Catty Comment

Late last night I switched on BBC1 in the middle of a mesmerisingly tasteless kinetic version of Heat Magazine, called “See you in Court”

What do George Galloway and Danielle Lloyd have in common, apart from both being remorseless self-publicists?
You got it. They’ve both been contestants on Big Brother. Appearing on Big Brother may be an instant, if sad way of increasing your public profile, but contestants must be aware that in doing so they sacrifice all, and I mean all, privacy.
Now this ill-matched twosome have turned to the courts of Justice to seek damages from corporations they claim have intruded upon their privacy. Ms. Lloyd had some images stolen by Carphone Warehouse during a phone-to-phone data transfer. The subject of the images in question happen to be the very things (another twosome) she is famous for, and she considers these particular images private because they show some scarring, due to a recent operation after a cancer scare. She claims. She has hired a respectable, expensive-looking lawyer to handle the case, whilst at the same time acquiring, courtesy of the BBC, some nice useful publicity for what she calls her career.
This is what we have come to expect from the BBC, and to be fair, this country. Cause and effect, effect and cause.
Much more unwelcome was the sight of George Galloway, the dandified publicity-seeking former Respect MP who seems to have nothing better to do than lead a camera crew around London, onto a train, and to the Guardian Offices to meet his good friend the Marxist Islamo-phile associate editor of the Guardian, Seaumas Milne, I can’t remember why.
Mr. Galloway feels he has had his phone tapped or bugged, but he’s not quite sure, by the Newspaper that Andy Coulson was in charge of.
These cases are very lucrative for the lawyers and possibly the winner, but in the scheme of things not particularly relevant to the advancement of all mankind. George Galloway is enjoying publicity, free, gratis, and to no benefit to you, me, or the man on the Clapham Omnibus, for his sickeningly hypocritical vanity project. A man who purports to be a politician, i.e. beyond reproach, who willingly, without duress or coercion, appeared on what they call ‘National Television’ wearing a red leotard while impersonating a cat in a most unsettling fashion, is claiming huge amounts of money, on the bandwagon of discrediting David Cameron because he once employed Andy Coulson, in the celebrity phone hacking mountain out of a microscopic molehill.
And the BBC adds insult to injury by beaming this repulsive trashy saga into our homes, pitched, needless to say, firmly on the side of the protagonists, and against the defendants, at our expense.

Dumb BBC (Again …)

Jenni Murray on Woman Sour rewrites the Mayor of Casterbridge :

“The Mayor of Casterbridge, written in 1886, opens in the market square in the town of Dorchester, where a drunk Michael Henchard is offering his wife for sale”

OK, who’s ignorant – Jenni, the scriptwriter, or the researcher? As any Hardy reader kno, Henchard sold his wife at Weydon-Priors fair, miles from Dorchester – and the book opens with the Henchards trudging towards that village. The news of Henchard’s wife-selling could hardly have come as a revelation to the citizens had he done the deed in the market-place.

The rewriting of history continues when presenter Fiona Clampin gets chatting to Sue Clarke and feminist English lecturer Dr Jane Thomas from the University of Hull.

“It’s worth remembering that labouring people in rural districts didn’t necessarily marry – they would ratify their engagement by having intercourse, and if the woman got pregnant than they would marry, and if she didn’t get pregnant then if they didn’t want to they wouldn’t marry … so I think that wife-selling was an early form of divorce in those days”

“Yes, I’ve heard that”

Three points here

a) labouring people DID marry, even in the distorted picture we’re given here. The authors of “An Economic History of Bastardy in England and Wales” give a figure of 6% for illegitimate births at the start of the 19th century (as compared to over 40% now). In fact pregnancy generally led to marriage – and the birth of an illegitimate child was usually followed by marriage unless the man defected. As the ne’er-do-well father in Hardy’s ‘A Tragedy of Two Ambitions’ describes it :

“She was my wife as lawful as the Constitution – a sight more lawful than your mother was until some time after you were born !”

b) AFAIK, the ‘proving’ of a relationship by pre-marital intercourse, with marriage the result of pregnancy, was ONLY a custom of the Isle of Portland, and notable because it was such an exception. In Hardy’s ‘The Well-Beloved’, Avice Caro’s “modern feelings” are quite against the tradition, which she feels Pierston’s father may insist on.

“If the woman does not prove with child, after a competent time of courtship, they conclude they are not destined by Providence for each other ; they therefore separate ; and as it is an established maxim, which the Portland women observe with great strictness, never to admit a plurality of lovers at one time, their honour is in no way tarnished. She just as soon gets another suitor (after the affair is declared to be broken off) as if she had been left a widow, or that nothing had ever happened, but that she had remained an immaculate virgin”

Hutchins, “History and Antiquities of the County of Dorset,” vol. ii., p. 820, 1868, quoted in Bloch.

“So faithfully was this “island custom” observed that, on the one hand, during a long period no single bastard was born on the “island,” and, on the other, every marriage was fertile. But when, for the further development of the Portland stone trade, workmen from London, with the habits of the large town, came to reside in Portland, these men took advantage of the “island custom” and then refused to marry the girls with whom they had cohabited. Thus, in consequence of freer intercourse with the “civilized” world, the “Portland custom” has gradually fallen into desuetude.” – (The sexual life of our time in its relations to modern civilization, Iwan Bloch, pub F.J. Rebman, London 1909)

c) the remark “so I think that wife-selling was an early form of divorce in those days” doesn’t follow from what goes before – and in any event, it was never considered as anything but a disgraceful proceeding.

Bias Against Thinking

This heading is designed to preempt queries about its relevance to this site. I put it to you that dumbing down and bias are closely related, maybe siblings.

The BBC’s dumbing down and repetitive programme ideas have become sinister. They constantly parade low standards and questionable ideals before our square and hypno’d eyes. This creates unrealistic expectations yet somehow stifles aspirations.
Take this programme about entrepreneurship called High Street Dreams. Tired old formula, seen it millions of times before. Mentoring members of the public and bringing an *idea* to the *marketplace.*

The ideas weren’t ideas at all. There was nothing there. What we were shown wouldn’t have reached a pre-audition for Dragon’s Den. The episode I watched was about toys and children.

Children rarely like toys. They like the idea of toys, but the expectation is always far better than the actuality. But never mind. For me the values the programme espoused only went to show where we’ve gone wrong. Marketing, presentation, all with one goal. The triumph of trickery over content.

Mentor Jo Malone uttered the word ‘product’ so many times that it lost its meaning. That always happens when you repeat a word over and over. Product product product product product. Product. See? Now what does it mean.

“It will change your life,” they intone, as they do on every other programme.

“What does failure mean to you?” they ask everyone on TV. “I’d be devastated” comes the predictable reply.

Please, please. Mr. Thompson and Mr. Byford, when can we have some original programmes?

DUMB AND DUMBER

I caught only the last ten minutes of Today this morning. The main item was that Bob Dylan has released an album of Christmas songs. This was the cue for an inconsequential ageist chat about his career and whether he’s lost it. Yawn. What is happening to Today? This is the self-declared flagship of the BBC’s £800m-a-year news operation, but increasingly it fills its airtime with trivia about non news. I did analysis recently that shows that such Dylan-like content has risen from 2% of Today’s feature time five years ago to more than 14% now. No doubt the BBC news bigwigs believe that this is what people want, that the audience is interested in arty-farty stuff that fits in with their worldvew, and that wall-to-wall news is a bad thing. People such as Dylan are just as important in this picture because their lefty hogwash views are about changing the world. But meanwhile, coverage of the real issues that matter, such as the slow motion coup d’etat by the EU, are virtually ignored.