David Campanale writes: It was in a one-to-one union meeting with BBC management where I met the darkness.
In the wake of the post-Jimmy Savile BBC Trust investigation into a culture of bullying, harassment and control inside the BBC, I had gone on behalf of the National Union of Journalists to read out evidence from fearful staff of sexual assault, physical assault, misogyny, homophobia, drunkenness and theft, all attributed to one manager. I was asked, “Okay. What does the NUJ want done about this?” I replied, “Suspension, pending a full investigation”. The reply, “There is nothing there that merits such a severe response.”
Journalist concerns were smothered by a black cloak of BBC denial. It took years of investigation before resolution.
From one catastrophic loss of staff and public trust to another, somehow the BBC keeps staggering on. It has to because, governed by Royal Charter, the funding and governance arrangements will remain in place until the end of 2027. In line with whenever the charter is renewed, the national owners of the BBC—the people of Britain—then get to have their say about the corporation’s future.
The BBC Charter is covenantal, not contractual.
Thanks to the Daily Telegraph scoop, we all know about the serial, devastating errors and bias identified in a leaked memo in the BBC’s Gaza coverage by independent editorial advisor Michael Prescott. Notwithstanding criticisms about his actual independence, his finding that one guest commentator stated “Jews should be burned as Hitler did” appeared on BBC Arabic 244 times in 18 months” cannot be denied.
Another man given a platform for his extreme antisemitic views—describing Israelis as less than human and Jews as “devils”—appeared 522 times in the same period. It came as no surprise to me that Jewish former colleagues of mine in BBC News say they shudder some days at the thought of going into work.
Then there is the Trump editorialising, evidence of the biased coverage of gender ideology and the handling of the suspension of newsreader Huw Edwards, among other failings. Or the unspoken but nevertheless discernible editorial assumptions pro-life critics say steer the way the BBC deals with assisted suicide (in favour) or ‘abortion rights’ (also in favour). Not to be forgotten is how the BBC’s relentless focus on Gaza is not matched by journalistic coverage of Sudan, Nigeria, or Myanmar, despite evidence of mounting crimes against humanity.
This sort of editorial depravity points to a darkness within the BBC that is spiritual at heart. It is an evil so impressive it must be directed at something at least as powerful; the explicitly Christian covenant that once guided the BBC in its counsels. No compliance mechanism, training course or change to leadership at the top can expel this evil or break the tempestuous chains of the spirit of the power of the air.
The dark chasm of Abaddon beckons all who are not wary.
Over the entrance to BBC Broadcasting House are Eric Gill’s sculptures of Prospero and Ariel, representing the magician and ‘spirit of the air’ who, when cast forth, causes ‘The Tempest’ after which Shakespeare’s play is named. But hidden inside the entrance is Gill’s equally striking sculpture inspired by John’s Gospel, ‘The Sower’, on the fruitful power of the spoken word when scattered on good ground.
Word and spirit. Both engaged in the dark struggle of all eternity against the other.
Tim Davie’s predecessor, Lord Tony Hall, made clear in December 2017 he understood the BBC’s spiritual inheritance when he recognised the winning side was already established. In a Trust publication he declared, “Our commitment to Christianity is undiminished”.
In his work Mere Christianity (1952) adapted from a series of BBC radio talks between 1941 and 1944, C.S Lewis wrote:
Christianity is the story of a great king who has turned the whole of human history into a divine romance.
What then if he was right? And that the story of the BBC is not just ”a self-enclosed field of human endeavour” but “the theatre of the divine self-disclosure”, as Anglican theologian Oliver O’Donovan once described the world.
The allegory in Matthew 12.43–45 offers itself as an analytical tool for C.S Lewis’s and O’Donovan’s insights. “An unclean spirit returns to Broadcasting House from whence it was sent out”, it might be written. ‘“Finding it empty, swept and garnished”’ of its Christian enchantment, we continue, it has entered in to dwell in the bowels of the BBC, along with “seven other spirits more wicked than himself”’.
The hostility coming with the returning spirits appear to the BBC on every side.
The prevailing secular narratives about the causes of the chaos run parallel. In one direction, BBC editorial staff and management are accused of imbuing a left-liberal world view that is out of touch with the public, who pay for it through the mandatory licence-fee, set to rise to £181 next year. It is this unacknowledged ‘wokery’ which critics say accounts for the ‘bias’. And it might explain the estimated 300,000 households who have stopped paying their licences in recent years, denting the BBC’s annual £6 billion revenues by roughly £50 million.
At the same time, the BBC’s friends and prominent journalists argue that the corporation is the target of a right-wing ‘hit job’. Speaking to staff this week, out-going Director General Tim Davie attacked “enemies” of the BBC, accusing them of “weaponising” the corporation’s errors.
But of course, these secular narratives might both be true, simultaneously.
When leading the National Union of Journalists in BBC News in London, as austerity cuts were imposed by the 2010 Coalition government of David Cameron and Nick Clegg, I fought hard to warn against their impact on the quality of the BBC’s news output. Shedding vital editorial roles in global BBC Newsgathering, in the BBC World Service, on the News Channel (subsequently merged with BBC World News) and local and regional news, was always going to cause problems.
It wasn’t just on the breadth of what the BBC could do; it was reliability and quality too. Countless senior journalist roles have been cut since then, with numerous ‘old-timers’ used to spotting errors, or senior enough to challenge groupthink and faddish opinions, choosing to exit the BBC. These unrelenting cuts didn’t appear from nowhere. It was the interests of right-wing press barons driving government policy towards the BBC that outwardly account for the financial trauma.
A hostile, commercial imperative is revealed in submissions to the 2011 Leveson Inquiry, which followed the News International phone-hacking scandal. Mutual backscratching intended to permanently damage the BBC are there in plain sight. In return for promoting the Conservatives before the 2010 General Election—which began fourteen years of Tory power—the Sun was granted signed articles and exclusive interviews by party leader David Cameron in support of their campaigns.
The Conservative party also backed the campaign in the Sun and the now extinct News of the World for a freeze in the BBC licence fee, a freeze they delivered within months of the Coalition government forming after the 2010. Writing in July 2011 in the Daily Telegraph, the now Reform Party activist Tim Montgomerie claimed that Conservative policy on the licence fee was directly determined by James Murdoch.
Citing sources at the top of the Conservative policy-making machine, Montgomerie attributed key changes of policy on the BBC to David Cameron, who went on to tell Newsnight that his freezing of the licence feel was a “delicious moment”. It’s a matter of record that David Cameron admitted to having 26 meetings with executives from News International after becoming Prime Minister. Two of these involved James Murdoch. The then Prime Minister can’t avoid accusations that he played a major part in damaging the BBC. Or the Lib Dems suinpporting him.
Let’s look at the lasting legacy of damage. To this day, the corporation carries the burden of a series of government imposed major funding commitments, including much of the huge cost of the BBC World Service and S4C, all paid from a licence fee that was frozen repeatedly. Piled on top of cuts to staff pre-dating the financial crisis, the BBC in 2010 was forced to immediately cut a further 2,000 jobs. Accompanying the slashing of swathes of vital posts in frontline journalism were anti-competitive cuts to pay, which drove too many of the most talented into the cesspit of lucrative corporate PR and comms.
With the commercial interest of News Corp and the party interest of the Conservatives driving broadcasting policy, it’s easy to forget that the BBC is not just another department of Whitehall, to be pushed around at the whim of whoever sits in Downing Street. But after the right-wing ‘hit job’ carried out by David Cameron and George Osborne in 2010, with the endorsement of Clegg’s Liberal Democrats, coming back for another whack at the BBC’s revenues was always going to be on the cards. And so it has transpired.
When the Conservatives remained in Downing Street after the 2019 General Election, Prime Minister Boris Johnson doubled down on the Conservative assault. Yet another costly government policy was dumped onto the backs of licence-fee payers. Any household with someone aged over 75 who receives Pension Credit became eligible for a free TV licence. This welfare policy used to be paid for by the DWP but is now denting programme budgets to the tune of £250m a year. Director of News, Fran Unsworth told BBC staff early in 2020 that a further 450 journalist posts were to be closed. In an address to staff, she said, “Never in my career have I felt this organisation under threat as the way it is today.” But more was still to come.
In an address early last year to the Royal Television Society, Tim Davie spelled out the pain of 14 years of Tory cuts, saying it had reduced the BBC’s budget by “30 per cent in real terms”. Another £200m in cuts was then announced by the former Director General, who said thereafter, £500m of annual savings would be needed “because of inflation” and “licence fee freezes”. A month after that in April 2024, the head of the BBC World Service Liliane Landor said she was resigning due to “deep concern” about the impact of News cuts.
There is something neat about Conservative freezing of the licence fee and loading half a billion of extra cost (World Service, free licence fees etc etc) that both delivers what Rupert Murdoch was demanding in damage to the BBC—and the digital behemoths after him—whilst covering the policy in the robes of national austerity.
Is there a route to deliverance, a Christian journey to renewing the BBC covenant with God and the people?
In September this year, former Labour Party MP, leadership candidate and policy chief, Jon Cruddas, sought to address the spiritual dimensions of institutional failure. In a speech for group ‘Together for the Common Good’ on the theme of renewal, Cruddas considered:
Is it possible to have a modern statecraft that deals with and challenges the scale of the issues we face today without a belief system situated behind it?
He concludes not. Instead, he argues for a “spiritual renaissance” inspired by the prophets of the “old religion”, Christianity.
The founding director general of the BBC, John Reith, was such a proponent of the “old religion” and would have found common purpose with Cruddas. As a Scottish Presbyterian (his father was a minister in the Church of Scotland) Reith spoke in support of the ideals of the Scottish Covenanters. He would have been convinced that whether a ‘house’ endures for posterity depends on its honour and worship of God. Drawing on his upbringing in the manse, Reith understood that institutions can be mysteriously enchanted with the spirit of Christ.
In 1937, a Director of the BBC’s Scottish Region, Cleghorn Thomson, spoke of Sir John Reith as a “covenanting idealist, a Praise God barebones dwelling on chill Olympian heights of motive, resolved to uplift the groundlings.” We don’t have the minutes of the BBC Governors of the time to determine intention, (I know, as I’ve investigated the BBC Archives) but we can surmise that Reith meant for the BBC to be set apart to the work of God by means of a covenantal oath.
Such a prayer can still be seen in the ceiling of the Broadcasting House, in Upper Regent Street. Translated from the Latin, it reads:
This Temple of the Arts and Muses is dedicated to Almighty God by the first Governors of Broadcasting in the year 1931, Sir John Reith being Director-General. It is their prayer that good seed sown may bring forth a good harvest, that all things hostile to peace or purity may be banished from this house, and that the people, inclining their ear to whatsoever things are beautiful and honest and of good report, may tread the path of wisdom and uprightness.
