No News Is GB News

I thought better of Andrew Neil. Not in the sense that I think he's a decent human being with good politics. But denuded of the mantle of the BBC and the prestige attached with being its flagship political journalist we see him for what he really is. Another reactionary in a shaky studio desperate for relevance engaging in an inverse relationship with the truth. Happy to peddle cancel culture bullshit and use the term 'woke' to hide an increasingly unhinged agenda as the world sails on by. Society evolves and the reactionaries need this as their war totem, afraid of losing every piece of privilege. They call the need to justify that privilege the 'woke' culture they are increasingly fighting. Real issues are abandoned.

So now, hiding behind investment from questionable non domicile sources, Andrew Neil is flanked by a cohort of tired old boys from the BBC, a Sun hack with a shtick that's part Milo Yanoupolis and part Tucker Carlson, and a winner/loser (possibly both simultaneously) from the Apprentice. Their inaugural event was patronised by a bizarre call in from Alan Sugar himself, from what looked like a curry house. He didn't know what to make of it either (GBN, not the curry house).

Neil, for his part, sits at a tiny desk in a studio that looks like a home furnishings catalogue set. It is both drab and hilariously kitsch, like ash kitchenware from the eighties, or your first microwave. He's reduced himself to moaning about the latest in the never ending flow of 'woke' stories. The latest involve a teacher who said the N word while trying to discuss the difference between it, as a term of abuse, and the country Niger. Apparently he did so clumsily and a pupil got upset.

So what? People make mistakes all the time. Should they not have to explain themselves? That doesn't mean he has to or will lose his job. It means that, in a mature society (the kind these reactionaries don't want), an understanding will be found after looking into the matter, and an accord reached. Maybe he behaved badly, maybe he's actually a racist, or maybe some poor kid just misunderstood. It's not a story except for those desperate enough to consult the tarot of political correctness gone maaad, and divine some extra insight into our degrading culture. These people don't care about kids, if they did the likes of Neill wouldn't be supporting politics that starves them. Twice. During a plague.

This station will fail because its own ideology cannot stand. They've already had a discussion in which some insane aristocrat made excuses for - inexplicably - Jeffrey Epstein. This sort of thing will happen more often and the minute they challenge it their values will be exposed. Free speech absolutism is childish nonsense. Defending scumbags makes you a scumbag. But of course anyone that points this out just gets smeared with the word 'woke'. It's the new bogeyman, a term that's malleable enough to apply to anyone or anything inconvenient. Actual news be damned.