John Peel’s record collection to go online

This is genuinely exciting. What sounds like the entire record collection of late, John Peel, DJ extraordinaire, to be put online by the BBC.

I’m a day late on this but I…

I’m a day late on this but I thought Amelia Hill article in yesterday’s Guardian (BBC unable to investigate hacking, says Patten) was telling about the way the BBC has been devalued in recent years.

Chris Patten: “As a publicly funded broadcaster whose output is so directly intrusive, there are some areas where we ought to be particularly careful in our journalism or even decline to follow where newspapers or online journalism may properly lead.”

Hello. Isn’t the BBC meant to be independent? Whose independence is protected by a Royal Charter? If a story, such a phone hacking, is in the public interest, then a public broadcaster should be free to report on it. End of.

Help! Save the BBC World Service

Well at least David Cameron has found it within himself to apologise (sort of) to the BBC.

Quick point to the Indy’s Ian Burrell who criticises News Corporation’s most recent escalation of its attack on the BBC. Like a victorious general keen to push home recent victories, Rupert Murdoch is pressing his troops ever forward. The Sun says today that “the Beeb is today the pompous voice of defeated socialism,” adding that the corporation’s coverage of the housing benefit cuts – which has warned that many could be made homeless – “must not become a licence for malicious and unscrupulous propaganda”. What? Like Fox News?

Politics and the English Language and Nick Griffin

I enjoyed watching Nick Griffin flounder of BBC Question Time last night. David Dimbleby handled him beautifully, like an experienced barrister might toy with a petty rogue. He snared Griffin about 14 minutes in, using a speech the leader of the far-right British National Party made (alongside David Duke, leader of the KKK) in the US, where he said:

“If you put that [expelling non-whites from Britain] as your sole aim to start with you are going to get absolutely nowhere. So instead of talking about racial purity, we talk about identity. We use saleable words: freedom, security, identity, democracy. Nobody can attack you on those ideas.”

It was over 50 years ago that George Orwell (right) in Politics and the English Language remarked how such words were often used by politicians with the intention to deceive:

The words democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another. In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using that word if it were tied down to any one meaning. Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different. 

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Orwell Prize targets political bloggers

Glad to see that the Orwell Prize for political writing has been extended to included blogging. Heard Jean Seaton on the Today Programme this morning saying that if Orwell were alive today, he would have been a blogger. She added: “He was always absolutely avid about whatever was the contemporary form of media.”

“He would have been interested in the democratic possibilities of it – anyone can do it as long as they’ve got access to a machine,” said DJ Taylor, Orwell’s biographer. “[But], the misuses to which blogging has been put … would have appalled him. There would, in all probability, have been an essay on Blogging and the English Language.”

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Keeping it Peel: Festive Fifty continues over on Dandelion Radio

Palace Rocks for John Peel Poster

Originally uploaded by
Denim Badger

I’ve been listening to Dandelion’s Radio’s Festive Fifty a little over Christmas. Dandelion is a net radio station inspired by the work of the late John Peel.

Sadly you can’t download the countdown when you feel like it, Dandelion only “streams” audio, meaning that you must wait for the show to be broadcast live on a schedule. Which is fair enough when you consider that that the independent station – run and paid for by volunteers – needs as much exposure as it can get.

This year’s fifty, voted for by fans of the station, is about halfway through now and is fittingly full of fuzzy guitars and Fall songs. It’s surprising that this idea is not taken up by the BBC, who could archive the show and make a virtue of keeping Peel’s tradition alive online.

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Charles Wheeler: last of the great bureau chiefs

Lots has been written about the sad death of the great Charles Wheeler. I though John Tusa summed him up best in today’s Guardian:

“Charles was the obverse of a puffed-up “personality journalist” – the kind of person who thinks his personal presence is our message. Charles was the last of the great BBC bureau chiefs, the journalists expected to lead the BBC’s coverage of a great subject – India, the US – and to do so with real knowledge and total authority. Listeners and viewers recognised that when he expressed a judgment, it was based on thought, knowledge, experience, and acquired information, not on prejudice or wish-fulfilment.”

The cult of Steptoe & Son

Ah, but if only the same level of energy had been directed towards my post on the new Steptoe and Son biopic. I spent twice as long on it, but received only a single comment (although it was a good one). The Curse of Steptoe is set to run on BBC4 on March 14. It’s an excellent example of working class comedy and I think probably the finest sitcom ever made.