Above any tempestuous spirit is the power of the living Word. The right path now is to redeem what is lost. Just as Britain is being re-enchanted in numerous small ways, so can the BBC be re-endowed by a renewal of its founding Covenant, to the affirmation by prayer and songs of praise that Christ is King.
David Campanale is a multi-award winning journalist who worked for 30 years in BBC News, covering events around the globe. He served two terms on the National Executive of the National Union of Journalists, whilst chairing the London branch of the NUJ in BBC News.
David served as a director of one of Britain’s biggest Christian disaster and development charities, Tearfund and a CMS Mission Partner to Politics and the BBC. He stood in 2019 for Parliament as a Liberal Democrat and was Vice Chair of the Movement for Christian Democracy. He is a Visiting Fellow of the Danube Institute
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To this excellent piece I would add the utterly compromised reporting of BBC (and just about every other news channel) of economics, business and finance matters.
Successive chancellors and the Treasury go unchallenged over the function of money and purpose of tax because reporters have swallowed hook, line and sinker what they were given as gospel by their neoconservative, free market economics teachers. Increasingly, the present chancellor repeats what The City of London says is for everyone’s good but in truth serves to satisfy the bond markets and moves wealth upwards. And just about everyone parrots the rubbish about ‘hard-working, tax-payers’ money’ financing government services—it doesn’t; spend (creation of fiat money) always precedes. No one challenges the assumptions over targets for inflation; no one challenges the myth that a country that issues its fiat currency like the UK could go bust—it can’t; no one challenges the lie that says government debt is de facto morally bad—it happens because it is a safe haven for people, corporations and other countries to deposit their excess savings.
And in terms of moral theology (yes, we’ve finally got to the serious stuff!) no one examines what is a true understanding of the Godly purpose for money and wealth; the silence is deafening! There must be some journalists and commentators at the BBC, ITV and C4 who ‘get it’, but I doubt that they would last long in post if they spoke up and questioned the purposes of free market ideology. (I’m an old ‘City’ insider and before ordination I worked for nearly 30 years in the financial markets.)
But should we expect The BBC to make these points? Are not these things for Christian leaders…?
Economics impinges on the world, not just the church – so Yes.
Peter Davies says that nations which issue their own fiat currency cannot ‘go bust’. But what does that phrase actujally mean in those circumstances? If we are forced to print money to pay interest on gilts, and if those interest rates are large, then an inflationary spiral is the result. Also, many pensions are inflation-protected, worsening the spiral. Pl;enty of South American countries that issue their own fiat currences can tell you where this leads, and it is very messy.
Christian leaders on matters of moral theology, of course, should be making these points. My concern is that the vast majority of those commentating on and interviewing politicians on anything to do with money and wealth appear to assume and accept the application of the free market school of economic theory.
I would have thought it incumbent on radio and TV interviewers in terms of balanced reporting and critical investigation to challenge politicians when interviewing them especially when it is plain that policies based on free market economic theory do not benefit the population of the country at large.
Please distinguish between free markets in goods and in money. And whether you mean within the UK or also across borders (customs tariffs or not). I am not necessarily disagreeing with you but requesting clarity.
Thank you, Anthony Williamson, for checking this out; you raise an interesting distinction, notwithstanding tariffs! In terms of physical goods, the cost of movement is far greater than for moving money, which is done by hitting the ‘send/pay’ button. Therefore, for goods the marketplace is qualified in that sense as movement is less free. The market for financial products, forex, money, capital, etc., certainly in my days, was usually claimed to be akin to a perfect market with ease of transmission and wide/perfect knowledge. That, of course, was not true because the big traders had a massive knowledge though known client interests plus their own position (long, flat or short), which potentially could dominate movement. Sorry, this is long-winded, but in essence I am referring to the translation of the philosophy(ies) of free market economics into what has evolved into practice in terms of both how capital/monies are traded and how countries moved to support and enable that through deregulation. We saw this in the UK with ‘Big Bang’ in 1986, and that set in train the direction of politics to this day. For further on this Modern Monetary Theory has a lot to say.
I agree that what is a free market is a a question of definition, but isn’t it fairly well understood that it refers to governmental regulatory constraints rather than factors such as the cost of transporting goods?
For what it’s worth I support free markets in goods but regulated markets in money. I have been called leftwing in my monetary policy and rightwing in my fiscal policy. I note the almost unprecedented increase in popularity of President Milei in midterm elections in Argentina, which says much for the Austrian school; I don’t think the have the whole truth, but I’d prefer them to the Magic Money Tree or Piketty.
You are right. A basic understanding of the role of retail banks in money creation is lacking inside the BBC. Without this, you get people thinking mortgages are provided from savings at the bank, when the loan itself creates the cash required and also a poor understanding that QE has inflated asset prices especially house prices, causing those who already have wealth to increase, whilst keeping out the poor who are blocked from market entry. But this is a general problem not a BBC one.
Never mind journalism in general, what about religious broadcasting content? Even ‘factual’ programmes such a County file have a discernible slant.
But the splicing of Trump is gut wrenching, and I am no Trump supporter. To hear Rusbriger spouting forth on a Trump defamation case, again was truly mind numbing, in effect saying he shouldn’t have a claim, because of the way he’d spend any damages, thereby perpetuating the politics, and diminishing, defamation and replacing cause/ claim with remedy, even though defamation is a law for the rich it is a law seemingly held in contempt in journalism, no doubt seeking to rely on the opinion defence. It is a law of some substance, going beyond mere hurt feelings, pride, and contempt.
There are limits and a societal cost to so called ‘free speech’ as there are to ‘ public interest’ censure, editing.
How can the BBC; which is riven through with Evil, Woke, Marxist, anti-family, anti-English, anti- protection of children, anti-white-male, anti-success, anti-God, anti-goodness, anti-decency, anti-innocence, anti-Jesus Christ ness, stand a chance to recover it’s Christian heart when The establishment Church of England is also riven through with such things also?
When, as Isaiah (Isaiah 5:20-25) warned would occur, people call what is Good as though it were wicked, and call what is wicked as though it were Good, then we are truly in days of woe.
The BBC is completely wicked. The lies that spew forth from it are daily and hourly and incessant. There is no goodness in it.
Why anyone would pay to have a brain-washing box of lies in their home and expect to be able to think critically still, is beyond me.
“The BBC is completely wicked. The lies that spew forth from it are daily and hourly and incessant. There is no goodness in it.”
I disagree. That’s just so far over the top it’s meeting itself on the way back. …especially as “I don’t watch television.”
I readily criticise the BBC on a number of issues, actions and stances … and occasionally shout at the radio or tv… but “completely wicked” etc..?
Children in Need seems to have some goodness in it does it not?
Some goodness? I’d have to do a google search…
15 Oct 2014 News- BBC Children in Need has been criticised by the Daily Mail for holding onto almost £90m of charity money in bank accounts and investment portfolios.
In 2006, the independent watchdog Intelligent Giving advised viewers not to donate to the charity because of its administration costs. Of £33m raised at the time, £2.4m went towards administration costs.
In November 2024 in The Spectator-
Rosie Millard has resigned as chair of Children in Need, she says, because of an ‘institutional failure’ that led to almost £500,000 being paid out to LGBT Youth Scotland (LGBTYS). Payments only stopped, Millard says, when she alerted Children in Need of the history of the charity it was funding. In 2009, James Rennie – chief executive of LGBTYS from 2003 to 2008 – was jailed for life after being revealed as part of one of Britain’s worst paedophile rings. LGBTYS received its first grant from Children in Need seven months after Rennie was convicted.
It is not as if LGBTYS has become a force for good in the lives of young people since. It has relentlessly promoted the idea that everyone has a gender identity, and to this day its website churns out the sort of advice that children do not need to hear.
Its ‘Trans and Non-Binary Coming Out Guide’ reads more like propaganda. After dismissing the idea that there are only two ‘genders’, readers are advised to experiment with different names and pronouns before ‘finding the ones that feel right’.
A 2025 episode of school drama ‘Waterloo Road’ focuses on Lois, a boy living as a girl who is shown to have stopped visiting his grandmother, who has dementia, after she ‘dead named’ him by using his birth name, Jake. ‘Dead naming’ is portrayed as something so serious that it is more important than visiting a close dying relative.
In an episode from 2013 schoolgirl Kacey Barry is shown binding her breasts to look less feminine. Chest-binding has been found to cause breathing difficulties, chronic back pain, changes to the spine and broken ribs, but none of this is reflected in the drama.
In 2014 CBBC showed a documentary, I Am Leo, centring on the life of Leo Waddell, a 12-year-old girl who (with the mother’s approval) was living as a boy and taking puberty blockers. The video is still on YouTube.
Or read about Dr Ronx Ikharia. She (preferred pronoun ‘they’) self-describes as follows: ‘Dr Ronx is an award winning trans non binary emergency medicine doctor by profession. On screen they are best known for their role as a presenter on CBBC’s Operation Ouch. They describe themself as a queer, black, intersectional feminist.’
According to Luke, reporting the words of Jesus, it would be better for him/her/them if a millstone were hung around his neck and cast into the sea than that the person should cause little ones to go astray. Including the producers of such programs.
However, I agree that the BBC is not totally corrupt. In my opinion, the BBC – excepting its BBC Arabic arm – has done a great job in holding Israel to account these past two years. I have been appalled by the death and destruction Israel has meted out on the inhabitants of the Gaza Strip in retalliation for the atrocity of October 7th.
So Israel should just sit and wait for Hamas to do it again? Babies burnt befoer their parents eyes and mothers then pack-raped, all proudly put on social media and never disavowed by Hamas? October 7th commanded widespread support among Gazans, and women and children turned out to insult living and dead Jews dragged back to Gaza.
Has the sin of the Gazans reached full measure?
I believe in the power of the Cross? The suggestion that anything is inherently and irredeemably evil is not biblical. The power of the Gospel transcends any spirit of the power of the air. Or to take Reith’s Covenantal model, the requirement is to invoke its terms.
The malaise runs very deep indeed.
Once you have a relativist society,
then people are socially allowed to think what they want,
and in this they will be directed by 2 things:
(1) if they are allowed to think what they want, the particular view for which they will opt will be identical with their desires;
(2) they do not want, socially, to be in a minority among their peers. Because merging opinions and desires will be a popular move from which people can gain much, that evidence-free outlook can form a majority.
They have a vast reach and therefore vast power. All they need to do is form an Overton Window maximally convenient to themselves and then (circularly and self referentially) pretend it was their all along.
The way of overcoming this is evidence, honesty and truth. Pluralism and relativism are so embedded and bound to be so popular, that if those in power are on that side, they can leave anything else on the cutting room floor.
