The Social Acceptability List 2015

As the New Year approaches, we reflect on a bumper year in the world of social discourse. Here’s a little run down of the movers and shakers in this year’s Social Acceptability List, which is compiled by the Fallen in Public and its patchy memory and is about what politicians, newspapers and netizens went on about and how. What’s in? What’s out? What’s OK? What’s not? Read on to find out...

In today's edition - IT'S IN! Ties With China!

Since China went red, the West has wanted to shun it. But money is the loudest voice in politics, so gradually we’ve had to accept that China is here to stay. The first step was recognising, in 1971, that the communist People’s Republic of China was the China that got the seat at the UN, at the expense of the Republic of China, which is now in the (mostly) unrecognised state of Taiwan. Since then, money has spoken more and more until, finally, the Chinese are building power plants in the UK.

It’s an irony that the Tories have been far more gung-ho about China, while Labour (who traditionally would be seen to be closer bed-fellows) have been more hesitant. First we had George Osborne talking about how his daughter is learning Mandarin, hailing it as the language of the future (not without reason). Then, for a good while, we had an admiring commentary on Chinese (and generally eastern) education. I live in China, and I know about Chinese education, and it’s a rough, relentless, dispiriting slog. It stifles creativity; it promotes mindless conformity. It’s also completely inseparable from their overall culture, and works seamlessly to keep an abundance of people from getting too rebellious. Chinese students memorise much, but learn little. But their exam results are fantastic.

But their fantastic exam results aren’t the cause of their economic success. That, rather, is due to the cheap labour, long hours (many unpaid), few regulations, fear of asserting any rights, and the sheer numbers they have. It’s an economic rise led by the cruel whims of the markets and backed by investment of the state, and (for its sins) it’s taken many millions out of absolute poverty. The British governments’ similar willingness to leave everything to the market, and to sell out their own labour force for cheaper labour in China, is one of the reasons for the UK’s economic troubles.

This year, the Tories finally filled the bathtub of hypocrisy and slipped in to the bubbly warmth of a Chinese money spa. It materialised as a full-blown, Chinese state-owned enterprise in the UK for energy. Another high profile partner in the UK energy game is EDF, the state-owned French company. All this while taking the axe to public funding of services, and maintaining the narrative that publicly run organisations are costly, bureaucratic and wasteful, and should be avoided at all costs.

John McDonnell, in another attempt to ruin his career, attempted to highlight this irony with his Little Red Book prop, his dig at Osborne’s new friendship with the Communists. It turned into a playground argument about who liked Mao more.

Around the same time, China's leader Xi Jinping came to meet our duel leaders, Cameron and the Queen. The red carpet was laid and a propaganda coup was shown for all 1.3 billion Chinese back home. I saw the news reports on the subway TVs. The Chinese have a great fondness for the UK (despite being on the receiving end of British colonialism), and though they may be overworked and denied many rights, they are proud of the strength of their country. The British as allies was seen as vindication.

China still gets mocked. Its rich shoppers get mocked at Christmas; its taste for gambling and luxury is mocked as a great communist irony. Its policies get roundly criticised in the media, but not from politicians. They’ve taken the Saudi approach: let’s not let morality get in the way of a good heist. I dare say China will become more socially acceptable in the political sphere as time goes on, to the extent that - if I may make a little prediction - the efficiency of single-party power will challenge the merits of troublesome democracy that we currently cling to, and eventually usurp it.

Gettin' Righteous with the Feedback

I'm not one to poke my head out and get all riled up but the BBC's been getting my goat of late. I like the BBC as a principle, and often in practise too. Sure, BBC3 and it's down with the kids schtik is a bit grating, and the strange gloss that is liberally pasted over a BBC 1 show makes it undeniably cringeworthy, but that stuff's for other people who aren't me. And that's what the BBC's about – making programmes for people that aren't necessarily me. This is why important programs that don't bring in the viewers are kept on the air. They have a duty to give information, to teach, to be impartial.

Sometimes this quest for impartiality makes for some strange viewing. Let's say you have a front page story – a man's been caught having sex with his goats. Well you can bet that the next day BBC will have some spokesperson from the Foundation for Animal's Rights to Marriage (FARM) putting forward the case for bestiality in the name of a balanced debate. It can mean that some strange and infrequently held views are given inappropriate airtime. A good example is climate change – despite a tiny minority of scientists disputing anthropogenic climate change, the BBC are compelled to invite on some smug, populist sceptic to wave his arms and say it's all a conspiracy. Here James Delingpole laments the BBC's ignorance for siding with "scientists". Pesky scientists, with their "evidence". Another strange situation is that "balance" requires not taking sides in the Israel-Palestine troubles, despite the fact that the crimes have been overwhelmingly perpetrated by Israel. The BBC is generally criticised as being unreasonably pro-Palestine, as this 2006 article by Michael Gove shows.

Ukip are a right wing party, it might not surprise you to hear, and recent darlings of the BBC (and many other media outlets). There's even a website, (IsNigelFarageOnQuestionTime.com) dedicated to informing the curious viewer whether Nigel Farage is on Question Time on any given week. Since 2010, the pint-swilling populist has been Question Time's joint-most-frequently-invited guest along with Labour's Caroline Flint. 

Still, the BBC get a lot of verbal excrement thrown at them by the right for being a Stalinist propaganda arm of the state. Read any number of right wing newspapers for this attitude. Peter Hitchens is a great example. He complained about the Radio 4 program What the Papers Say giving him a silly voice. They do that to all the journalists they imitate, the only difference with Peter is that his voice is silly in real life. Was Peter a little offended, perhaps? Maybe a little political correctness in the BBC is in order, hmm, to stop them satirising poor lowly irritant toffs such as himself, maybe. He also complained about the BBC misrepresenting an article he wrote about Ukip, and then he made out that the fact that they apologised made the BBC even worse. 

