BBC turns Terracotta Warriors origins into culture wars

The world is changing, the sun sets on the British empire and all that is solid melts like a Mr Whippy ice-cream in the summer heat.

Some people can't stand it. In terms of cultural appropriation, Dan Snow's claim in his programme, The Greatest Tomb On Earth: Secrets Of Ancient China, that the Terracotta Warriors (made some two centuries before the Common Era), were Greek-led innovations takes the chauvinist biscuit.

Snow dons his best Victorian colonialist demeanor to assure BBC viewers that, joy of joys, it was us who did it after all. All is right with the world.

According to the BBC puff, "Mobilising the latest technology, delving into some of the oldest texts, enlisting world experts and employing forensic science, together the three reveal an explosive secret from the foundations of the Chinese empire".

That "explosive secret" is the leap from simplistic human representation in art to the full-on 3D life-size figures discovered in the tomb of the First Emperor, Qin Shi Huangdi (259-210BC). For which Snow credits the west on not very much evidence.

As if, as in every culture, the Chinese weren't already on the road to increasingly "accurate" representations of the human figure. European art underwent its own revolutionary leap in human depiction in the middle-ages, more than a thousand years later: from stiff, unreal figures (similar to early Greek sculptures) where man was peripheral to God, to man placed at the centre of the universe as a spiritual being, giving rise to perspective and an attempt to inject life into the art. But even that is not as a big a leap as Snow taking credit on behalf of the West. History isn't — or shouldn't be – a competition. (Yes, that goes for Chinese chauvinism as well.)

Qin Shi Huangdi unified China, often brutally, and standardised weights, measures and language. It was a period of massive change giving rise to a super-state that could draw on all its resources.

Of course, cross-fertilisation happens. Hey, the West got China's silk, porcelain, tea technology, gunpowder and hydraulics and a whole lot more. The Jesuits may have introduced the water screw to China but the Chinese soon replaced it by vastly more efficient piston-pumps.

But, let's say Greek statues found their way into China. If it was such a massive influence, then surely there would be copies of the Greek style cropping up elsewhere? That distinctive fluid, muscular style: where is it in ancient Chinese art?

The whole weight of the programme rests on the assertion that the terracotta warriors would not have been possible without the Greeks teaching the Chinese how to do it, even though the Chinese were technologically more advanced.

During Qin Shi's reign there occurred a paradigm shift in figurative representation in the plastic arts, a vast improvement on how the Chinese had hitherto comprehended the world. Given that China had the ceramics technology, how long would it have been for them to size up? The puppyish Dr Albert Lim (not a threat to Dan Snow's officer-class authority) happily bounds alongside providing ethnic and scientific cover with lots of excited gasps but he never challenges the narrative swerve being constructed out of the flimsiest evidence.

On closer inspection, China history buff Hooi Yau Ming writes in one Facebook discussion:

The evidence was not conclusive, and they acknowledged that in the documentary. The skull that was found in Xi'an, whilst not of Chinese origin, was not of European origin. And the DNA test which showed genes of European origin, was done on DNA located in Xinjiang province, which is nearly 3,000km away from Xi'an - I myself am not surprised by this particular result.

Why don't we ever see what the Greeks learnt from Egypt? Two years ago, I proposed to the BBC history department for their 2017 Hong Kong handover anniversary season that, among other subjects, we make a programme about Joseph Needham's scholarship around China's innovations that have affected the west. I suspect mine was a perspective they'd rather not deal with.

The BBC should be making programmes about the richness of human diversity and celebrating how we are all interconnected, not blowing up some jingoistic arts and tech turf war. Dinosaurs from a fading empire comfort themselves that Chinese are mere copyists and Mighty Whitey the true innovators, but from what I've seen, the reverse is true.

Sadly, I suppose we can expect more of this twisted history now that the sun is setting on the empire.

Now THIS looks interesting: why didn't science rise in China? Jonathan Spence and Alan L Goodman debate.

Understanding the viciousness of the anti-Corbyn tendency: shades of the Paris Commune

Jeremy Corbyn, the BBC and the democratic process

Why has Jeremy Corbyn's election as leader of the Labour Party with a massive 59.5 per cent provoked more fury among the centre-left than the predations of the right which still overwhelm us?

I'm bewildered by the preoccupation among good friends with diversions that have little to do with the big central crises facing us: worsening poverty and wars.