Have you ever noticed how questions are never approached from the perspective – What do the studies say?
Have you ever noticed how extremely obvious truths are actually *outside* the Overton window – e.g., what they call ‘abortion’ is killing humans, usually your actual own offspring, and since it is premeditated it is indistinguishable from murder. The very idea that the Overton window should be subjected to any outside body – e.g. logic or evidence….
‘was there all along’
I like the BBC. It honestly reflects the society in which it lives. Watch the BBC and learn something about the world around you.
Change society yourself by being salt and light.
Believe in your heart that God raised Jesus from the dead and confess with your lips, then you will be saved.
Spurgeon said “A lion doesn’t need defending. All you need to do is let it out of its cage and it will defend itself.”
It does not honestly reflect the society in which it lives.
It is (among) the main bodies that can help determine what people do and do not see as being norms in the first place.
(Now – of course – you and I know that it is irrelevant whether something is a norm. The question is whether it is good. But to most people, the main question is whether it is a norm. The BBC is not guiltless in producing that situation.)
Anyway, merely reflecting a society would be incestuous in the first place. Can no suggestions on improvements be made?
And even then we have not mentioned the fact that their recruitment base is wildly unrepresentative. Educated urban liberals – those who think, with Paul’s Athenians Acts 17.21 that what life is really all about is exchanging and chattering about what is new (novelties or ‘news’ – the ‘newer’ the better).
Steve, thanks for this calmly expressed support for the BBC. It’s refreshing to read a good comment in the midst of much negativity. Perfect the BBC ain’t, but for many people in dark places of oppression and violence around the world it is a deeply trusted source of good information. Kate Aidie shows why every week in From Our Own Correspondent. And at only £3-4 a week it’s a bargain.
Yes, what’s a bit of corruption and lying if most of it is OK?
Huw Edwards and Jimmy Savile – great public servants! And Huw was a bargain at only £400,000 pa.
How much do you pay to watch ITV and Freeview?
I agree with this. For Reith I imagine that invoking the terms of the covenant is the first step towards God’s divine intervention. The door of our hearts and that of Broadcasting House had to be opened and the Lion of Judah released.
The doors of Broadcasting House stand under the statuary by Eric Gill – covered in bullet-proof glass.
In its own terms this article explains why I do not have a television, let alone a TV licence.
It’s more than TV; radio, podcasts and …
There seems to be more depth to some radio programmes.
I have had it with several decades of having my political views disparaged and insulted as being far right (effectively Nazi) by the BBC when they are merely those of the mainstream Tory party of 40 years ago (not to be confused with the Blair-lite party of Cameron) and stilll popular among much of the British people today. Add to that the blind eye – then denial – of Savile and the rot it exposed. Now there is the outright deceit practised against Donald Trump. Worst, though, is the injustice of having to pay the BBC for the right to watch other channels.
The BBC deserves to be closed and dismembered. The obvious and simple way is for the government to make the license fee voluntary.
Decriminalising non payment of the BBC licence fee will be a wound that cannot be stemmed without losing the corporation’s core identity. I am not a catastrophist and believe in the possibility of repentance, especially in Christian founded institutions.
Nonsense. If ITV, Freeview and Netflix can survive and flourish without threatening to prosecute the British people, so can the BBC. It’s a dinosaur.
No, the license fee should be kept but spread around broadcasters for programmes of cultural and scientific interest and current affairs programmes. The BBC can then fund its most viewed programmes like Strictly and Eastenders with adverts. The BBC still provides some Christian programmes like Songs of Praise and Morning Live on Sundays and Pilgrimage at Easter
It’s very un -Christian to force people, under pain of criminal prosecution, to pay for things they don’t watch. It’s Stalinist, in fact.
Do you support un-Christian totalitarianism, Simon?
The BC is bloated and a vast spendthrift of other people’s money.
And the BBC is fundamentally hostile to Christianity, and full of atheist and gay ideology.
I met David Campanale in our church in Cheam when he was the local parliamentary candidate just before the Liberal Democratic party gave him the elbow.
He impressed me greatly. Pity, but for that he would have been our MP, a great loss.
The BBC is far from perfect but I fear its days are numbered and I further fear that what may come it its place will be far worse.
I agree. On this occasion ‘better the devil you know’.
Thank you Ray. We are in days that require a bold stand for biblical Christianity. We are not as those who shrink back from this fight. It is time to go forwards.
The BBC is the enemy of biblical Christianity.
These are not the 1930s.
The BBC is the enemy of biblical Christianity.
These are not the 1930s. C.S. Lewis would be laughed at by the BBC today. Their idea of children’s programming is that gay propaganda fanstasy that Doctor Who has become.
But then a publicly funded organisation is hardly going to reflect Biblical views given how different they can be from society’s secular views. Why would you think or expect otherwise?
…and even ”Pride” and (intentionally anyway) transgenderism at CBBC. Yes, RT Davies’s Dr Who propaganda (and in his other amoral programmes) is unremitting and as blatant as one can get. Shame on those who corrupt the innocent, as Jesus said.
We wrestle not against ideologies, vain philosophies and theologies
We contend with principalities and powers in the heavenly places
that deceive, rob, blind, enslave and kill.
It would seem unlikely that the hirelings of the C of E et al
and their blind leading the blind and in need of re-enchantment themselves could ever “re-enchant” Anti Beeb.
The weapons of our warfare are mighty Through God
to the pulling down of of Strongholds……..
We cannot “fight like hell”[DT] but we can fight like Heaven
2 Pet 2:4 …if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment;
2 Pet 2:17 These are wells without water, clouds that are carried with a tempest; to whom the mist of darkness is reserved for ever.
2 Pet 3:7 But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men.
Jude 1:13 Raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame; wandering stars, to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness for ever.
Church, wake up, be prophetic, sound the Trumpet,
Lift up Cry aloud Spare not, warn every man,
God has appointed a Day…when the Last Trumpet will be sounded….
It is strange that the author references Eric Gill’s statue outside the BBC but fails to mention that Gill was a paedophile molester of his own daughters and committed bestiality.
While other statues have been torn down or thrown in the Avon, Gill’s work adorns the front of the BBC – and is protected with reinforced glass after someone took a hammer to it.
So the statue is a fitting tribute to Jimmy Savile and Huw Edwards and all the measures taken by the BBC to protect them and reward them with huge salaries.
It is also repellent that the author goes on a rant about the licence fee being frozen in the past- as if it was not too high already! How much licence fee does ITV receive? Zilch. How much for the 100 or so Freeview channels? Nada. The whole setup is completely false and belongs to a time when the GPO handled telephone services.
Sky and Netflix now outstrip the BBC in revenue because people want to buy their product.
The BBC depends on criminal prosecution of people who want to watch ITV.
The BBC should long ago have been privatised with advertising or made a public company with subscribers.
Years ago Peter Sissons, in a parting commentary, outlined exactly the problems of the BBC and it has only got worse. If most British people feel alienated from the BBC, that is because it is quite out of step with the majority and has been for years.
Staff surveys show how unrepresentative of Britain the BBC is. With a Muslim is in charge of religious broadcasting (imagine that happening in Pakistan!), fewer than 25% of the staff identifying as Christian, about 50% as ‘atheist’ or ‘no religion’, and on sexuality, 11% of its staff as LGBT (1.1% as transgender) and 8% ‘preferred not to say’, it is no surprise at all that the BBC reflects the feelings and desires of its staff. I would have no problem with this – if it was a private company and not a public parasite.
It needs to be privatised as a matter of urgency, or made into a public company with license payers as shareholders.
Further work of Eric Gill includes the Stations of the Cross in Roman Catholic Westminster Cathedral. They too remain in place.
My article is based on a lecture I give to churches detailing a lot of the BBC history and sets out the abusive history of Eric Gill. Not everything could be said in this piece. I don’t believe art becomes evil because of fallen humanity. Otherwise we concede Satan’s claims to the world.
Not everything could be said – but a comment (in a long article that several ti mes attacks the Tories for freezing the licence fee/TV tax) on Eric Gill in the light of how modern society treats artifacts (e.g. the removal of the Colston window from a Bristol church) and the spending of £300 k to protect a sculpture of a man with a naked child (carved by a man who sexually abused his own children) is worth at least a passing nod. We call it ‘irony’.
if he did what is claimed then I dont see how it is appropriate to keep such a sculpture. Very odd.
Have you read the lives of the Renaissance artists recently?
Extracts from https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/06/10/bbc-state-broadcaster/
During the pandemic the BBC morphed from a national broadcaster founded on impartiality into a state broadcaster that stifled voices challenging the authoritarian response to Covid. Current and former BBC journalists described a “climate of fear” during the pandemic, with experienced reporters “openly mocked” if they questioned the wisdom of lockdowns, or called “dissenters”. Some complained to senior managers about the BBC’s blinkered stance, but were ignored. Others communicated via secretive WhatsApp groups to share their frustrations, like members of a resistance movement.
While other news organisations made their own assessments of conflicting scientific evidence on coronavirus and the best ways to weigh them up, the BBC was alone among news gatherers in attending the Counter-Disinformation Policy Forum, which was chaired by ministers or civil servants.
Robin Aitken, a former BBC journalist and author of the book The Noble Liar: How and Why the BBC Distorts the News to Promote a Liberal Agenda, said it was “alarming” to discover that the BBC took part in the Forum, which he suggested was “a conspiracy against public debate”.
“People were suggesting eminently qualified experts as alternative voices, but in my experience not one of them was put on air.”
The journalist was one of three who gave evidence in private to Parliament’s all-party group on pandemic response and recovery last November. Their evidence was never made public, [and] all of them are too fearful of the repercussions of speaking out to be identified by name.
A second witness told the APPG at the time: “Downing Street pursued its lockdown strategy with a reckless disregard for the mental health of the public, lacing its messaging with fear and guilt to ensure broad compliance. “This approach should have sounded alarm bells for every freedom-loving journalist in the BBC; instead, many of my colleagues were cowed. The apocalyptic atmosphere in the newsroom was fuelled by new in-house health and safety rules designed to ‘stop the spread’, many of which were absurd and the sort of box-ticking theatre the BBC is more than adept at.”
The same source was astonished at his editor’s reluctance to allow him to report on anti-lockdown marches happening in London, some of which attracted tens of thousands of protesters. They said: “In editorial meetings if you raised the fact that there were lockdown marches going on, you were told that was not on the agenda.”
Prof Heneghan [Director of Programs in Evidence-Based Health Care at the University of Oxford] says: “For the whole of 2021 I was virtually ghosted by the BBC. I was sometimes booked to go on programmes but then it would be cancelled or I would be told I wasn’t needed. “It got to the point where the BBC was at times just the broadcast arm of the Government, for example the way they reported death figures without giving any context to them.” Meanwhile others with no medical qualifications were being put on the approved list simply because they were on-message.
