Opinion: The Beeb and the Royal British Legion

Ok.. Where were you all... Last night?
All those commentators/reporters/hack who will shriek for a politician to be hung from a lampost via a rectal hook for not sporting a poppy from the first second they come on sale... those people who take pride in the forces to a fetishistic level... where were the howls of delight about the BBC putting The Royal British Legion against the might of the X Factor?

I knew which one I wanted to watch. I never watch the X Factor... even if I had I would have watched the Royal British Legion.. Why?... well as somebody with political views that are... shall we say... 'Out of step'... with both mainstreams, my freedom of thoughts, speech and action are even more important to me.  I also feel immense proud for my brother, who serves in the air-force and my elder relatives, who sacrificed a lot for my freedoms (Which of course include the freedom to challenge the political mindset of the men who sent them to war).

My Granddad would be happy to know I'm wearing a poppy, and although a 'Famous Commentator' has said his Granddad would be appalled, I'm less inclined to worry about that as I have and never will meet him.

I watched the Royal British Legion, and I read the Twitter feed as it went. I was proud and I was moved. It was the kind of thing TV was made for. All the while I could read other people's tweets about how the X Factor had 'Broken' and feel slightly sad for them. Reading Twitter there seemed to be no particular generational or political line.. some were watching one, some the other.

Now... If the BBC weren't there... would there have been that choice?
There were no phone lines that you could make money from, promotion seemed to be brutally restricted to the Royal British Legion Itself, anyone attempting to place adverts within would have found them looking ludicrously inappropriate. Would this even have worked on a commercial station?

The BBC put the British Legion against the Xfactor... I don't know how the numbers totted up... Who 'Won' in that respect... What I do know is that I didn't hear any of those aforementioned commentators backing up the BBC.. not one... Not one of those people who would have liked to see Russell Brand and Wossy kicked from the White Cliffs of Dover in a coffin full of glass actually swallowed it back and said "Well actually, this is what the BBC does very well".

I love the BBC. I feel it is one of our countries greatest cultural achievements, but it is under constant threat from commercial interests disguised (Poorly) as news outlets.

Last night they did exactly what all those pundits said it should be doing, and what was their response?
A silence a lot longer than two Minutes...

Opinion: Winterval Retrospectively Cancelled... PC Gone Mad.

Happy Day. The 'usually flawless' Daily Mail has today announced that the most famous Anti-PC fairytail is in fact a load of utter Bumwash. Winterval was never going to replace Christmas, not even to Placate those tricky Muslamics.

Cards on the table time. I like political correctness. I like having an agreed idea of what it is and isn't 'polite' to say, even if it can be a bit clumsy sometimes. I like that it isn't ok for a Government employee to use racist, sexist, homophobic or transgender baiting language with impunity.

I'm also a passionate advocator of free speech. Is this a contradiction? No... Of course not... Political Correctness doesn't sew up your lips, it can't stop you...All rules can be transgressed. All it does is formalise that some people aren't comfortable with what you might want to say. It makes you think about consequence... About context... About whether the words you say are actually communicating what you intend.

So... Back to Winterval. I've been arguing this with people for over ten years now. I know people who were living there at the time. I knew it was bunk. Whenever I got into the discussion about 'PC gone Mad' this came up, enshrined in the cloak of utter Factiness... "THEY BANNED CHRISTMAS!"

When I explained that they actually didn't I got eye rolls, I got called a naive lefty (I have no political allegiance as it happens) and mostly I got told I was wrong. It was national news, and I was just one person who disagreed.

And now it has been retracted, over a decade too late and with much less fanfare than it was announced... I feel my job is to make sure this gets out as much as possible... This story has done real damage, hitting a hot button for people usually untouched by Religious differences, driving a wedge between the mainly secular public and all those who 'wanted to steal Christmas'... Except they didn't... Of course they didn't... It was a desperate fantasy to sell newspapers and hammer home a terrified, neophobe worldview... a fantasy that has taken far too long to unravel but has finally disintegrated utterly... As I said at the start, Happy Day... I think it's time to celebrate...

Anyone wanna pull a Winterval cracker with me?

To finish, a quick and unconnected Theresa May Joke:
Will you let me in your country? The official guidelines won't... But Theresa May....
Arf.

Opinion: Why Miss Jones?

It's straight out of Rising Damp... Miss Jones, desperate to have a baby, fluttering around relationships and counting off her dwindling supply of ova... Then it gets X-Rated... she decides to simply have sex with someone who doesn't actually want to procreate with her, something he makes abundantly clear by using a condom,  a condom she promptly stole (Somehow) and... delicately... applied the resultant mess to the... appropriate place.

Ok... It's only Liz Jones doing what she appears to do best... throw out a wee bit of controversy and wait for the Anti-Trolling to hit overdrive... The DM gets a nice spike in hits from people who would never usually go to their site and any news can get snuck passed the Media savvy whilst they are all making jokes on Twitter (As I was)

Of course... like most of Liz Jones's work, it's almost certainly not 'True' in it's specifics. Most Condoms contain spermicide, most gentlemen would question where you were going with the used condom... (What an amazing piece of excuse wrangling you'd have to come up with for that one) and of course if you left it for even a few minutes to cool down, all of the wrigglies you are attempting to harvest will be dead...  She knows this of course... it' never meant to be taken as statements of facts.. and if it were there may even be some legal implication... I'm sure there is provision in law for theft of genetic material.

Now I enjoy the rare (Very Rare) guffaw at her hyperbolic style, her almost total disregard for facts, people's feelings, or even her own descent in to parody... it's as if she's a pen name for a 'lefties' parody of Nadine Dorries. Sometimes though, also like Dorries, she can be a distraction and decoy from some real news. In fact I would say that it was largely her job, why else throw out lines like: "Speaking as a feminist" and then follow it with a line about disliking "Mumsy" types. Blimey.. that's really supporting women there... all those 'Mumsy' types who have children out of love, not to 'Get something' out of a relationship. So you read... You Rage

But that's the point... she throws it out.. it rattles our cages and people bite. At the time of writing she has been trending ALL day (8ish Hours) she has her own, masterful Konnolsky spoof entry and she's made my Twitter feed resemble a thesaurus entry for the word 'Semen'. In that time I've read jokes, rage some terribly crass 'Appearance led' insults and even the odd well meaning attempt to defend a serious point perceived in her rorschach tumble of words, something about how 'some women' are driven to do this or that because of societies expectation of them to have children... a potentially interesting point.. But not what her article is about. No it's about us... The reaction. The Howls and the Protest and the Jokes... even the utterly terrible ones about her appearance.

So... I guess in that respect she won.