One wonders if Peter and his ilk might have some interests at hand. Like perhaps organisations that criticise the BBC might have something against, say, the principle of public ownership in general. Well the Daily Mail's not exactly one to champion public ownership, owned as it is by the shifty Lord Rothermere who doesn't believe in paying taxes on this profits, and hence doesn't. And what about Murdoch's papers? No surprise that News Corporation is no fan of its big British rival – it can't even stage a take-over. The Centre for Policy Studies enjoys a good BBC bash. Founded by Margaret Thatcher and a few other neoliberal greedy-types, it promotes free markets. The BBC is public and – deep breath – regulated. 

The uniting criticism is that the BBC is run by a 'liberal elite', and these critics want to swap it with a conservative elite. But the accusation of left-wing bias doesn't really ring true. The Greens, despite having an MP, are vastly outweighed in coverage by Ukip, and Trade Unions, despite being the largest democratic organisation in the UK, are outweighed by representatives from business – union member's bosses. BBC News's bigtime interviewers – Andrew Marr, Andrew Neil, Jeremy Paxman (now gone), Nick Robinson – are all Tories to some degree. We hear a lot about growth in the economy, but no critique of what growth amounts to, and  we get a lot of cheap shots at Ed Miliband (granted, Ed makes himself a target by being pretty useless).

This article from a Cardiff University lecturer shows the stats. It reports that research shows "the BBC tends to reproduce a Conservative, Eurosceptic, pro-business version of the world, not a left-wing, anti-business agenda."

It then signs off with... 

"The funding for some of the research discussed in this article was provided directly by the BBC Trust."

Oops!

But of late I'd say that the analysis is pretty accurate. The BBC failed to report a huge anti-austerity march last week, except for (eventually) this piddly little post-it note of a report. Then I saw Andrew Marr on Sunday having a great old jolly with his breakfast time pal, Foreign Secretary William Hague, signing off by thanking him for the little chat. "It's been a treat," he said before blowing him a subtle kiss. 

Then today I listened to Radio 4's Analysis. It's one of those slow, thoughtful radio shows that you don't get many places. It tends to go a little beyond the trite pie-slinging political soap opera that's curated by Nick Robinson and friends on BBC News. It was called Tories: Nasty or Nice? Now, no surprises for guessing where I stand, but I'm always up for hearing the other side of the argument. The problem with this episode, however, was that there was no other to the other side. It was presented by Tory supporter Robin Aitken, and he didn't try and hide his political persuasions.

So, I wrote to Feedback – 

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I listened to this week's Analysis, a show which is often pretty good. I understand that this episode was exploring the question of whether the Conservative Party are nasty or nice and it was delivered by a Tory supporter. I don't have a problem with the presenter's political leanings, but I would have thought he would have to adhere to some form of political balance for the sake of the show. This wasn't the case. While he was exploring how the 'nasty' label had come to be, and putting the case forward for 'nice' – with the aid of the Right-wing philosopher, Scruton – there was a complete lack of challenge to his thesis. By my recollection, there was one guest who thought the Tories were 'nasty', yet she still found time to congratulate them on their foreign aid budget. There was no response from a representative of the Left to the accusation that in fact it is they who are 'nasty', never mind any detailed exploration into the damage that Tory policy has caused, or the financial interests that effect many Tory's judgements. Need I remind Aitken that it's not just Tory words that are so offensive, but their actions too.

Aitken's conclusion was that mending the electoral prospects of the Tories is a PR excersise, and after hearing this episode (and with the absense of coverage of the recent anti-government protests fresh in the mind) one wonders how involved the BBC is getting in providing that PR.

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I also sent a link of the programme to http://biasedbbc.org/. They're obviously a paranoid anti-left bunch, but bias is bias, right? I'm sure their hatred of Labour, Europe, climate science, Obama, etc., won't get in the way of a their duty to seek out bias and put it right in whatever form it be! Right? 

What I said to them was...

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Hi, I noticed some recent bias that I think you'd be interested in.
This week's episode of the BBC Radio 4 programme, Analysis, had a complete lack of balance.
For your interest, here it is: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b047ws86

Keep up the good work!

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At least I'm nice hey. In conclusion, I don't think the BBC is as-a-rule conspiratorially left-wing or right-wing. Thankfully, the BBC's set-up involves so many editorial pigeonholes that they'd make a really incoherent propaganda organisation. Unfortunately that leads to some aggressive accusations when they slip up. The difference between where the accusations come from, as I see it, is that where the Left generally support the BBC and are concerned when it seems to be parping the government line, the Right are happy to criticise anything because destroying the BBC is the ultimate aim. 

Some say that the BBC generally align themselves with the government of the time, being nice in order to save the license fee. That wasn't the case in the 80s when the BBC was happy to give Thatcher a hard time, and we hope it's not the case now. The fact that both Left and Right seem to have an endless amount of ammunition is probably a sign that the BBC isn't drifting too far either way, overall. (I'm referring to party-political leanings here rather than social politics, for which the BBC is a little to the left – in line with dominant social attitudes – or economics, for which the BBC is to the right – in line with dominant economic discourse.) But to dispell the accusations of pro-gov bias, they better start holding the government to account for some of its work, reporting the mass anti-government movements, and stop snuggling up all cosy-like with despicable politicians on Sunday morning sofas.