The sneering voice of leftism

I can't remember what it was that propelled Robert Peston onto our TV screens - I think it was something to do with the banking crisis or maybe the expenses scandal - but whatever it was he has been a virtual ever present on the BBC news since.

On the face of it, Peston is the ideal sort of person for the BBC to employ as they attempt to address the criticism of their often overt left wing leanings. The son of a peer and with past experience working at a stockbroker's as well as various journalistic stints at leading "right wing", pro-capitalism newspapers such as the FT and Telegraph, Peston must be as right wing capitalist as they come, right?

Wrong.

Peston's membership of Common Purpose reveals his true political leanings, but you'd never know that just by looking at him. What does give him away, though, is his voice - because Peston has that trademark of the rabid left winger; a whining nasal drone shaped by his barely concealed contempt for politics of the right.

It's the same vocal style I first became familiar with through my scouse English teacher in the mid-seventies. It doesn't matter what the upbringing, accent or dialect - left wingism is characterised by this whining nasal drone with underlying tones of contempt and sneering. It's nasty. This English teacher saw me as something of a protege - I was, at the time, leaning to the left myself - and took me under her wing to some degree introducing me to punk rock and the works of the "poet" John Cooper Clarke.

To be fair, it's probably true to say that this introduction to John Cooper Clarke was what sparked my love of classical - proper - poetry. I found his stuff to be such drivel that I had no choice but to go and find out about real poetry and what a joy I discovered.

Anyway, I digress. My point is that the BBC are reacting to the fact that their institutionalised left wingism has been outed by trying to give an impression of impartiality. Peston is one of those who is supposed to address that. Unfortunately, for the BBC, his sneering nasal drone gives away the reality of Peston's rampant left wing ideology. It always does. Whenever you listen to anything on the BBC, it pays dividends to listen as much to the tone and style of the delivery as much as the words they say - because however they try to dress up their left wing bias the sneering voice of leftism cuts through.

Shrink to fit

The news that the BBC is going to cut a couple of radio stations and reduce its Internet presence is a bit of a smokescreen. On the face of it it sounds as if the BBC, like the rest of us, is doing its best to reduce its costs. It isn't - and has no intention of doing so, but it has led to a debate about what we want from the BBC.

Do we keep Radio 3 and Radio 4 or just Radio 4? Do we need BBC 2 and BBC 4 or can we get by with just one TV channel? This is what I keep hearing - where do we cut the BBC?

We cut it at its source of funding - the licence fee.

The BBC is too big and is doing too much - way beyond its remit, in my opinion - but the debate about what services to cut is not the right way to think about how to reduce it. The obvious answer - obvious answer to me, anyway - is to force the BBC management to make the decision about what to cut and you do this by reducing the amount they receive from the taxpayer.

I'd start with a 10% reduction in the licence fee every year for five years followed by a ten year freeze. That should be enough to get the BBC to cut some of its multitude of stations and services.

Whether we're left with just one TV channel and one radio station is irrelevant - but if, after that fifteen year period, the BBC is failing to fulfil its remit as a public service broadcaster then just get rid of it.

What this case tells us about the BBC

There's more to this than meets the eye.

I'm not going to comment on the jail sentence which, as some commenter has already said, seems unduly harsh, but more about what this reveals about the prevailing ethos at the BBC.

It reveals just how immoral and seedy the BBC truly has become as an organisation. Once upon a time, "Auntie" held itself up as a paragon of virtue and high standards. What we now know - as evidenced by the employment of overpaid juvenile presenters who make dirty phone calls on air and the evidence of this case - is that the BBC is a cess pit of bed-hopping, cheating immorality.

In essence, the BBC is a microcosm of progressive liberalism and indicative of society in general under progressive liberalism - a showy surface of respectability underneath which lurks a filthy rotten body.