As we now know, the first Spring lockdown is estimated to have saved 1,700 lives, according to a landmark study published earlier this week, set against an as-yet unknown number of people who have died of cancer, heart attacks and other illnesses because care was interrupted or unavailable. Not to mention blighted educations, a rise in childhood mental health problems and the enormous cost to the economy.
Quite so – the BBC were falling over themselves with the enthusiasm of zealous apparatchiks during one of Stalin’s purges in the 1930s. Only the church-closing Welby surpassed them in moral purity. With the nightly fearporn on the news with its portentous music and absurd statistics, you would have thought we were caught up in the Black Death 2.0. Those were the days when lone walkers in the Dales were dangerous super-spreaders but thousands of BLM demonstrators in London had immunity.
An interesting question for the brave social psychologists is how far heightened anxiety about the doom du jour (covid, climate change etc) reflects the feminisation of public discourse and the extent to which television is increasingly a female world, which is conformist in outlook and perceives the world as a threat to be tamed rather than opportunities to be exploited. In other words, reflecting the anxieties that tend to go with being a woman. The world of youtube, OTOH, seems to be much more a male world – argumentative, technologically minded and resistant to censorship ‘for the greater good’.
The Guardian published this fine article in November 2020, “Let Us Disobey”, about lockdown-busting church meetings held in barns etc:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/22/let-us-disobey-churches-defy-lockdown-with-secret-meetings
I didn’t call myself a nonconformist for nothing.
I led on some of the BBC early coverage from my reporter role in the newsroom, including the first television report underlining the threat of SarsCov2 spreading asymptomatically. There was no conspiracy of silence – far from it. I’ve read all the radio and TV headlines from early 2020 and the BBC was measured in its reporting and was not swallowing any government line. Decisions can be taken quite quickly on what goes into a bulletin and no one was waiting for sign off from Downing Street.
There was a nightly drumbeat of doom with statistics of deaths – with very little context given, that the great majority of those who died were elderly or had underlying health conditions. Children were at no statistical risk. Some Indian-American statistician (not a physician) based in Edinburgh was also on repeatedly on the BBC. You heard very, very little dissent (from Henaghen, Battyracha – sp? – Ioannides et al).
Thanks for the reminder. David Campanale’s exculpatory reply refers to early 2020 and ducks the point that the nightly drumbeat continued into 2021, if not 2022. As late as Sept 2021 the BBC was reporting uncritically that “the UK could face 50,000 cases a day by October without action”.
One of the very few MPs willing to think independently was Andrew Bridgen. On March 23rd 2023 the BBC devoted an entire one-hour show on Radio 4 to attacking a speech he made.
https://dailysceptic.org/2023/03/28/in-defence-of-andrew-bridgens-speech-to-parliament-on-the-risks-vs-benefits-of-covid-vaccination/
On another parliamentary occasion, the BBC Parliament channel throughout his speech ran a series of captions purporting to correct what he was saying. The BBC eventually had to apologise.
In short, the BBC was an organ of State propaganda, repressing all dissent, and the State in turn was the slave of Big Pharma. Most lamentably, very few Christians stood up against it . State and free churches alike just allowed themselves to be brainwashed.
I believe you when you say there was no conspiracy of silence. The tragedy is how unrepresentative of a deeply polarised country the views of the newswriters were.
A review of the BBC’s “Unvaccinated” by Norman Fenton and Martin Neill. The program was screened in July 2022.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-55996728
Fenton was Professor in Risk Information Management at Queen Mary University of London, Neil Professor in Computer Science and Statistics at said university.
Later the same year the BBC boasted how it got Facebook to remove a vaccine-injured support group with 250,000 members
https://dailysceptic.org/2022/09/16/bbc-boasts-it-got-vaccine-injured-support-group-with-250000-members-removed-from-facebook/
Analysis of the 30 September 2013 BBC Panorama documentary ‘Saving Syria’s Children’ and related BBC News reports contended that sequences filmed by BBC staff and others at Atareb Hospital, Aleppo purporting to show the aftermath of an incendiary bomb attack on a school in Urm Al-Kubra were largely, if not entirely, staged.
https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-bbc-saving-syrias-children-documentary-staged-events-fake-video-footage/5470158
The smartest thing the Israelis did was banning the BBC (and the others) from reporting from Gaza. It didn’t stop the propaganda but it couldn’t have the BBC imprimatur (or not quite).
Opening paragraph of Stephen Pollard’s article https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/04/28/the-bbc-has-gone-to-war-on-our-culture/
‘Here’s your starter for 10: which music festival has a disco night, a Nick Drake tribute evening, a Sarah Vaughan night, and a performance by the pop star Sam Smith in its first few days, and carries on with shows by the likes of Florence and the Machine? … It’s the self-described “world’s greatest classical music festival” – the BBC Proms, which last week released its programme for this summer.’
The BBC’s approach to reporting criticism of Islam:
https://dailysceptic.org/2022/06/09/the-bbcs-shameful-capitulation-to-islamists-in-refusing-to-report-impartially-on-the-latest-blasphemy-furore/
Will someone please leak the Balen Report of 2004 into antisemitic reporting of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to that point? The BBC has buried it very deeply, at a realtime price in ex-VAT legal fees of one third of a million pounds.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balen_Report
Ah, the Balen Report. I had forgotten about that cover-up. But not the attempted stitch-up of Cliff Richard, along with the South Yorkshire Police. The list of BBC crimes is a very long one.
How interesting.
Cliff Richard v. BBC 2018 – the BBC paid him £2 million (of licence fee money) for invasion of privacy, colluding with South Yorkshire Police in filming a raid on his property and reporting unsubstantiated allegations that were never reported to the police. Richard said he was still £1 m out of pocket after years of fighting to clear his name.
This is about the most egregious of all their misdeeds, until one remembers some of the other ones too.
It has in common that there is a commonly shared cliched unintelligent assumption which those involved seem completely unable to escape from. I have never seen how the Trump thing could have been anything but deliberate and planned (and those who dare to call it a ‘mistake’ – even after all they have done wrong – are as dishonest as can be) – and yet this blinkered mindset thing could offset that a bit.
The BBC completely cancelled Botanist David Bellamy because he refused to go along with their evil Global warming scam.
David Attenough is only their golden boy because he tows the line.
The BBC is the propaganda wing of the Satanic global elites.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdd_cw6kNls
Richard Attenborough doesn’t “toe the line” – he truly believes it. Trouble is, he knows nothing about atmospheric physics, because he is a zoologist. He merely amplifies what he is told.
I recommend the in-depth 2023 documentary Climate: The cold truth, here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmfRG8-RHEI
You mean David, Richard was his brother and an actor of Jurassic Park, 10 Rillington Place, Miracle on 34th Street and Gandhi fame
Yes, thank you.
Sorry—are you saying that global temperatures are not going up?
Or are you claiming that they are not anthropogenic?
Jeannie will give her own response of course. But, as posed, your questions cannot be answered because it doesn’t allow for the enormous variety and complexity of causes and effects which drive climate change over time (irrespective of anthropogenic causes), along with the apparently decreasing marginal effect that CO2 has on temperature increase as its atmospheric concentration increases.
No one doubts that climate is on the move – it always has been in terms of cycles over decades, millennia and millions of years. The problem we non scientist members of the population have is the same as what occurred with Covid-19: science has been corrupted by politics (and huge financial interests) so that objectivity is completely overwhelmed by narrative. In such a situation truth is the first casualty, not least because scientists whose insight is not aligned with the narrative are brutally silenced (relieved of post, starved of research funds and/or rubbished in the public square).
It hardly needs saying that the BBC, as it currently operates, is front and centre of narrative promotion rather than journalistic integrity. So it fails in its very first duty of imparting reliable information. On the one hand it doesn’t report facts honestly and clearly, on the other it omits altogether to report facts which, if known, would seriously undermine the intended narrative.
We want temperature data to work out the amount of global warming from a given time in the past. To do that, you look at the temperature in many places at that past time, and also in the present. Then you calculate the difference at each place, and take an average over the many places on the globe.
When doing this, there might be good reason to use a different temperature from the value actually recorded – if a particular weather station was put up in a green field but has since been built round, causing an Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect. This should be compensated for.
One way to correct for UHI heating is to find weather stations near the one in question which are still in fields, calculate the average warming at those, and use that figure to correct the figure at the weather station that became urbanised. This procedure is called data homogenisation.
That’s good science. You should explain what you did, and keep the original data so that readers can check for themselves.
BUT homogenisation is often done wrongly, and makes the warming look bigger. Homogenisation should first identify the extent to which each station has been urbanised, and when. Instead, software is often used, e.g. a ‘majority voting’ algorithm among stations in the same region. But if there are more urbanised than green-field stations, the urbanised ones mistakenly add the UHI heating to the green-field data. That makes recent warming at the green-field stations seem bigger. Or the correction needed to cool data from an urbanised station is applied from before the date at which it was built around. That makes the past look cooler, making subsequent warming look bigger. Or no correction is applied to urban data, causing UHI heating to be assigned wrongly to CO2.
Many webpages of older temperature observations have been replaced by ‘corrected’ ones at the same web address. “We…. do not hold the original raw data but only the… homogenized data” – website of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia. The CRU cited constraints on data storage in the 1980s.
A pause in global warming was observed in real time between 1998 and 2012, even though China and India were opening many coal-fired power stations. (“We can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment” – IPCC lead author Kevin Trenberth, email of 12th Oct 2009 to Michael Mann.) 90 papers were written about the pause while it was happening. But no pause can be seen today in the temperature data for 1998 – 2012. The data have been changed!
If in a school science experiment, I had
* used altered data to reach my conclusions
* made up data
* thrown away the actual data
* said only in small print that I had altered it, and
* used questionable methods to make the alteration
then my teacher would have thrown me out of the laboratory with 0/10. Yet this is happening in climate science. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Although there is no way I can fail to believe in dangerous global warming / climate change / threat to nature, and even if there were none it would be better to be safe (in harmony with nature and retaining full biodiversity) than sorry – nevertheless I appreciate that Anthony gives a little bit of hard evidence. (Of course I am not an expert anyway.)
Hi Anthony
could you point me to where you are getting this info from re UHI etc?
thanks
Peter,
I shall post a comment immediately below with multiple weblinks and ask Ian to greenlight it. (Any comment with more than one link is automatically referred to him.)
