It's 1995 Again...

...which is what you feel listening to the BBC today. No sign of a new era, or the relief of getting rid of a bored, boring administration in London or anywhere else, such as we got in 1997: instead we've got all the typical BBC crap of giving people with no expertise in politics like the shit presenter of the shit sports-comedy show on Radio 5 "Fighting Talk" the space for gems like: "[Sue Mott]...he's locked in CCHQ...[shit host] let's hope so..." of Boris. The casual, even causal, non-political slagging off of Tories that used to be a staple of 1990s BBC output while the Tories were the decadent, corrupt party of power. All they've done now, to deserve this, is win. That's all it takes. Indeed the shit unfunny host of Fighting Talk called his regular "AOB" slot at the end of the show "Boris" on the assumption that everyone would wish to slag off the new Mayor of London. As two of them did, the other two refusing to comment.

Anyone who thinks the BBC is not biased is ignorant or is a liar. Check out the BBC website for its references to the "series of articles" published by the Guardian urging people not to vote for Boris and its wholly stupid "other newspapers did the same" supporting evidence. I saw, or read, no evidence of the Daily Telegraph's long series of articles urging people to vote for Boris: it's not even on the stupid hack's radar: he was writing solely for his mates in North London.

They are gutted: expect the BBC to do their damndest to make Boris's tenure as Mayor uncomfortable. The Tories must both privatise the BBC and conceal their intentions until election time - as it is, we're going to see some real hardcore flag-waving for Labour over the next two years; if the Tories announce any such plans the Beeb would doubtless resort to subliminal red-rose images during CBBC.

"As I was going to say before I was interrupted..." as Gordon Brown did not need to say during his Toady interview this week.

My own fave this week was Radio 5's trailing of a report on immigration by "the think tank the IPPR", never, to my knowledge, mentioning that it is, quite openly, a Labour think tank. You can always tell when a "report" (which rubbish seems disturbingly often to be the lead news items on Five Dead) says stuff they like because they don't identify its origin. We get "the IPPR" or "the Joseph Rowntree Foundation" but "the right wing think tank Civitas" although, to be _scrupulously_ or even _radically_ fair, they have failed, recently, to identify "the Tax Payers' Alliance" as right wing.

As a matter of interest, why is the most important news of any given day often the results of a report by an NGO into a subject whose opinion you could predict after 10 pints of Stella? I could count on the glasses of one visit to the pub the number of damnfool times I have heard this shit: as if anyone with half an-alcohol swamped braincell couldn't tell that any given report by Greenpeace is going to recommend that we all give up on land, even the trees, and fuck off back to the oceans. Recycling our clothes first, of course. Or that any report by the IPPR is going to tell us that immigration is wonderful and also to reinforce what Labour told us in 2004 about East European migrant workers - by some staggering coincidence.

Don't get me wrong, I couldn't really give a fuck about immigration. I do give a fuck about biased "national treasures".

Five to one that Ken Livingstone gets his own show on Radio 2,4 or 5; is a regular guest on Question Time; is a rent a quote on all news bulletins; is even invited to take over from Jimmy Armfield summarising the football when old Armfield is kicked out for being a stupid old twat (which he is NOT, emphatically, but which phrase reflects my expectation that someone of his class, integrity and intelligence is barely even relevant to today).

Fuck it, two-to one. And I might even pay out early.


UPDATE: Fuck me I have forgotten English tenses. Any English graduates please feel free to advise me accordingly.