IS it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s Dame Emma Thompson on her mythical solar-powered broomstick, buzzing in like some Wicked Witch of the West to harangue hard-working taxpayers that the collapse of civilisation is nigh. We must relinquish our dependence on fossil fuels and go carbon neutral by 2025. That’s what it felt like when listening to the relentless anti-government bias on Tuesday’s Politics Live.
Joining Dame Em on her broomstick is a bloke called Rupert Read from Extinction Rebellion, the group that had all the time and money in the world to disrupt the lives of those who do not over the Easter weekend and continues at the time of writing, this time blockading the Stock Exchange. Notwithstanding his carefully dishevelled appearance and ‘mockney’ accent, viewers were treated to the gospel according to St Rupert which included the formation of a ‘Citizens’ Assembly’ to tackle these gross environmental injustices, conveniently ignoring the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change set up over 30 years ago, and which could well prompt the question ‘What is the point of the Westminster Parliament?’ A moot point in the present Brexit debacle. Rupert even insisted that ‘air pollution has gone down in London since our protest began – fact’.
Viewers were assured that Londoners had enjoyed the disruption hugely; presumably the police were just out on a jolly and didn’t mind having their Easter leave cancelled. It wasn’t for the activists to clear up the detritus they left behind after their ‘serious’ eco-protest. This group of eco-fanatics and fantasists can afford to live on this mythically green and wonderful planet, unconcerned that the technology is not there to turn the world fully fossil-free in the timescale they demand. Once the world economy has collapsed, Rupert will have to relinquish his preferred mode of transport, rail travel, and confine himself to something along the lines of Dame Emma’s broomstick.
Where to turn for light relief away from the fawning Left-wing bias, general ear bashing and the prophets of doom on the BBC? Certainly not the Graham Norton Show. Bafta award-winning Graham bounds cheerfully on to the stage to announce his guests and indulge in a bit of the BBC’s favourite pastime of Tory bashing. This week cheeky-chappy Graham revealed a state secret. The Prime Minister ‘went on a walking holiday in Wales – so jealous’, he chirped, giggling furiously, and up popped a photo, showing Mrs May and her husband leaving a motorway service station. ‘Two flat whites,’ chortled Graham and how the audience loved it, clapping furiously like seals waiting for more titbits of Tory mockery provided enthusiastically by their host – they weren’t disappointed.
Imagine the furore, especially in The Guardian, the paper for the permanently offended, if Graham had described Labour’s Diane Abbott as a ‘bumpy black’ after the Shadow Home Secretary was spotted illegally sipping a can of ready-mixed mojito at 1pm on the London Overground. Diane’s indiscretion was barely mentioned on the BBC, as if the general public is used to her ‘lapses of judgement’ which are legion, including a fake image on Twitter of an Israeli jet over Tehran on April 16 last year and her refusal to clarify remarks she made on Question Time where she suggested that members of the charedi Jewish community were targets of hate crimes because of the ‘costume they wear’. Heaven help us if she ever becomes Home Secretary, responsible for the internal affairs of England and Wales together with immigration and citizenship for the UK. No chance of Graham poking fun at Diane and her delicate ego.
Never mind Dame Em’s massive carbon footprint all the way from LA in order to lecture the rest of us from a pink boat, while gridlocked traffic puffed out even more carbon emissions. The BBC seems reluctant to question the unfounded apocalyptic projections of the eco-gang, instead passing them on to the licence-payers as gospel. Or is reference to the Bible not permitted in the BBC’s lexicon of PC bias?