Genuine cooling transforms to spurious warming:
https://joannenova.com.au/2014/08/the-heat-is-on-bureau-of-meteorology-altering-climate-figures-the-australian/
Geophysics professor F.K. Ewert finds that NASA altered data back to 1881, making subsequent warming look bigger – especially in the Arctic, which obviously isn’t urbanised:
https://principia-scientific.org/nasa-exposed-in-massive-new-climate-data-fraud/
Where stations are sparse, adjustments may come from stations in distinct climates, e.g. Tasmania from Melbourne!
https://joannenova.com.au/2019/10/homogenisation-the-magical-system-which-uses-thermometers-in-victoria-to-correct-the-temperature-in-tasmania/
In Paraguay, both urban and rural weather stations were adjusted, exaggerating recent warming:
https://web.archive.org/web/20150228033812/https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2015/01/26/all-of-paraguays-temperature-record-has-been-tampered-with/
Environment Canada filled in the temperature record from 1850 to 1949 with ‘modelled’ data even though actual measurements were available:
https://www.climatedepot.com/2019/10/08/100-years-of-climate-data-deleted-from-canadian-policy-report-including-historic-high-and-low/
Environment Canada said there wasn’t enough data, so they made some up. The result exaggerates any subsequent warming – circular logic! The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in the USA invents data for multiple stations that have closed:
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/hidden-behind-climate-policies-data-nonexistent-temperature-stations
NOAA also asserted record June heat in central Africa in 2024 despite having no data at all for the region:
https://realclimatescience.com/2024/08/record-heat-in-africa/
This website documents multiple further examples of homogenisation that make the warming look bigger, and is the best resource I know of:
https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/tag/Greatest+Scientific+Fraud
Peter,
I shall post a comment immediately below with multiple weblinks and ask Ian to greenlight it. (Any comment with more than one link is automatically referred to him.)
Many thanks, Ill have a read.
there is no ‘evil global warming scam’, it’s called science.
No. It’s fake science. You only get funding if you toe the line.
Correct Tricia. It started with uncertainty at the research front – which exists by definition of the research front – but one of the several competing schools of thought then got monetised and the others didn’t.
When a hard question in science is not settled, differing schools of thought arise. They compete for grant money and jockey for positions on grant-dispensing committees. As more data comes in and as theories are invented and developed, researchers realise one by one that a particular school is correct. This school wins more grant applications, jobs, etc – slowly at first, then by avalanche. Other schools decline as members move their research focus or take jobs outside research or retire. Each school typically ignores the others, but when interactions occur these can be sharp.
Science can be thrown off course for longer if a school that ultimately turns out to be wrong gains most of the grant money and job vacancies. From June 1988, US funding for climate science rose 15-fold in 6 years after an alarmist briefing to Congress at which one speaker (Jim Hansen of NASA) had jinxed the air conditioning. Politicians trusted what scientists told them. Science faculties and job applicants knew that recruitment was a response to the alarm, and understood what proposals and viewpoints would (and wouldn’t) win jobs and grants. Other Western nations followed. At that time, no warming effect other than greenhouse gases was known apart from a short-term solar cycle and the earth’s orbit, both possible to account for. So scientists included only CO2 in their computer models. More effort then went into matching the models to the data, doubling down on CO2 as the ‘master switch on the dial’ of global warming.
The situation became much harder to turn round because Big Finance got involved in investing in green industries that were government-subsidised, and Big Finance then presses government to continue the gravy train of subsidies regardless of subsequent scientific findings.
I doubt it is just due to money that most scientists it seems disagree with your understanding.
Peter,
Most *climate* scientists disagree with my views, but then “they would, wouldn’t they”, for the reasons I’ve just explained. Among other physicists, some take their colleagues’ word for it, but a growing number of physicists don’t and who, when they take the trouble to educate themselves about the details, come to a different conclusion. I’ve explained how the data are improperly manipulated in a further comment on this thread. I’m reluctant to get into the thory on a thread that is really about the BBC.
Companies employ science to , for instance, predict where oil can be found. If funding is for vague scam driven projects funding will ultimately stop. Of course, companies will pay for any theory to be fielded for a while, until share holders object.
The BBC’s bias over climate, detailed:
https://dailysceptic.org/2025/11/12/decades-of-crying-fire-in-the-climate-theatre-have-left-the-bbc-with-net-zero-credibility/
Re your comments above on temp data.
Richard Muller, a physicist at Berkeley, was also concerned about such data. He decided to do his own research and said ‘We are bringing the spirit of science back to a subject that has become too argumentative and too contentious… We are an independent, non-political, non-partisan group. We will gather the data, do the analysis, present the results and make all of it available. There will be no spin, whatever we find.’
After the analysis he said, ‘We carefully studied issues raised by skeptics: biases from urban heating (we duplicated our results using rural data alone), from data selection (prior groups selected fewer than 20 percent of the available temperature stations; we used virtually 100 percent), from poor station quality (we separately analyzed good stations and poor ones) and from human intervention and data adjustment (our work is completely automated and hands-off). In our papers we demonstrate that none of these potentially troublesome effects unduly biased our conclusions.’
A few years later he said, ‘Call me a converted skeptic. Three years ago I identified problems in previous climate studies that, in my mind, threw doubt on the very existence of global warming. Last year, following an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, I concluded that global warming was real and that the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct. I’m now going a step further: Humans are almost entirely the cause.’
Berkeley Earth: The Urban Heat Island effect is real. Berkeley’s analysis focused on the question of whether this effect biases the global land average. Our UHI paper analyzing this indicates that the urban heat island effect on our global estimate of land temperatures is indistinguishable from zero.
The BBC announced that WTC7 collapsed 26 minutes before it did on 9/11 with it still standing behind the reporter as they told this lie.
Time and again, newscaster give their reports in lock step with each other, using the same phrases and quotes and terminology.
The BBC can not be trusted. Just look at what the snake Bashir did to Diana.
Just look at the evil lying incessant brainwashing of the Convid campaign.
Look at how ‘climate change’ is mentioned on the BBC every single day.
Look at how a suicided Epstein and a prince of the blood are mentioned every day…but Pakistani Muslim men gang raping thousands of little girls here at home? Not a squeak.
T Robinson (who’s real name is yadda yadda yadda- go find him) is a racist far right thug extremist….have you got that through your brains yet after the thousandth telling?
We had years of the same over Nigel Farage….only being more careful now because they have to be.
Donald Trump is rarely called President Trump or Mr Trump….just ‘Trump’ and he’s been distorted by the BBC for many years.
The BBC are the propaganda wing of the worst people on the planet- the ones that want you with a chip in your hand or forehead and living in a 15 minute concentration camp eating bugs with no rights or freedoms.
Jeannie, it is nice to have you on the blog. But I am not sure your diatribes here are helping the conversation.
Jeannie
An observation on the ‘mark of the beast’, if Ian will allow (he is the expert, not me).
I would see the ‘mark of the beast’ as a corollary to the Seal of the Lamb. ‘mark’ and ‘seal’ being to all intents and purposes equivalent, in this particular context at least. The Seal of the Lamb is an allusion to Gen 4:15 and more specifically Exekiel 9:4-6, and should be interpreted through those lenses. It is an invisible spiritual mark, visible only to God, and presumably other spiritual powers. It offers identity and protection.
The Mark of the Beast is the default option for those who do not have the Seal of the Lamb. It refers to the fallen state of mankind. All who do not carry the Seal of the Lamb fall into the other camp by default.
They ‘cannot buy or sell without the mark of the beast’ simply means that the world economic systems are fundamentally flawed by the fallen state of mankind. I happen to have a degree in Economics, and also a couple in Theology, and am reasonably sanguine with the view that world-wide economics is corrupted by our fallen nature. It’s hardly a revolutionary idea.
It has nothing to do with injections or chips or anything of the sort. However, since all my best ideas on Revelation are derived from Ian’s brilliant commentary, I’m happy to let him decide.
Often I appreciate your input Jeannie, but not this one.
I think you might be a conspiracy theorist. ‘Thousands’ of girls – evidence?
The dilemma now facing the BBC is the search for a Herculean Head one
Willing to accept the challenge and have those powers that can cleans the Augean stables and the decades long accumulated manure of the sacred cows.
All very much like the need for a head of the same stamp in the C of E;
It Requiring a river of life and the labours of a people called to be kings and priests unto God. The ancient kings and priests were the the shepherds of their people those that were only hireling shepherds were disasters for the nations people. See 1 & 2 Kings
Those saints who are “ called” as shepherds will be those who will “be made” kings and priests in the Kingdom to come.
Not simply the paid priests but all those “called” to be saints.
QUOTE ” The Lord said to Ezekiel: “I have set thee for a sign”,
“Say unto the House of Israel, I am your sign”.
“Thou shalt be a sign unto them, and they shall know that I am the Lord”.
That is very clear. How shall they know that He is the Lord,
the Good Shepherd that gave His life for the sheep, He would make us a sign unto them, that they should know. He would that there should be in us a reproduction and an expression of the truth in Christ.
In laying down His life for the sheep we know that there was a vicariousness into which we do not enter.
There is no atoning value about our laying down our life, but apart from the vicariousness or the atoning value of it, the fact remains that there has to be manifested in us the death and the resurrection of the Lord Jesus before ever we can be of any use to others.
There has to be a manifestation of the power of His death and there has to be a manifestation of the power of His resurrection.
Paul was a great example of this truth. He could never be satisfied that those whom he shepherded should just have information. His whole travail was that they might have Life, that Christ should be fully formed in them.
“My little children, on whose behalf I am again in travail until Christ be fully formed in you”
. He who said that, and entered into that, was one who went that way himself, and could say: “Follow me, I am your example, I am your sign, I have gone this way”; and he cried right to the end that he might be in that way:
“That I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection, being made conformable unto His death”.
That is the way of a true shepherd.
There is no question about Paul’s sacrifice for others. “I fill up that which is lacking in the sufferings of Christ for His body’s sake, which is the church”. [ Tom Austine- Sparks in “The Power of the Name”.
Shalom.
Look at a couple of the woke vicars the BBC uses as presenters to start with. I don’t watch television so there are possibly others who I’m unaware of;
In 2014 Rev Kate Bottley denounced Songs of Praise as “depressing”, insisting that religious TV programmes should instead be “brave, bold and at times controversial”. ‘It’s like a piece of soggy quiche…It should be spicy and flavoursome’.Nowadays the programme is a multi-faith pick’n’mix. Rev Bottley also said she feels strongly about the C of E’s approval of gay vicars in civil partnerships, but its non-inclusion of gay married vicars. Bottley has said she could leave the Church of England over its inclusion policies, but chooses to stay and “keep having the conversation”.
Richard Coles still wears a dog collar and rakes in money based on his lies. Coles admitted that he and his priest partner Oldham, lied to continue in their positions in the church and he likened himself to the resistance and the Church to the Gestapo.
How about binning these two activists and employing some godly men of integrity, to represent the church, to start with!
Richard Coles is given the max media time, so as to engineer perceptions of the Church.