Broadly speaking, my anti-Corbyn friends are focusing on Westminster-bubble concerns such as the cabinet reshuffle; personalities (they don't like Corbyn or his cohort); plus JC's sympathy for the Palestinians and his criticism of Israel. What is going on with this endless stream of pieces on a reshuffle in which he sacked one person (shadow Culture Secretary and former SpAd/corporate lobbyist Michael Dugher) and moved another?

Compare this with Tony Blair's nights, weeks, months and years of the long knives, when Blairites were parachuted into constituencies against the wishes of locals, and his removal of the authority of Labour Party's National Executive Committee (NEC) as a means of centralising his power along presidential lines. Were Seumas Milne even half as thuggish as rottweiler Alastair 'sexed-up dossier' Campbell, the media would be having a conniption. Oh, they already are.

The rest of us see Corbyn as representing the first real hope for people devastated by decades of intensifying Tory and Tory-lite policies: food banks; the breaking of the NHS; ATOS savagery towards the disabled; the transfer of wealth from poor to rich as "austerity" (for us!) while the super-rich TRIPLED their wealth since the 2008 crash; the break-up of education (academies — imagine Toby Young as your mentor); crippling tuition fees; neglected flood defences; banking scandals where no-one is held to account; tax avoidance by massive corporations; a tanking economy disguised by various financial tricks and an artificially inflated housing bubble; another crash on the way but without the safety net of a China powerhouse this time; wars without end; a destroyed manufacturing base since Thatcher and now steel, coal and a burgeoning green energy industry killed off; fire sales of public assets; ownership of the media by a handful of moguls; increased poverty, homelessness, debt and hunger; hefty wage rises for the political class while we're pauperised; and general selfish corruption permeating every walk of life.

However, in the official narrative the realproblem is ... Jeremy Corbyn. We're told that he's so weird-beardy extreme that he couldn't possibly win a general election, but the consequence of their efforts to undermine him could well be the creation of a self-fulfilling prophecy, and an unintended demonstration of a contempt for democracy – remember, Corbyn's leadership has a greater democratic mandate (almost 60 per cent of the selectorate) than any Labour Party leader of recent times, including Blair – which matches that of the Tories. Meanwhile, the notional 'centre' of British (and American) politics has moved so far to the right than it currently enshrines policies and attitudes at which even Thatcher and Reagan (during their first terms, anyway) would have baulked.

When the right and the soi-disant 'moderates' attack Corbyn, we see an attack not on one individual and his cohort, but on everyone trying to mount a challenge to the rich who are taking everything that isn't nailed down, and damn the rest of us to hell. This is class war and it's being waged unopposed by the richest class against us. We're not allowed to defend ourselves. And whilst the membership of the Labour Party swells, the degree of influence which the party establishment wishes to allow that membership to wield proportionately decreases. In other words, STFU and stuff those envelopes!

Even conservatives like Nick Robinson and Peter Hitchens are worried by the concerted media assault on JC, while mainstream journalists Roy Greenslade and Nic Outterside are questioning the ethics of our partisan press. The blogosphere has rushed to ensure that the public is kept informed of the truth ... which should be the BBC's job, but – as that ship has sailed – we're largely reliant on blogs such as evolvepolitics.com to fill in the gaps.

Laura Kuenssberg, BBC hit-woman for Cameron

VERY posh girl Laura Kuenssberg, BBC News Political Editor, was only serving her class when she and Andrew Neil facilitated Cameron's ambush of JC and the rest of us by orchestrating the resignation of Labour MP Stephen Doughty in the studio five minutes before PMQs. Their boast of how they achieved this interference with the democratic process was deleted from the BBC website but you can read a cached version of it here.

So far over 10,000 people have signed the Change.org petition to sack Kuenssberg and Andrew Neil for manipulating the news rather than reporting it. BBC impartiality is now a joke. Instead of speaking truth to power and challenging it, they suck up to it. Although, given Kuenssberg's background, she's not so much twanging the vocal cords of her masters' voice as much as taking a vocal solo with it. I am sure her rewards will be great now she's made her bones with her class peers. Has she reserved a space on her office wall for the wooden shield on which she'd like to display Corbyn's head as a hunting trophy?

One of the comments at Nic Outtenden's incisive piece reminds us: "Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind." ― George Orwell.

