Auntie and Mandela

There's an "ad" running at present on the Beeb showing a series of vignettes with various people glued to their telly/radio watching/listening transfixed as the relevant commentary intones things like, President Kennedy being shot, Man on the moon, etc., the tagline being, “where were you when you heard the news”.

Well twenty years ago today I was in Manchester watching the box, waiting for the release of Nelson Mandela, it was running about an hour late.

When it did happen, it still seemed very surreal, but utterly awe-inspiring. After nearly three decades in prison, the man whom most people acknowledge (we hope) as the Father of the Nation was freed at last, and armed guards escorted him to a crowd of many thousands.

It was a great day, and great coverage from Auntie!

I for one do not see any benefit to be gained from the (virtually) daily outpouring of bile against the Beeb from the right-wing press, for were the BBC to go, we would stand to lose so much more!

Expel Uganda from the Commonwealth

I was alerted to this story by an astonishing piece on the BBC World Service programme website for African listeners asking "Should homosexuals face execution?"
It refers to an Anti-Homosexuality Bill to be debated by the Ugandan Parliament later today.

It is abhorrent that the Ugandan Government, or anyone else for that matter, wish to ban homosexuality. Not only that, they are proposing the death penalty for people whose only crime is to love someone of the same sex.

If this repulsive measure is passed, then Britain should stand up for human rights and expel Uganda from the Commonwealth.

The cost of Free Speech

Nick Griffin's disastrous appearance on Question Time landed taxpayers with a £143,000 security bill.

That's how much police spent dealing with protesters outside BBC Television Centre, closing roads, and using a helicopter to keep the nutty neo-Nazi numero uno safe.

I think that most sane people will be horrified to find out that so much public money has been spent giving the no-Nazi party their best-ever publicity.

However, on balance I think it was money well-spent to show everyone, what an odious little tic the man was and how his neo-Nazi party is really the heir to Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists.

"I'm not an extremist. I'm a national socialist".
"I read Mein Kampf... there are some really useful ideas there".
And my all-time favourite: "Yes, Adolf went a bit too far... It just creates a bad image".

Why is Jeremy Clarkson such an obnoxious little oik?

For once I actually don't have an answer, I genuinely, truly, madly, deeply want to know.

He (Jeremy Clarkson) epitomises ALL that is wrong with modern Britain, the incivility, the bullying, the thuggery, the total idiocy masquerading as blunt-speaking.

Whatever, one thinks of Gordon Brown, and I certainly am not a fan, to call him the c-word in public, is an insult too far.

Please Auntie starve this gobby sub-golf club wiseacre of the oxygen of publicity, however much money he brings in in overseas sales.