The Reverend Richard Coles – as the BBC styles him – is willingly used to undermine Christianity. Imagine a gay imam being pushed by the BBC- totally absurd and impossible.
The Church of England is established church of the nation, Islam isn’t. The Church of England’s Synod has also now approved prayers for same sex couples within its church services who are married under UK same sex marriage law. Coles and Bottley are not far from the average C of E vicar, they are not conservative evangelical Baptist or Pentecostal preachers or Orthodox priests. Remember too even the Pope has now allowed non liturgical prayers for same sex couples by Roman Catholic priests
It’s very un -Christian to force people, under pain of criminal prosecution, to pay for things they don’t watch. It’s Stalinist, in fact.
Do you support un-Christian totalitarianism, Simon?
The BC is bloated and a vast spendthrift of other people’s money.
And the BBC is fundamentally hostile to Christianity, and full of atheist and gay ideology.
Simon:
Coles was an NSM clergyman who LIED to his bishop about his homosexual sex life – and then boasted about this after he left the ministry. He doesn’t even have PTO now.
If you think this is ‘not far from the average C of E vicar’, then the Church is in a very bad state indeed.
You praise liars. Very strange.
No it isn’t, the BBC is not very keen on anti LGBT, anti female ordination hardline conservative evangelical or Orthodox Christianity maybe. The BBC has no problem with the liberal wing of the C of E or the Church of Scotland and Methodists and Quakers etc or even moderate RCs. It also normally includes representatives of all wings of Christianity and other faiths and those of no faith. Nothing wrong with the license feee subsidising high culture and science either
I thought ITV don’t get licence fee money because they are paid through adverts? According to the article, the government piles more duties on the BBC and doesn’t increase its money to pay for them. All great institutions make mistakes sometimes. Surely it’s not reasonable to expect the BBC to be overtly Christian in a country that plainly isn’t? But of course I’m an evil left-winger…
And it’s very worrying that some of the loudest and most vitriolic attacks on the BBC come from media outlets that have an exceedingly poor record of objective journalism and owning up to their mistakes in phone hacking etc. The lack of integrity they display is breathtaking.
It’s not that. It’s the sheer lack of integrity and truth in using the word ‘mistake’ at all in this instance. Splicing bits together requires careful and painstaking planning. The parts did not splice themselves together by pure chance. Yet this is the theory which, with a straight face, people are spreading.
I think the BBC has recognised the mistake that was made and apologised. Have the mainstream media outlets that have been so vitriolic and biased in their reporting done the same? When there’s a problem over gross bias at one such outlet does it interview its own editor to ensure he is accountable?
Nonsense, Tim, “unintentional” isn’t an apology, it’s an evasion of responsibility and a lie, not least because this dishonest editing happened twice – to ssy nothing of the deep anti-semitism in its Arabic broadcasting (and why does it have an Arabic service anyway?). You are forgetting that the BBC is a public service broadcaster with powers to criminally prosecute people who don’t pay tax to it to watch ITV. I am sure you find that deeply unjust and un -Christian. Do you pay any money to ITV or Freeview?
I’m not forgetting anything, just disagreeing with you, politely. Why is it so incredibly difficult or almost impossible to get the newspapers that are gunning for the BBC to admit to their own obvious and blatant bias? The same is true about some of the politicians who’ve been waging a long campaign against it – they’re not noted for their integrity. Have a look at Andrew Brown’s perceptive piece in today’s Church Times.
You are missing a very obvious point, Tim – the newspapers are private companies which cannot force me to buy their product in order to read someone else’s newspaper. The BBC alone has this power to prosecute and criminalise the population. You must agree this is deeply immoral in a free society. This is a Soviet policy and anti-Christian.
But Tim, no one is noted for complete integrity. You say that no one, for that reason, should say what the standards are to which we should aspire. That makes you guilty of two things – a non sequitur, and not caring about moral standards ever getting spoken about. What do you think would happen if they were not?
Wasnt it an external production company that made the programme? Perhaps the ‘mistake’ by the BBC was simply allowing it.
I don’t expect the BBC to be overtly Christian. But I do expect them to be even-handed in their reporting of Israel, LGBT matters, Trump, grooming gangs, climate, Covid and ReformUK, and to reform themselves so as to make a repeat of Savile, Huw Edwards etc much harder. Instead we saw a rant by its just-resigned Director General claiming the absence of bias and calling it all a plot by the (yawn) far right. Such myopia shows why the BBC is essentially unreformable. I agree that it once was a ‘great institution’, but it ought now to be made to depend on those who watch its programmes by other means than through the government. All that is necessary is to make the license fee voluntary.
No, I am not suggesting that moral standards in the media don’t matter and the BBC should absolutely be held to a high standard. Complete integrity is impossible, for you and I as much as any organisation. Standards matter very much for all, but that includes the outlets expressing outrage in their campaign against the BBC. But as the saga of phone hacking revealed those newspapers are often unscrupulous in their attitude and utterly unaccountable but they actively try to shape public life, often at the behest of foreign owners. A media landscape without the BBC funded in something like it’s current way would be severely impoverished. Read Andrew Brown in the CT. And, as I mentioned, the BBC is extraordinarily good value for the price of a cup of coffee in Starbucks a week for a whole household.
(Please don’t tell me again that I don’t understand, I do, it’s just that I disagree with you.)
No, Tim, you don’t understand basic equity or even basic technology. You think that people who want to watch ITV or Freeview should be forced to pay an annual tax to the BBC or face prosecution and a criminal record.
That is deeply un-Christian. If you like it, you pay for it. Don’t enforce your likes on other people.
James, please don’t tell me that I don’t understand something just because I disagree with you. If you want to respond to my points (or those of others) please do so courteously without presuming to know what I do or don’t understand. I was making a completely different point. I don’t assume you don’t understand my points e.g. that media outlets that have been vitriolic in criticising the BBC display great hypocrisy. I assume you understand them but disagree, and that’s fine. I don’t feel the need to be negative.
What do you make of Philippa Chalkley’s comment below?
Tim:
You keep making the same basic error. Newspapers are PRIVATE companies. No doubt there are hypocrites and liars among them, just as in the BBC. But so what? Newspaper A cannot make me pay for its product or prosecute me because I want to read another Newspaper B.
This is the fundamental point you keep missing.
It is a fundamental question of Christian fairness.
Tim:
You keep making the same basic error. Newspapers are PRIVATE companies. No doubt there are hypocrites and liars among them, just as in the BBC. But so what? Newspaper A cannot make me pay for its product or prosecute me because I want to read another Newspaper B.
This is the fundamental point you keep missing.
It is a fundamental question of Christian fairness.
Paying for things with a tax is deeply un-Christian? Since when? I thought Jesus had a fairly clear teaching on Christian attitudes to paying tax (Matthew 22, Mark 12, and Luke 20).
46% of the English and Welsh population were Christian on the last census, more than for any other faith and more than the 37% who classified themselves as non religious, so while you wouldn’t expect it to be overtly Christian it still has to give Christians some airtime. Which to be fair it still does in programmes like Pilgrimage and Sunday Morning Live and church services broadcast at Christmas and on Songs of Praise. It just also has special shows for Ramadan and Eid etc as well given 6.5% of the UK population are Muslim too
Simon,
It’s the enormous number of gays and transgenders in BBC management – many times more than in the population at large – that is the real story.
The number of self-described Christians in the BBC is about half of their number in the population but the number of gays and transgenders is about five times the UK at large – probably more because 8% declined to answer this question.
So the BBC is suffused with atheists, non-religious and LGBTs.
That’s why it bigs up The Reverend Richard Coles at every opportunity – a man who boasts of lying to his bishop about his sexual relationships and who doesn’t even have PTO in the Church of England.
Not sure where you are getting that from? Anyway there are now probably also more gay men who are C of E vicars percentage wise than there are gay men in the public at large. Richard Coles was Vicar of St Mary’s church Finedon from 2011 to 2022 and before that was a curate at St Botolph’s church Lincolnshire. Before that he was a very successful member of a pop band which had a number 1 hit and 3 top ten hits and a theology degree from King’s College London and MA from Leeds. The C of E was lucky to have him
Simon: these details are from the BBC’s own staff survey in 2022 – google it for yourself, I found in in 20 seconds.
I understand you fervently wish to see homosexuality publicly recognised and praised in the Church of England but your personal wish is not the doctrine of the Church.
And you keep missing the fact that Coles repeatedly LIED to his bishop about his sex life – and boasted about this after he gave up his NSM post.
No church is lucky to have a liar undermining its doctrine.
Simon:
Coles was an NSM clergyman who LIED to his bishop about his homosexual sex life – and then boasted about this after he left the ministry. He doesn’t even have PTO now.
If you think this is ‘not far from the average C of E vicar’, then the Church is in a very bad state indeed.
You praise liars. Very strange.
Same sex couples already are now recognised in the Church of England, since LLF parishioners in civil same sex marriages can get prayers within services for them. Synod will almost certainly soon have the simple majority passed bishops have confirmed needed for Vicars to enter civil partnerships, once approved then vicars in faithful same sex unions can also have sex with their partner with full approval of Synod. Not that most bishops or parishioners care about it now anyway
Simon,
I understand that same sex relationships are very important to you personally but they are NOT part of the doctrine of the Church of England and they won’t be in the next few years, despite your persistent campaigning. The liberal church is aging and dying: more than two thousand vicars will retire in the next five years and only a few hundred will replace them.
Along with this, hundreds of parishes will close and be amalgamated. Half of C of E paridhes have no children attending. This is the demographic time bomb you are ignoring.
Wrong, on both counts. The Bishops affirmed that simple majority of all 3 houses of Synod is enough for clergy same sex marriage and that is very close if not already there.
Yougov also found 56% of the youngest Anglicans ie those under 30, say the C of E should perform same sex marriages compared to just 34% of Anglicans over 70.
https://yougov.co.uk/society/articles/45199-anglicans-more-likely-not-back-church-england-cond
The C of E is also one of the biggest landlords and shareholders in the UK, with over £8 billion in assets, it can easily afford to keep most of its churches going even if just 1 man and his dog attended via rental and share dividend income alone.
Wrong again, Simon. For clergy to enter a same-sex marriage would require a two-thirds majority as a change in doctrine. That was in the legal advice they got. The You Gov poll you cite is nonsense as it concerns self-described ‘Anglicans’ and not regular attenders.
You also ignored the statistics I cited that 2000 clergy will retire in the next five years and only a few hundred will replace them.
Your desire for same-sex marriage in the C of E will have to wait.
