Blind judgement

Ah, here's condescension for you.  In the eyes (pardon the pun) of the BBC, Enrico Dandolo wasn't a great man, he was a great blind man and should be remembered as such.

In the brave new world of gruesome identity politics, refusing to see past a physical flaw to see the man isn't bigotry, it's enlightenment.

Spare me.  I refuse to be remembered as a sinus problem.

The EU mind at the BBC.

A BBC Europhile laments the collapse of the dreams of establishing a European Empire and lets the mask slip with this litttle gem:

For myself, I had always been an enthusiastic pro-European and an unashamed believer in a federal European state. Like many English people of my tastes and proclivities, I rather fancied myself propping up zinc bars, sipping pastis and listening to the musical chink-clank of petanque. 

I viewed an increasingly united Europe as a necessary counterweight to US world hegemony and Russian idiocy, while also being a handy cosmopolitan stick with which to beat the backs of uptight Little Englanders.

That seems like a pretty fair characterisation of a BBC European Empire booster; a man who sees himself in Continental cafes, drinking anise-tinged cocktails and wouldn't be caught dead watching something as English as bowls, but is perfectly happy with petanque.  A man who isn't so much interested in dissolving nationalism as establishing Empire over sovereign states, is anti-american while critcising Russia strictly for the sake of form (and very likely for abandoning Communism).

But I think the final bit is most telling.  Above all else, he is a man who despises his own country and sees the entire, rotten European project as a stick to beat his fellow, retrograde countrymen.

It's a telling difference of philosophy.  A decent man who disliked his own country would just leave.  This sort isn't satisfied unless they conform to his will.

The fruits of willful ignorance

How far the BBC have fallen.  The have Jeremy Paxman do a flashy programme about Gordon of Khartoum and get every salient fact completely wrong.

I shouldn't be too hard on them.  It's not as if it's the British Broadcasting Corporation, after all.

Iceman

A breath of sanity

God, I've been waiting for someone to say this.

Jackspeak

In an above board story, the BBC takes a new tack and shows us the ropes of Jackspeak.

I had the first edition of Mr Rick Jolly OBE's copper-bottom guide to Royal Navy slang and that's not just swinging the lead, so cop a shufti while I get myself a cuppa NATO standard, negative two.

God down the memory hole

James Delingpole looks at the BBC's decision to abandon using AD and BC for dates in favour of CE and BCE.  I particularly like this point:

But the BBC isn't doing this because it has been flooded with complaints, you understand. Nor is it responding to public demand. No, as it primly explains on the Q&A page on the section of its website bbc.co.uk/religion, it is doing it to be 'in line with modern practice'.

'Whose modern practice?' you might well ask. Do you know anyone outside the BBC or the fields of Left-wing academe who has even heard of CE and BCE? Or anyone who seriously finds them preferable to the perfectly innocuous term 'AD'? 

Almost certainly not. And this is what gives the lie to the BBC's weaselly, passive-aggressive excuse. The implication of 'in line with modern practice' is that anyone who disagrees with the change must be reactionary, backward, fuddy duddy. Note, too, how the phrase is careful to evade responsibility for the decision. Nothing to do with us, it's 'modern practice'.

As an archaeologist, I see that this imposition of CE and BCE on the world is Newspeak in its most dishonest, repellent form.  It isn't being done for any reason other than to shove Christianity off the board and the culture it supports with it.  It seeks to change the basis of the modern calendar away from the year of the Incarnation, or as close as our ancestors could determine it, to some arbitrary "common" date that merely hangs in history.  And this only because proclaiming a Year Zero isn't practical while people still remember all the other Year Zeros from the French Revolution to Pol Pot and the charnel houses they all ended up creating.  It is nothing but intellectual thuggery and totalitarianism masquerading as "tolerance" when its real purpose is base intolerance of Western culture and Christianity in particular.  As Mr Delingpole points out, this is one small example (Actually, it's a major example), but it's by this steady drip that Civilisation is eroded.

The only solace in this is that the BBC makes the same mistake as academia made.   They think that people respect ideas because of the institutions they come from and that those ideas can be issued like proclamations from the Elite on high that the Outer Party will meekly obey.  What they forget is that institutions are respected and true elites made by the ideas they present and defend. When those ideas are false, self-serving and oppressive, all that happens is that the institutions and their members are abandoned.

When the BBC is finally reformed and returns to being the objective body it was intended to be, that day will be noted as 201* AD.

Update: "Someone needs to get out down the corridor and find the individual who passed this edict and give him or her a figurative kick in the pants."

I agree except for the "figurative" part.  An edict is exactly what this is.

Richard Feynman: No Ordinary Genius

I had the privilege of attending a seminar with Dr Feynman once and a more charming and intelligent man there never was.   He was also never afraid to ask the "stupid" questions that everyone else were too embarrassed to bring up.  One of my favourite moments of the Challenger Disaster inquiries of the 1980s was when Dr Feynman had the guts to speak up and ask what the heck an O ring was.  Turned out, no one else on the panel knew either.

Clive Sinclair, the anatomy of an inventor

Shale gas is the devil's fumes

Gas of evil!

The other day I talked about how shale gas is a promising new source of energy that can keep civilisation going for centuries.  I also said that, for this reason, the environmentalists hate it.

Sure enough, the BBC declares shale gas to be evil in the sight of Blessed Gaia–worse than coal, in their words.  It's so evil that it will SET YOUR SINK ON FIRE!

I expect scaremongering from the Beeb, but at least do it with some sort of subtlety. 

