Monday 9 April 2018

When the BBC considers Racist attacks on Wales to be merely mocking.

 The BBC have covered yesterday's row  over  columnist on the  Sunday Times  insulting both Wales and the Welsh Language.


They write
Sunday Times columnist Rod Liddle has been criticised on social media and by Welsh politicians for comments that "mock Wales" over the campaign against renaming the Severn crossing.
About 26,000 have signed a petition against the move to name the second crossing The Prince of Wales Bridge.
Mr Liddle sparked a backlash on social media after writing its name did not matter so long as it lets people "get out of the place pronto".
The paper has been asked to comment.

"Mock Wales?"  the BBC seems to think this is minor jesting.

 

The Beeb does carry some of the response  that does not think that this is simply mocking, but it is typical of the media that they do not call our racists article by their peers in the same way politicians  and ordinary members of the public using social media.

Its not as Liddle hasn't got form in October 2010 in the Spectator he wrote

 What to do about S4C, meanwhile, is simple: close it down. Virtually nobody watches it – well, actually, LITERALLY nobody watches it. A recent survey showed that almost 200 of its programmes
had zero viewers. What an epic waste of money just to assuage the sensibilities of some of those miserable, seaweed munching, sheep-bothering pinch-faced hill tribes who are perpetually bitter
about having England as a next door neighbour. S4C has become a state funded sinecure for the utterly talentless, the dregs who cannot even get a job at HTV (Cymru); a corrupt political sop of not
the scantest interest to even Welsh people. Bin it, Johnny Bach. Bin it.
Mr Liddle. started his career  on the South Wales Echo and Western Mail so maybe the poor dab saw "something nasty in the woodshed"  which fuelled his racists remarks .

Because they are racist remarks on a par with the much derided Katie Hopkins.

However directed at the Welsh it seem to the BBC it is "simply mocking".

I am not sure that the Welsh and our Language is the last place that Racist remarks by columnists   like Liddle are considered  to be part of the great English "Wit" we are told about , The Scots, Irish  and especially the French still remain open targets.

But it often seems that remarks that would lead to prosecution for hate crimes , if they were directed against any other minority are seen as mere mocking of Wit from English Columnists  in  so called "quality" newspaper or by Comedians who have thankfully abandoned the sort of racist  joke I unfortunately grew up with.

One further comment  for many who were outraged by Liddle maybe  we should also  consider our own reaction.

If we find such attacks unacceptable, then it is unacceptable  when directed at others .

2 comments:

Soupcruncher said...

Being Scottish I'm very familiar with this superiority complex. English British Nationalists who think England is Britain/UK and Scotland and Wales are merely regions. It's one thing to have a pride in your country, but using that pride as a starting point for looking down on others is, well, Nazism!

Leigh Richards said...

"just to assuage the sensibilities of some of those miserable, seaweed munching, sheep-bothering pinch-faced hill tribes" - this is hate speech pure and simple and liddle needs to be reported to the Police. People dont have to contact the MET police, you can report it to your local force who will then contact the police in london where liddle lives.

https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/law-and-courts/discrimination/hate-crime/how-to-report-a-hate-incident-or-hate-crime/