The BBC World Service recently celebrated it's centenary. They played a recording  of the first head of the BBC, Lord Reith,  speaking at the launch of what was then called The Empire Service. He apologised for the poor  quality of the programming and promised it would be get better. He must be turning in his grave. The Newsroom programme had an item about the supposed reintroduction of beavers to Britain on the legendary first Duke of Wellington's former estate. Less than a minute on a search engine shows that beavers were reintroduced to Scotland more than a decade ago and have been in northern English rivers as well  for several years now. The only recent development is their arrival in Hampshire. Is it BBC World Service policy that nothing that happens north of Watford counts? Or, let's look at the 23 January edition. What the heck is World of Witchcraft? I've heard of World of Warcraft. This was one of several examples of sloppiness in an edition that could be taught at broadcasting school as a "how not to do it". Or what about mentioning several times mentioning the Archbishop of Canterbury was on a joint visit to South Sudan with the Pope with only a brief aside that the Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland was also a member of the party.  But then again, Canterbury is south of Watford.  

We get a radio programme here in Canada, courtesy of the BBC, called In The Studio. It's usually pretty dull, pretentious, people talking pretentiously about their latest project. The interviews and updates are usually assembled over a period of several months. But the biggest problem is that the programmes are often presented by the subject's best friend or someone who wants to be their new best friend. Too often the programme stinks of "you scratch my back and later I'll scratch yours" careerism. I'm reminded of a student journalist's interview with Andrew Neil when he was editor of the Sunday Times. It was so sycophantic. It was pretty obvious that the student hoped Neil would give her a job when she finished college and didn't want to upset him with any probing questions. 

I'm glad the odious  Aung San Suu Ky has had seven years added to her existing 2ear prison sentence. She deserves it for what she did to the Rohingya Muslims. In the old days bad cops used to frame criminals on the basis of "you may not have done this one but you've done a lot of bad stuff and for the sake of your neighbours you should be in jail". Wrong, but how much wronger than defence lawyers giving prosecution witnesses' addresses to their clients? The charges Aung has been jailed for were trumped up by the military regime that runs Myanmar, once known as Burma. But if Aung hadn't been born a girlie, she would have been part of the junta  founded by her father. Aung and her father, General Aung San, occasionally showed disarming honesty.  Long before the genocidal attack on the Rohingas, Aung said she would not never lift a finger to protect them because such a move would be electoral suicide. Her father when challenged that he only only stopped fighting for the Japanese  when it became obvious they would lose the Second World War, pretty much replied with a smile  "Of course". 

Quite  often when I hear folk complaining about racism I can’t help feeling their narrow focus is missing the bigger picture. And that is that the problem is not really skin tone but of being poor. Take for example police stopping people. It’s often about location rather than skin tone. Now, it's true certain neighbourhoods may have a lot people with certain skin tones. But the police are suspicious of everyone on the streets of that neighbourhood and stop them for “a chat” regardless of skin tone. Those who cry “racism” are, intentionally or through stupidity, doing the work of the Boss Class. Divide and Conquer. The old Klu Klux Klan was more about stopping black and white workers uniting to fight poor pay and working conditions than any genuine belief amongst its financial backers in racial superiority. 

It's not very often I hear much worthy of praise on the Canadian taxpayer funded Canadian Broadcasting Corporation; never mind something that involves moral courage. The item concerned was about a scheme to teach Black people how to become professional wine tasters. We were told that this necessary because a black person had once been told that a wine tasted of quince. When further explanation was sought the person in question was told to eat some quince and then they would understand. After the interview tape ended one of the programme presenters remarked she had never tasted quince either. It was like something from the Emperor's New Clothes and at least one other presenter also declared he had never tasted quince. Now, we're talking about a programme here in which if brains were gunpowder, collectively the entire production team would not muster enough to blow one nose. Certainly no-one involved in producing the item concerned had challenged the woman behind the training scheme to give a better example for the need for a race- based training scheme. So, it was kind of refreshing to hear the racism even obliquely  challenged on air.