Feminism is a one-way street

According to the controller of BBC One, the Beeb is not only "hideously white", but the cop shows are hideously male.  You can guess what that means.

This sort of bean counting isn't pro-women, it's anti-men.  If I were to point out that nine out of the BBC's 15 main presenters are female, would they sack one and replace the other with a man for precise balance?  I'm sure they would.

About the time Doctor Who stops being a sex romp and goes back to being a children's programme.

Update: Another underrepresented group.

A minor detail

The BBC does a report on the Casio F-91W wristwatch, which the Guardian claims is regarded by the Americans as a red flag for identifying Jihadists.  The Beeb chunters on about how popular the F-91W is for 18 paragraphs and it's only in the caption of a photo at the bottom of the page that one tiny fact is revealed that indicates that the American's aren't a load of barking mad paranoids:

The F-91W is used in bomb-making.

Oh, it's not only popular as a time piece, it's also a crowd pleaser as a timer for setting off IEDs.  Here's a thought: Maybe detaining a suspected Jihadist walking around with a bomb component is what we like to call rational.

BBC surrender monkey test

James Delingpole looks at a new BBC documentary about a modern Britain at war where the enemy can shout propaganda in the high street, those who confront them get carted off by the police, and the BBC plays Dr Goebbels for them.

To coin a phrase, they're not anti-war, they're just on the other side.

?

From the BBC:

Self-test health kits could do more harm than good, consumer group Which? has warned.

In? other? news?, the? BBC requests? applications? from? anyone? interested? in? taking? over? the? post? of? copy? editor?.   The? current? one? can't? tell? a? word? from? a? logo?.

Classics for degenerates

The BBC has a point here.  When I read Wuthering Heights, I couldn't help thinking that what kept it from being a true classic was the lack of vile, obscene language.

James Burke and the Apollo spacesuit

This is one of the things I recall most vividly from the BBC's coverage of the Apollo 11 landing. Maybe I'd read Have Spacesuit, Will Travel too many times, but I really wanted one of these.

James May trying it out in reverse decades later. I suspect that this replica isn't that accurate or Mr May would have been dying of heat exhaustion by the time he went for his cheeseburger.

Suspect coverage

The alleged coffin of the suspected assassin of the supposed president thought to be John F Kennedy who is believed to have been possibly shot in what may have been Dallas, Texas might be up for what is considered to be an auction.

Apparently the supposed BBC doesn't like to get too near established facts.

British Things

Queen Victoria was a dotty idiot who deserved nothing better than to have sugar poured on her head by a servant, the British Empire was a monstrosity built entirely on slavery, conquest, and pillage, and "there are no British things".

Quite a servings of lies, distortions, omissions, and half-truths here–too many to deal with at the moment.  So, what is it?  Left-over Soviet agitprop?  A university Trotskyite society screed?  A remake of an old Lord Haw Haw broadcast set to music?  A clip from some late-night "comedy" show?

Nope.  It's from "Horrible Histories"; a BBC "educational" programme aimed at British children.  That's right.  Children.  Apparently, the brief of the BBC is now to make British children ashamed of their country, their history, and their culture.

Okay, fine.  So be it.  I now await the next installment when the BBC returns the favour and gives the same gleeful muck-throwing treatment to Imperial China, the Ottoman Empire, the Soviet Empire, or the career of a certain middle-eastern camel salesman turned prophet by the name of Mohammed.

I shan't, however, hold my breath in the meantime.

Update:  Not surprisingly, Captain Scott gets the same libelous treatment.

Undeserving poor? What undeserving poor?

I prefer "Ban for life".

Mr Chris Bowlby of the BBC looks at the question of morality and the dole and can't imagine anyone who should be denied benefits. 

When Britain can't tell the difference between a conscientious quadraplegic who'd take a job in a second if only he could figure out how and an able-bodied layabout who has no intention of ever putting in an honest day's work in his worthless life when he can scrounge off the dole, then it's time to put up the shutters.

I offer this as a solution to this conundrum:  Instead of starting with the idea that everyone deserves benefits and working down, start with the concept that only those law-abiding citizens who want to, but truly cannot work and have no other means of support should be offered government support–and keep it there.  Permanently. Private charities, the Church,help from one's family, friendly societies, unemployment insurance plans (preferably private), or emergency relief in time of disaster are one thing.  Dole as a matter of course is nothing but parasitism.

And I speak as a man who has eaten a lot of sardines and Ramen in his day.

Death of the wrist watch

The BBC asks if the cell phone and other digital gadgets are killing off the wrist watch.  It's an interesting question, but I sincerely doubt it.  The wrist watch is too useful a gadget and having a timepiece right where you can see it at any moment has too many advantages.  Besides, a watch can be made virtually indestructible while a cell phone can be destroyed by whispering "moisture" to it. I can't imagine a yachtsman, a scuba diver, or a pilot relying on anything other than a watch and even in more prosaic circumstances a watch has the upper hand.  Which do you suppose is more practical while driving during the summer time when the only pockets available for carrying a phone are in a pair trousers?  Which is more accessible?

Here at Chez Szondy, I wear a wrist watch all the time.  That's because, being a freelance writer, I spend most of my time working in my pajamas and the wife doesn't take my concern that there are at least four rooms in the house without a clock seriously, so it's either a wristwatch while I'm pottering about or guessing half the time.

The BBC's argument rests largely on the fact that young people don't wear a watch as much as their elders do.  Obviously, what this indicates is that the young need a few more cuffs on the earhole.  Mind you, they need that on general principles.