I worked at the BBC for years and I know exactly why they let Bob Vylan's antisemitic rant on air – and how to fix it

The Sun

18 hours ago

ALL week, people have been asking why on Earth someone at the BBC didn't just pull the plug from the wall when that silly man at Glastonbury started chanting about how he wanted everyone in the Israeli Defence Force to be dead.
It was a pretty amazing spectacle, if I'm honest, because all those Tarquins and Arabellas in the crowd joined in. Even though I'm willing to bet 90 per cent of them had absolutely no clue what the IDF is.
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But what's even more amazing is that the footage remained on the BBC iPlayer for a full five hours after the event.
Now I want to say from the outset that I don't really care about what people say at music festivals.
It's been going on for years.
From the anti-Vietnam War hippies in the Seventies through various anti- establishment punks and right up to the mass genuflecting at Glastonbury in 2017 when Jeremy Corbyn popped up on stage to talk about the 'commentariat'.
This is all quite normal. The crowds at these festivals are young and idealistic and they chant and they weep . . . and then they grow up and buy a people ­carrier and no harm's done. But people watching at home are not young and idealistic. Or stoned. And they've already got the people carrier.
So when the BBC broadcast a man saying he wanted to kill everyone in the IDF, it was a bit of a shock.
You know it. And I know it.
And yet somehow, the BBC didn't know it. Why?
Alarm bells ringing
We know, and they must know too, that these days you can go to prison for a long time for sending an offensive tweet. See Lucy Connolly for details about that.
So you'd think that if a man on stage was calling for the death of 169,000 ­Jewish conscripts, it might set the alarm bells ringing in the BBC's well-manned operations centre. But it didn't.
Fury as Glastonbury crowd chants 'death to the IDF' during Bob Vylan set aired live on BBC
I think the problem is instinct.
If someone had climbed on the stage and started chanting about death to immigrants, their natural reaction would have seen the feed cut in about one ­second.
Same as it is when a streaker comes on the pitch at a football match.
But Bob Vylan was chanting about the awfulness of the Israeli army.
And to a BBC person, that doesn't ­trigger instinctive revulsion at all. I know, because I worked at the BBC for a really long time, that most of the people there are lefties.
Soft lefties for sure but ­lefties nevertheless.
So everyone they talk to at the water cooler, and everyone they meet at their agreeable Islington dinner parties, and everything the algorithm sends them on their lefty social media feeds, says the same thing.
The Palestinians are right. And Israel is wrong.
As a result, the plug stayed in the wall.
And if they were reading the online backlash, they'd put it down to far-right, Zionist agitation.
It's hard to know how this attitude can ever be changed. Director General, Tim Davie, who's a mate of mine, says he's going to get on it immediately — but what can he actually do?
I have one idea which might help.
For a long time, the BBC advertised in the ­Guardian to fill all the jobs that came up. Which is why the whole place is currently full of Guardian-reading lefties.
So here's an idea. Next time a job comes along, run the advert for it in The Sun.
DON'T CREDIT LOSERS
ONE of the (many) ­mistakes George Bush made after the 9/11 attacks was describing the hijackers as ­'terrorists'.
This is something the British learned during the Troubles in Northern ­Ireland. Never refer to the bombers as terrorists. It makes them sound important.
It's better to refer to them as 'criminals'. Which makes them sound like shoplifters.
We seem to have ­forgotten this simple thing now, though, because the group that strolled into Brize Norton air base last week and spray-painted those jets are about to be listed as a terrorist organisation.
No it isn't. It's just a bunch of chinless losers with an aerosol can.
And that's a long way from the Red Brigade.
Heard the one about the Czech Republic being the funniest country in the world?
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A NEW study has found that Brits are the 18th wittiest ­people in the world.
We beat Germany (phew) but lag behind countries such as Greece, ­Portugal and, in the number one slot, the Czech Republic.
Hmmm.
I'm not sure about this because I've racked my brain and can't think of a ­single funny TV show to come from the Czechs, whereas we've given the world Monty Python, Fawlty Towers, The Office, The Thick Of It, The Vicar Of Dibley, Big Train, Armstrong And Miller, Dad's Army, Ripping Yarns, Smack The Pony, Nuts In May and about a thousand more besides.
JAGUAR WOKE-UP CALL
ALL week, people have been saying that sales of Jaguars have plummeted by a spectacular 97 per cent because of their wokey 'Bud Light' rebrand a few months ago.
Well, sorry to spoil the story with a dollop of truth but the fact is that Jaguar has actually stopped making cars altogether as it prepares for the new range of ­electric motors that are coming along soon.
Obviously, I'm sad ­Jaguar has decided to go down this path and you probably are too.
But the fact is that in America, which is the company's biggest ­market, 75million people voted for the uber-woke Kamala Harris. That's an awful lot of people who think internal combustion is the devil's work.
MPs NOT ALL BIRD BRAINS
I HAD it in my mind that all Labour MPs are bitter and twisted class ­warriors whose sole aim in life is to make things ­miserable for people who want to work hard and have some fun ­afterwards.
So this week, when the Labour MP for Bishop Auckland – a chap called Sam Rushworth – got to his feet during a debate on grouse shooting, I was expecting a load of ­communist codswallop.
I was in for a surprise.
The proposal for a ban had come from a group called Wild Justice, who had argued that the cost would be economically insignificant.
But good old Sam said that if you work in the grouse shooting industry as a beater or gamekeeper or a caterer, that's your job.
And to you, that's not economically ­insignificant at all.
I'm delighted to say Wild Justice's petition was thrown out.
THERE'S been a bit of a brouhaha over plans to replace the historical figures on our bank notes with people who are more representative of the times in which we live. Poetesses with penises. That sort of thing.
Who cares? Cash is only used these days for buying and inhaling drugs.
And frankly, I find it quite amusing to think that when Jane Austen has been axed from our tenners, the nation's coke enthusiasts will be snorting their fix through the curled up face of, I dunno, Diane Abbott.