Nope, you are wrong. The Bishops confirmed that clergy same sex marriage would require only a simple majority of Synod to approve clergy being in a same sex marriage under UK civil law. Only bespoke services for same sex marriage in church needed the 2/3 majority as a change of doctrine under Canon B2. ‘Clergy same sex marriage – the legal advice to the House of Bishops explains that legislation would be needed to change the current position. The legislation would need to include a Measure (made by Synod and Parliament) as well as an amending Canon, both of which would require simple majorities in the three houses of Synod at final approval.’
https://www.churchofengland.org/media/press-releases/update-living-love-and-faith-october-2025
Any self described English Anglican is of course a member of the Church of England as it is established church. Indeed technically any resident of a C of E Parish could be considered a member of it and entitled to be married or have a funeral in their Parish C of E church while it remains established church. Only non established churches count only regular attenders as members, as established church the C of E includes far more than that.
You can pick and choose statistics that you want but given unemployment is now 5% and rising in the UK and with more applicants for jobs than there are vacancies and the fill time stipend of a Vicar in the C of E is now £30k plus a mortgage and rent free house I expect the number of Christians interested in ordination may start to rise again.
When we were young, Hampstead Heath and the fair was a place of enchantment and joy.
For people like RC, it can be a place of anonymous groping, and (this is the point) he is quite happy for that to continue.
Utterly gross and depraved, and a complete reversal of any minimal standards. In important ways, his standards and values are no better than Peter Tatchell’s.
That was when he was a popstar and before he was ordained, par for the course for the former having lots of sex with different people but not the latter
Not my point. My point is that he regrets none of it. So why was he ordained? Run of the mill Christians are expected to repent, but their leaders are not? Or not when it involves woke behaviour?
James, I get the point entirely, I just don’t think it’s a particularly important one. Yes newspapers, GB News, etc are private companies. But that doesn’t excuse them from high standards and truthfulness. And when they attack the BBC but frequently fall far short of its standards of journalism I think that’s hypocrisy. I don’t mind if you disagree but don’t tell me I don’t understand. I just think your point is much less significant.
Tim,
The fundamental point you keep missing is that private companies, like private individuals, have no duty IN LAW to be objective or free of hypocrisy. We may moralise as Christians about this – but that is a matter for God to adjudicate on, not you or me. In any case, I am not forced by law to pay The Guardian in order to be allowed to read The Telegraph – or vice versa. Do you understand this basic point of justice? My point is actually highly significant.
Further, the BBC is actually bound by law to be impartial and honest – but very many people do not see it that way.
It ‘bigs up’ the Rev Richard Coles because he is an experienced and popular broadcaster, who is consistently a quality entertainment booking (as evidenced by his extremely good run on ITV’s I’m a Celebrity…)
As for moaning about the BBC’s failure to adhere to your preferred social quotas, how very woke of you. I didn’t think of you as a fan of diversity quotas and affirmative action. I prefer people to be hired on merit, but that’s me.
The wish is that quotas stick to the actual proportions in society. What is the connection of that with ‘preference’? It is the precise opposite. It is renouncing one’s preferences for the sake of according with reality instead.
However, one could wish that the societal proportions were not as they were, but instead better than they were (in those many cases where moral considerations figure). Inasmuch as the BBC has undoubtedly helped to make them as they are (since broadcasters are the people most able of all to alter social norms, and social norms do alter), it would make a lot of sense not to stick with them, but rather to broadcast things that would make for more wholesome proportions in the future. And it is not by any means a subjective matter what that would consist in.
Christopher, I suppose the words of Jesus, “You who know how to give good gifts…etc” are relevant here. The BBC knows how to give us something good but chooses not to.
The wish is that quotas stick to the actual proportions in society. What is the connection of that with ‘preference’? It is the precise opposite. It is renouncing one’s preferences for the sake of according with reality instead.
Proper woke dogma. Where was it decided that people should be employed in quotas that matched the actual proportions in society? Women are 50% of the working age population. They are not 50% of police officers, nor 50% of structural engineers, nor 50% of professional boxers, etc. etc..
“Jeannie, it is nice to have you on the blog. But I am not sure your diatribes here are helping the conversation”
Ooooooh dear.
Very good short article in today’s Church Times by Paul Valley that acknowledges the serious problems at the BBC. But it also highlights the consistent malign influence of other media companies and proprietors and the impact of political interference especially from more right wing politicians, which suggests that the claim that the BBC is leftist, woke (whatever that may mean) or even Marxist are tendentious. Worth a read.
* Vallely, of course, in today’s CT.
If it looks like a dog, smells like a dog and eats bonio then………………..
James, I fully, repeat fully, understand your point about the BBC and private media outlets, payments and the law. But I disagree with you and don’t think your point is anything like as important as you say. The media gunning for the BBC is often hypocritical and dishonest; whether they’re privately owned, publicly owned, & however they’re funded is irrelevant. They should be more honest. You just have to let other people disagree with you without demanding that they should come round to your way of thinking. I think that for £3-4 a week per household the range of services the BBC provides is amazing; I don’t object in the slightest to paying the fee. You don’t agree, and that’s fine but at least allow others to respectfully hold another view; and I’m not seeking to convert you so please don’t try to convert me.
Tim,
I have no problem with you wanting to buy the BBC’s product, you are free to do so.
But it is deeply un-Christian to force other people to pay the BBC in order to watch ITV.
Would you agree to a a law that forced you to pay The Telegraph in order to read The Guardian? Of course you wouldn’t. But where the BBC is concerned, you sipport coercion to satisfy your desires. You cannot see how illogical your thinking is. Illogical thinking is incorrect thinking.
The funding question IS relevant.
James, I guess you could say that ‘licence fee’ is different from ‘tax’ but since you have introduced ‘illogical’ and ‘incorrect’, what would you say about the ABC in Australia? Or ‘public service’ in general? Should I complain about ‘theology’ of the Australian Goods and Services Tax when its purpose is to fund services in other states and territories of Australia?
‘*the* “theology” of the Australian…’
Trump will sue! With any luck that will do for the BBC.
It won’t, he is out of time to sue in the UK and in Florida it would need to be shown the BBC broadcast was shown there. It would also be license fee payers paying most of any damages to Trump, not BBC managers and directors salaries
I didn’t know you were an expert on Florida defamation laws, Simon -you are a man of many parts. But a tenner says you’re wrong.
‘If Trump sues in Florida, he would need to establish that the BBC Panorama documentary was available there. Because the documentary was not shown in the US, it would be hard to show that Americans thought less of the president because of a programme they could not watch.’
https://www.itv.com/news/2025-11-15/could-donald-trump-win-a-5bn-lawsuit-against-the-bbc
Nope, that’s a BBC lawyer type opining there – not an expert in Florida Defamation Laws, like you.
Its interesting to me that people (of a certain age) get so worked up about the BBC. Why is this? Is it because we actually do care about it and deep down just know what the ghastly alternative would be. Surely its better to have a publicly funded broadcaster which we can, at a push, still question and hold to account, than to have the alternative with no accountability and echo chambers abounding. I get so upset when people have such parochial views with little world interest, who forget how important the BBC is for people in oppressed lands and regimes, imprisoned, restricted and persecuted. Yes, its very very far from perfect, but honestly folks, just keep your eyes and ears open to when its playing stupid cultural games and consider seriously what would replace it and then pray.
Thanks for this comment. As you say, in parts of the world where oppressive regimes are in power the BBC is a vital and trusted source of information. It’s worth reforming because it’s so valuable.
Philippa, I’m surprised at how little response your excellent comment has produced. I would have expected others to recognise the value of the World Service output in countering the malicious stuff put out by many oppressive regimes.
In fact, Hugh Carleton Greene was determinedly opposed to Mary Whitehouse in the 1960s and so deliberately pushed boundaries and rubbished morality in general. This set the unspoken tone for those who followed. People got the idea they were in a secular society pretty much from 1964 onwards, though why they were happy to sleepwalk AWAY from morality – just shows how much influence perceived cultural norms have, and no-one is in nearly such a good position to implant these than the BBC etc..
I too value the World Service, but I am surprised you are wondering why people (not emotionally but rationally, though a lot of emotion would be in order) emphasise the BBC’s failings. Are not Greene, Savile, Woman’s Hour, Cliff Richard, Diana, spliced Trump enough?
Maybe the BBC staff should migrated to the CoE. Let’s see how that would work out. Or have we been given some clues with some instances, already?
Maybe the CoE is the BBC in disguise. With a memory of what it was.
President Trump has announced today that he intends to sue the BBC for between 1 And 5 billion dollars. Whether he wins or loses,the legal costs will be paid for by licence payers. It is very had to see that the splicing together of two unrelated parts of his speech was anything other than a malicious act. Someone in the BBC did this or was told to do it and they need to be exposed.
It was not a ‘mistake’.
On BBC, radio 4 this morning, evidently the defence will be that it was not defamation. Why? He was re-elected as POTUS.
In the England and Wales, I don’t think the law would support that argument, let alone proceedings in the USA where he has been successful.
It sounds like the BBC is lawyering up because they know the claim it was ‘unintentional’ is manifestly a lie. How can the editing of a programme – two programmes in fact – be un intentional? – especially when the first time this happened, it was called out by Mulvaney?
By saying, ‘Look, he was re-elected!’, the BBC is new admitting it was deliberate – and was intended to harm his electoral chances.
The costs will be paid by the BBC insurers. Next year’s premium could be interesting, though.
This barrister believes that recent BBC statements have invalidated their insurance:. The clip starts with the edited and unedited Trump speeches.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubgUjOyxkQo
In answere to the set question.
In both Church, States and News media it would appear that
multitudes of folks can discern the sins and shortcomings of
other people and their perverse destructive conducts, and
in great detail on some Christian blogs.
One might be forgiven for thinking that there are few, if any,
“good “shepherds for none are even so much as mentioned.
If one were to begin to “re-enchant”; where to begin?
Well, one might begin to detail and give positive characteristics of
“good” shepherds, of which there are countless examples in Scripture.
At times it is the theological questions that are asked that
generate more heat than light, carnal warfare, no solutions,
no leading, no guidance.
The Shepherd Motif runs right through the Holy Scriptures
from beginning to end. Not only so, but also in secular literature,
King Hammurabi of Babylon called himself a shepherd, and Homer regularly styles the Greek chiefs as shepherds of their people.
For those seeking a more positive view I heartily recommend
Mary Beth Gladwell @
dwellcc.org/essays/shepherd-motif-old-and-new-testament
May God have mercy on us and raise up faithful shepherd
who are kings and priests after His own heart and walk as He did.
Shalom.
Some interesting stuff in the article but the over-riding message seems to be that the BBC would be pure as the driven snow if not for the evil Tories and their commercial broadcasting friends. Why cannot BBC apologists see the huge plank in their eyes? The BBC has long abandoned any Christian ethic and become another part of the insular London media crowd – beholden to all the usual stuff. This isn’t Cameron’s doing; it’s deliberate recruitment amongst (from a national perspective) a tiny pool of like-minded left-of-centre metropolitans, with the result that there are no dissenting voices – Christian or otherwise – to challenge the groupthink. The pile-on vs the single Tory on the Board demonstrates this.
