The Talking Clock: BBC Question Time: English and 'offended'...

The Talking Clock is an opinion based, independently authored, small 'c' conservative, libertarian blog.

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Thursday, 25 February 2010

BBC Question Time: English and 'offended'...

As the way to repress free speech seems to be to run around squealing "I'm offended" all over the place, as an Englishman, I would like to declare "I'm offended".

Having just sat through BBC Question Time which, most of us will know, audiences are invited to after being asked about their political affiliations prior to the filming of, a couple of thoughts.

Did you notice the rampant hypocrisy amongst the panellists?

Whilst calling Nigel Farage a whole host of names - including the borderline 'racist' derogatory term "Little Englander" (Elfyn Llwyd) - there were a whole host of other 'insults'.

Later, Llwyd went on to say that those believing in 'creationism' are 'barmy'. Now, this blogger is not a Christian. But we'd imagine an awfully large number of Christians all around the world were or would be very offended by that remark.

Janet Street-Porter used a whole string of derogatory adjectives to describe everybody from Ed Balls to Chelsea defender John Terry. She also made a comment that was borderline sexist - against men, obviously.

And then we had the member of the Cardiff studio audience who announced that they wanted England to be defeated in the first round of the football World Cup.

Following reports of the sale in Scotland of T-shirts carrying slogans hoping that the football World Cup would be won by anyone but England, it's nice to know we're amongst friends in the United Kingdom...

But let's put all of that aside for one moment. We in England are quite used to taking it on the chin.

What we should REALLY be being told is why, at the last minute last week, Nigel Farage's appearance on Question Time was suddenly cancelled.

As you may remember, the show last week was transmitted from Middlesbrough.

Nigel Farage may well have had a thing or ten to say about the closure of a certain steel plant.

Nigel Farage may well wanted to have spoken about the export of British jobs to India.

Nigel Farage may well have wanted to speak about carbon trading scams and the role they play in the closure of certain steel works in the North East.

But no, at the last minute, his appearance intended for last week was cancelled.

Any chance of an official reason, BBC? Or shall we just accept what James Delingpole had to report on the matter?

The follow-on programme to Question Time - the often far more enlightening This Week - has just begun. In more measured tones, Michael Portillo made Nigel's EU speech his 'moment of the week'. He did so, noting the publicity that Nigel had given to the fact that Emperor van Rumpy-Pumpy is NOT elected into his job by anyone and is paid more than President Obama.

If the left-wing claptrap and hypocrisy that is Question Time doesn't want to engage, but instead wants to be anti-English, then the English should just consider their support, or lack of, for the 'telly tax' masquerading as a 'TV license'.

Update: Did this edition of Question Time backfire on the BBC? We're seeing a fair number of people coming to this blog after searching for 'biased audience' or similar. Interesting.

1 comments:

Wyrdtimes26 February 2010 13:04
I know Little Englander is intended as an insult but as an English nationalist I regard it as a badge of honour. The first little Englanders opposed the expansion of the Empire - turns out that they were spot in in their position. And the still are.
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