating respect given to the artistry of these supposedly cutting-edge truth tellers and radical thinkers, and the fact that no-one notices that their opinions are tired, mainstream and sheep-like, and not at all innovative, brave or thoughtful.

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    • John Anderson says:

      I listened to some of it – but it was the usual unctious twaddle one expects from that programme.   Gillespie has an awful voice,  I think,  and sounded pretentious as Marr fed her with soft questions.

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      • sue says:

        Well, he asked her if she set out to change peoples’ minds. The long pause indicated that she was searching her soul and trying to give an honest reply. (to give her the benefit of the doubt.)

        I think these people are so immersed in their own world view that they never take the trouble to have a radical rethink. Which is the very kind of rigidity that they rail against, but they don’t realise that they’re doing it themselves.
        That’s why they shouldn’t be thought of as cutting edge, or free thinking. They’re just the same old same old followers of fashion.

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    • jarwill101 says:

        It’s Beeboid reflexive reverence. Switched on for those that comply with the BBC ‘narrative’, switched off for those who utter inconvenient truths. Relatively basic AI robots could perform the same pre-programmed function, as they do in manufacturing plants to spare us tedious repetition – like talking/listening to trendy, self-obsessed, often talentless bores & onanists.

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    • Teddy Bear says:

      Seeing what the BBC write about her, I can see why she got an invite. Amazing that the BBC don’t realize, apart from anything else how many people they alienate pushing this ‘what about the poor Muslims’ view.
      On her last album Sarah Gillespie sang about the Dow Jones, Semtex smuggling and Guantanamo Bay. In her latest project, The War on Trevor, she draws on the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes and the jailing of suspected terrorists to compose a song which satirises a culture dominated by fear and retribution. Gillespie argues that the best kind of protest songs don’t have to be overtly political, but manage to harness the individual’s experience, and take the listener on an aesthetic journey.

      I haven’t seen a ‘society dominated by fear and retribution’, more one of appeasement – even to the point of absurdity and ignorance. ably pushed by the BBC. What must families who lost lives of their loved ones on 7/7 feel about this woman, and the BBC who keep pushing this ‘we’d be fine if we only could accept Sharia and do away with democracy’ type view, except without the long range vision to see that’s what is really involved.

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  7. cjhartnett says:

    And just in case we could not wait for the jug-eared nit who pays child support for other peoples kids and then uses a super-injunction( albeit uncomfortably…stuffed somewhere you`d expect then!)…he trilled on before the half-eight news.
    Before this, Bragg and the Strawbs were given the old resurrection from Lenins Mausoleum…we got at least two bellicose quacks about union power and some lefticulchi type telling us how outre and rebellious it all was…oh what a jape.
    As the Bard of Barking(has anyone told the Labour/Union cringing hack who did this piece that our William now lives somewhere more salubrious?…but there again, who listens or cares to update them?) splutters…which side are you on?
    The Tanking Twerp of Tolpuddle quacks the same ditty every year, and only Barber, Benn and Crow still bother to answer.
    Still-Monty and Humph are the new Irene Handl and Ian Carmichael.
    And in answer to Billy Bloggs question…I`m on any side that won`t have him and his gloopy socialist moochers anywhere near them!

       1 likes