My own view is that our nation is mainly secular and therefore the BBC should represent that national view more than the minority of us who have faith. I also think that representation should be of the cultural views of the majority too, but I’ve long given up hope of that.
The BBC groupthink with a few exceptions is even more anti Reform and anti conservative evangelical than it is anti Tory or anti C of E
I think that, in essence, it isn’t initially anti anything; rather, it is so intensely pro things like trans, the EU, climate catastrophe, Gaza etc. that any opinion that doesn’t exactly fit the opinion bubble is uncopewithable (to use my wife’s phrase). So it’s not PRIMARILY anti any of things you list. Instead, those things sit outside the camp of holiness and therefore are terrifyingly alien – producing a natural reflex of antagonism.
PS/ Ian, please can we be able to use effects like italics and underline to stress words or phrases, rather than have to shout with capitals?
To turn on italics you type a leftanglebracket then the letter ‘i’ (for italic) then a rightanglebracket.
To turn off italics you type a leftanglebracket then a forward slash then the letter ‘i’ (for italic) then a rightanglebracket.
For bold text you replace ‘i’ by ‘b’. There are similar letters for underline and strikethrough, which Google will inform you of.
David if you insert a * in front of and after the word then this is usally understood as emphasis.
Cheers guys. Really helpful 🙂
What I set out were examples of HyperText Markup Language, acronym HTML which I am sure you will recognise.
An alternative to Anthony’s method above.
Can the BBC be re-enchanted – answer NO. I was born in 1950 and remember my parents buying a television in the early 50’s. Our lounge was full of neighbours on the day of Queen Elizabeth II Coronation. It was a different time – we no longer need a state broadcaster, there are so many channels and companies to choose from. The BBC is no longer a bastion of truth. The Jimmy Savile affair showed that – it had been going on for years! They send threatening letters re the licence fee, I have received some! I have not watched the BBC News since the COVID nightly fear propaganda – standing there with the portent of doom with Union Jack flags. Their propaganda against President Trump has been non stop and to claim it was an error, when they deliberately spliced tapes and edited content is preposterous. I note one person has said, but it could be worse. I agree as when in America I found TV unwatchable with all the adverts. But we already have many companies and channels on Freeview, so I for one would not miss the Beeb.
They send threatening letters re the licence fee.
Yes, threatening letters, assuming that you are evading the tax and threatening to pay a home visit, which they never do. Why don’t they? Because the letters don’t actually come from the BBC but from an outsourced private company which goes through the motions of enforcing the law but has no wish to go to the expense of visiting homes. Over the years I have received many dozens of such letters, not far short of a hundred.
One can only suppose that the BBC is unaware that it is being taken for a ride.
Meanwhile, the licence fee pays not only for the cost of producing programs – a large proportion outsourced and thus indistinguishable from ITV productions – but also for the cost of paying another company to enforce the licence with completely futile and ineffectual computer-prompted warning letters.
Yes, Tricia, the worst thing is that they blatantly planned the splicing of tapes and still were unrepetant by telling the further lie that teh whole complicated splicing happened by MISTAKE! Yeah.
The BBC only reflects the state of the soul of the UK. If the zeitgeist changes and the pendulum swings to the right, because we have to toe the USA line (as we do), then the BBC will reflect the new status. The CxE will appoint new bishops who reflect the ‘right’ .
In all this coming change Christians will have to act as salt as usual. Psephizo will no longer be questioned relentlessly by liberals for being unchristian. They will be replaced by Christian nationalists who will constantly harp on about how wet and liberal the views on Psephizo have become; probably by some of the same Vicars of Bray.
Apart from after the Democrats clean sweep in the mini midterms earlier this month, the US may be swinging back to left liberalism again after Trump. Though admittedly if Reform keep their lead in UK polls up to polling day at the next general election we would likely get a nationalist Farage led government. Note though even Trump and Farage haven’t tried to reverse same sex marriage, their main hostility is immigration levels
The Left needs to acknowledge the difference between Nigel Farage, who is committed to democracy, and the *real* far right, who aren’t. Lazily calling Farage far right, or assassinating him (which I consider a real risk), is going to lead to trouble.
There’s a very thoughtful exploration of the issues around the BBC row and the options for the future in Steve Richards’ podcast at:
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/is-starmer-the-biggest-victim-of-the-toxic-culture/id1384867286?i=1000736600492
He quite correctly identifies the malign influence of some of the mainstream media and how the BBC has been affected by them not just recently but in the long term.
Many of us consider the BBC to be at the forefront of the malign mainstream media.
Dialogue with it has utterly failed, Tim Davie was completely unrepentant, and that is why many now support the breaking up of the corrupt and anti-British ruins of what was once a great corporation.
I’m not sure what ‘anti-British’ could mean in this context, but clearly there are some major reforms needed so that the BBC can play it’s vital role in countering the other media which is itself in such a parlous state, as Levison revealed.But breaking it up won’t address them and won’t give us a renewed national broadcaster.
Why do we need a national broadcaster? This isn’t the 1930s any more. Also, if you don’t know what anti-British means, ask one or two people who have put a St George flag on a lamppost recently. Please listen carefully to them before mentally damning them as racists. You have every right to disagree wtih them but remember that you share the country with them.
A couple of points:
* It is perfectly possible to love your own country without hating other countries.
* If multiculturalism grants Sikhs a homeland in the Punjab, Hindus a homeland in India, etc, then why must England be the locus of an experiment for all cultures, rather than a homeland for English culture (and there *is* an English identity) and for those who wish to adopt English culture?
* Is this situation cause for concern:
https://x.com/Adrian_Hilton/status/1989241025999827393
There were Brits in India of course too for centuries during the Raj and indeed still are some there now, see The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. As the Indian economy continues to grow faster than the UK economy that may become an even stronger trend, even though for now the UK remains richer per head than India, India now has a higher gdp overall than the UK on some figures.
Evensong on Radio 3 is enough for the BBC license fee
To boost the UK economy, let’s borrow Javier Milei and his chainsaw once his term is done in Argentina.
There is some kind of assumption that there is no alternative to having a national broadcaster and a national church. Will someone please explain the logic of that, for there seems to be none. Is it just that people cannot imagine things being different from how they now are? Things could easily be different in many ways, of course.
And if different institutions HAVE to be in line with one another, that immediately causes all sorts of problems, not least problems of one dictating to or bullying the other.
Though churches and other faith organisations would need to fill in the gap if following the big cuts in welfare and public service provision Milei is pushing through to fund tax cuts
Welfare handouts are pumping up rents to landlords; reduce the provision and the market dictates that rents have to come down.
And people’s families might have to help their relatives, as they used to.
Psephizo is questioned relentlessly by liberals for being unchristian?
Adam, I see myself as liberal when Christian Nationalists opine on political solutions to our nation’s problems but conservative when liberals opine on theology. And a lot else, too much to mention. In the end I believe it is my job to introduce Jesus, risen from the dead, to people I meet. When Jesus was asked to arbitrate inheritance laws He declined. I think He is saying to me, “enough, don’t get involved, keep it simple. don’t think too highly of yourself. Be faithful in what you have been given.”
I’ll go out on the street and give out Christian leaflets with any one who knows how to keep on message. People are intrigued to talk about the real stuff. Everything else is a diversion.
Perhaps the BBC is salt that’s lost its savour but I don’t think it’s important for Christians to bother about. I know Christian Nationalists want to invade the seven mountains of culture. A noble aspiration perhaps. Better to just go outside and talk to someone. Jesus said “My yoke is easy and my burden is light” “learn of me” .
oh, and my definition of a liberal Christian is one who questions the resurrection.
By that definition I don’t think there are any liberal Christians commenting on this blog.
What means of changing the Zeitgeist is more likely to succeed, or is nearly so large in its reach, as broadcast media?
Notice that so many Zeitgeist changes are precisely the ones that the very select demographic of BBC workers would want – and indeed have already pushed for.
James
Because BBC output for the most part is indistinguishable from ITV output, one can look on the licence as simply a tax on watching television – rather like a tax on smoking. Overall, watching TV does you harm spiritually (unless you are very discriminating), does little for family life, effects children detrimentally, and as with social media etc consumes time that God would probably wish you were spending in some other way (Phil 4:8). But it gives you a sort of pleasure. So besides having to sit through adverts you have to pay for it.
We are enraged by the BBC because it pretends to a cultural and moral superiority it rarely displays in reality, and less and less as the years roll on. But perhaps we can give thanks that BBC radio still hosts a daily service at 9.45 am, still allows Anne Atkins to give a ‘thought for the day’ occasionally, still broadcasts choral evensong, and broadcasts substantially Christian content at Christmas and Easter. Privately owned radio stations provide their own pop versions, but I am glad that BBC still provides music with a little more gravitas. That individuals here and there still open their minds to the gospel (and/or God does) may have as much to do with this background drip-drip as with the outreach efforts of the few remaining churches that might be considered faithful.
In today’s online Telegraph a 5-star review of Andy Webb’s book Dianarama: The Betrayal of Princess Diana, a reminder of yet another instance of corruption at the highest level. Here are excerpts:
Yes, I had forgotten about the Bashir scandal and the BBC cover up for so many years – and the fact that the BBC kept employing Bashir after he had said some pretty offensive things on American TV, like calling on MSNBC for a punishment-rape for Sarah Palin for saying things he didn’t like (see wikipedia). The BBC also stumped up £200k in 2022 for spreading smears about Charles’s nanny, linked to the fraudulent Diana interview.
Bashir retired early on ‘health grounds’ with a healthy BBC pension.
From today’s Telegraph
‘Hundreds of parents have accused the BBC of damaging their children with a “constant drip-feed of one-sided pro-trans programmes”.
The Bayswater Support Group (BSG), which represents 650 mothers and fathers of primary school-aged children and teenagers who believe they are trans, has called on Ofcom, the broadcasting regulator, to launch an investigation into the corporation’s coverage.
Among their complaints is that senior BBC managers, including Jonathan Munro, its new head of news, dismissed their concerns and failed to take them seriously.
The group has urged the regulator to examine what it describes as the corporation’s “failure to uphold their duty of impartiality and safeguarding”, as a result of the BBC’s “constant drip-feed of one-sided stories… celebrating the trans experience without adequate balance and objectivity”.
The BSG said the BBC’s biased approach stretched back nearly a decade, promoting trans lifestyles to young people who were already vulnerable because of their age and mental health needs.
At times, the BBC even appeared to encourage children to undertake irreversible medical transition, the parents claim.’