Jerry Springer, Tony Blair and the IRA

Here I am again ready to dispense my words of wisdom to the waiting millions (I can always dream!). Today has been spent as is usual for Sundays, in church, this week trying to put up with all the vitriol about the Jerry Springer Opera that was on TV last night. I never watched it but I understand that 1.7 million people did; many more than the 1 million one would expect to watch an opera and many of those 1.7 million were the very same young people that the Beeb were deliberately targeting. Success then for the BBC? No. I think the only result of this escapade has been an undermining of the integrity of the BBC and an increased threat to the validity of the TV licence. As the Conservative Deputy Leader, the rather scary looking Michael Ancram, said: “You can choose to go to the theatre, you can decide that you want to pay a sum of money to go to see something. That is where you go to see freedom of expression.” He was speaking on BBC Radio Four’s Any Questions? and added: “Public service television, I believe, has another duty and that is to exercise a degree of caution which is not there for the theatre to exercise. I ask the question about the motives of the BBC in putting this on. They haven’t advertised it as a great cultural event. They have advertised it as an occasion when we are going to have 3,000 of one type of word and 1,000 of another type of word. What they are trying to do is to get people to watch it because they think it is going to shock them. I don’t think it is the duty of the BBC to do that.”

Now in the past I've not been too keen on Michael Ancram, mainly because he looks rather too scarily like my father (!), but he does have a point. All right, he's only jumping onto the political band wagon just like his illustrious leader who does so every moment he opens his mouth, but if people want to watch this sort of thing they should go to the theatre and pay at least £25 for it. The BBC is publicly funded and shouldn't be used to fund something like this. The BBC should have a higher standard for itself than this. With Christian Voice's promised legal action this could run for a long time and I look forward to seeing how it develops. But enough of that for now.

Also in the news at the moment is Tony Blair and Gordon Brown seemingly trying to make sure Labour doesn't win the next election, or at least someone is trying to make it seem like that. For ages now there have been rumours that before becoming Prime Minister, Tony Blair promised to Gordon Brown that he would stand down at some point and let him become Prime Minister. What total hokum. As if someone would do that and of course Tony Blair is vigorously denying it and Gordon Brown is not commenting on it, but why should he? I am sure he would love to be Prime minister but the problem is, on his own he never will be. Like Neal Kinnock he just doesn't have the public appeal to be a Prime Minister which I am sure Tony Blair knows. I am not a Labour supporter (most of the time I don't support any of the idiots in politics) but I do despair when a party who can win an election simply by turning up is trying to make it appear as if it's got more than one leader. Even so I am sure Labour will still win this year's General Election if only because Michael Howard is simply a publicity seeking opportunist. It would be interesting to see what Charles Kennedy made of the job though.

Still in politics, what on earth is happening in Ireland? The IRA was recently officially blamed for the bank robbery last month where £26 million was taken from the Northern Bank in Belfast. Assuming the IRA did take the money most of it will soon be worthless because the Northern Bank are changing their bank notes and even if they were able to use it most of it was new traceable notes. They went to a lot of trouble for nothing, risking everything including the peace process, but if they are innocent the peace process is still going to be seriously derailed. The Police have blamed the IRA, but the IRA are strenuously denying that they had anything to do with it. Is it possible the police just can't believe the IRA could be innocent of anything? This is just going to breed an atmosphere of suspicion that prevent any progress being made in the peace process for years. If the police are mistaken in their belief that the IRA carried out this robbery then I believe all the men responsible for the allegation should be sacked for gross stupidity in potentially wrecking the peace process.

I think I'll leave it at that tonight. When I started writing this today I didn't think I'd be able to find much to talk about but as it turned out I could have gone on for ages! I think it's time I went to bed so I'll leave it at that for today and say goodnight.