THE END OF AN ERA - FROM BBC TO BABC!

 

                                  THE END OF AN ERA - FROM BBC TO BABC!

I renamed the British Broadcasting Corporation the 'Black and Asian Broadcasting Corporation' some four years ago when writing 'In Bed With A. Mann'.  Whether it was Part 1 or 2  is up for debate, I remember not, but the point was made. The BBC were starting to irritate not just me, but many white viewers. 

Black lives apparently mattering more than white, colonialism and imperialism both up for awards in the 'What can we hate next?' category and the BEEB's obsession with minorities has seen a once familiar and friendly family member morph into a distant relative with which I have very little in common.

Today sees the final vestiges of the football season come to an end.  At 3pm Morecombe will play Newport County, the victor gaining promotion to League 1 (Division 3 as was).  And so it is over until the new season kicks off in around three months' time -  a further Covid lockdown notwithstanding.  The pleasure of Football Focus and the Saturday afternoon update service on Radio 5 via the Red Button are now but a recent memory, as is Match of the day.  Football Focus was hosted for some ten years or so by Dan Walker, an amiable chap who played the role of anchorman without hype or brashness.  He was easy on the eye and ear.  All change!  I know not whether it was his choice to leave or whether he was pushed out, but his replacement is a black ex-football playing female, which ticks two boxes in one promotion. 

Frankly, I do not wish to listen to a female talking about men's football.  I have absolutely no problem with women discussing,  playing the game or partaking as a pundit,  providing it's woman football.  Slightly partisan, you may ask, and yes, that view could be formed, though I never had that problem with Gabby Logan! Why? Well for one she speaks well, does not drop her 'H's or 'T's.  On consecutive Saturday afternoons earlier this month neither the anchorman - for he was a man - nor the two pundits were white. The score read Black sports presenters 3 - White sports presenters 0.  I know I have mentioned this before but when the BABC do put a white female on as a pundit they invariably choose that dreadful Karen Carney whose command of diction is appalling.  The black male presenters are equally lacking, but they are black and that is the holy grail as far as the Corporation is concerned.  MOTD is no different.  I wonder how long Gary Lineker will continue to hold court?  He is so often the only white face at the desk, presiding over two black pundits who exclaim 'Penal'y', 'Missed opportuni'y', 'posi'ive', 'ge'in' (getting), 'li'le' (little), 'quali'y', 'coun'er'.  Quantity over quality, it's a race to the bottom in the name of race!

Away from football Eamonn Holmes and his other half have been replaced on daytime TV by a black female presenter.  A black male and female now host a game show so I've been informed.  The London news segment has a far greater ratio of black and Asian presenters than truly represents the population at large.  From Countryfile to Bargain Hunt they have sprung a number of ethnic presenters onto previously white middle-class programmes watched by white middle-class viewers.  Far from the heady days of James Braxton, James Lewis and David Harper, a chap called Danny Sebastian is now treading the boards, so to speak.  A tall, pleasant enough black chap, but does he really have to don a ridiculous bowler hat with a feather?  Is that his style of attire - in which case the man is a complete arse - or is it a'whizz' idea by the stage managers?  Either way, I now choose which episodes to watch...  Dragons Den will, from the next series have a new dragon, a black chap who has made a fortune by some means or other.  He will make his mark apparently by not wearing a suit!  Why?  Would a suit not fit due to an excessive shoulder chip?  

The white viewer is made to feel guilty at every stage of BABC commissioning.  Switch on the TV and there is a trailer informing the viewer of a forthcoming programme on Black music, Black subjugation, Black history, Black lack-of-history, the 'Windrush' debacle, sub-standard  black schooling and institutional racism, and on it goes...drip... drip... drip... Does it make the white viewer contrite, remorseful or grief-stricken for alleged unfairness at best and hatred at worst?  Does it buggery!  If the ordinary man in the street and park that I speak to is anything to go by, it just makes people resentful, angry that so many chips can be counted on so many shoulders and all singing the final verse from the 'White man's lament' which reads: 'If you don't like our ways or our traditions and past, GO! LEAVE! Interesting of course is that the teflon-coated ones never do, they merely wreak havoc with our society.

The BABC are not alone, the commercial stations are just as determined to drive away their basic white audience. Virtually every advert has a black/mixed-race family on show or a lesbian/homosexual couple happily playing their part in destroying the social balance, forcing it down the gullet of the viewer.  I feel I know what it's like to be a duck force fed its diet prior to being served up as foie  gras! Channel 5 are running a programme this week on Anne Boleyn, the leading role played by a black actress - Why?  They must feel so proud that once again they have tipped reality upside down and shocked middle England.  I've said this before but would a white Othello be allowed to enter stage left?  I very much doubt it!  What is good for the black goose is not always good for the white gander.

So, farewell MOTD, Football Focus, Football Update, Countryfile and any future programme that doesn't include a greater commitment to white actors and presenters.  I'm not holding out much hope obviously, so Talking Pictures and Yesterday will be my regular programmes for good, traditional British films when Black and White held sway, but in a manner befitting a nation that was yet to become a hotch-potch of  diversity and social breakdown.  By Christ have we paid a heavy price for our colonial past. The laugh is that my generation never garnered any benefit from the acts of our forefathers, we came under heavy and relentless fire because of them!  Still, as a fellow dog walker lamented only the other day 'I never thought I could feel so disconnected with my own country in front of my own television!'  Says it all really...