I always wondered what kind of sicko poked out the eyes of women communards with their parasols when the Paris Commune was crushed in 1871. Now I feel I know. And it's not a pretty sight.

BBC political editor @bbclaurak tweets in 2016: Floods-2 EU-10 Economy-3 Housing-0 NHS strike-0 Saudi/Iran/Korea-0 Reshuffle-56

— Russell Benson (@russellbenson) January 7, 2016

All white at the BBC: South Africa would be proud of Newsnight

I've had the good fortune to be one of the few ethnics who have slipped through the cultural net and been able to make a few good programmes at the BBC, having a great face for the radio. But it's shameful that there's still so much unconscious racism as inadvertently exposed in a recent BBC recruitment film which neglects to mention their Black Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) audience and production staff (absence of). That's how unaware they are in this age of diversity. After all, the Beeb is based in a city that's 44 per cent non-white, so what is their excuse?

"I set the general editorial direction of travel," says Newsnight editor Ian Katz at a meeting rammed with white faces.

I found it useless trying to talk to Katz when he was editor of the Guardian's G2 supplement in 2000. They'd run a controversialist piece by Charlotte Raven about the movie Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon which was storming the box offices: " ... Because they were oriental, everyone presumed this was understatement, rather than woodenness. ... In Chinese, delivered inscrutably, it seemed to contain multitudes."

My disappointment wasn't so much that one writer had written this casual othering of a racial group but more that the G2 editors — the Guardian institution — hadn't sounded alarm bells. I can only guess at how richly ethnically diverse they weren't. I was met with hostility for raising the issue, so I'm hardly surprised that Katz now works in an all-white environment at the BBC. (Here's how it panned out.)

When working on my my play for Radio 4, Red Guard, Yellow Submarine, drawn from my memoir of the same name about being brought up by Chinese communists in Hackney, I walked through Broadcasting House with my producer, Pam Fraser-Solomon, who is Black, and it was notable that the only other non-white face at the time was the cleaner.

It's assumed that white folk do everything best and that any person of colour is there as a token.

Every time we stick our heads up the dominant white establishment tries to shoot us down. East Asians actors were give four minuscule roles out of 17 in the Royal Shakespeare Company's Chinese classic, The Orphan of Zhao — which the RSC then had the cheek to market to Chinese audiences. Trevor Nunn wants to produce all-white Shakespeare histories in the interest of verismilitude, minus the bad teeth and buboes, of course.

The latest lazy dismissal in the Guardian of a rare project made by a non-white team, Reggie Yates: Race Riots USA, would indicate that the liberal media are in nightmarish free-fall into some inner apartheid hell zone. I mean, accusing the lovely calm Reggie Yates of the crime of swagger? How submissive must a Black man be to assuage the white writer's fear?

I suggest they seek help. And I said, "seek help", not "sieg heil".

The Independent: Behind the scenes Newsnight new show blows the lid on the lack of racial diversity on the BBC.

Reggie Yates Race Riots USA review: white liberal Guardianista requires smelling salts

Reggie Yates: Race Riots USA review

BBC3 Tuesday 29 Sept 2015

There's a lot of shark-jumping going on down Fleet Street. You may have observed the liberal press laying into the resurgence in progressive politics of late with a hysteria largely missing in action when it comes to the current assault on the poor, about which they are remarkably sanguine. I haven't seen such a screeching mess since the Mogwais were last fed after midnight.

Bankers break the economy and lie about Libor; the top percent double their dosh since the crash while the poor are driven to debt and suicide to better recapitalise the system. However, it's not the brutal transfer of wealth from poor to rich that's driving them to frothing fury, but Jeremy Corbyn's vest. How dare the new Labour leader lack vanity, have principles and, at long last, give hope to the weakest after three and half decades of Thatcherism?

When the oppressed and their champions mount a challenge, the liberal press turn out to be not quite so liberal after all. Just as the French government put their war with Prussia on hold in 1871 to team up with their 'enemy' to massacre the Paris Communards, you can barely squeeze a cigarette paper between the Guardian and their New Statesman stablemates on one side, and the Daily Mail et al on the other when it comes to maintaining the status quo (emphasis on status. And privilege.)

It's crept into every nook and cranny of the culture like the noxious diesel fumes invisibly killing us while someone makes a profit.

And lo, black Londoner Reggie Yates makes a thoughtful piece about the killings of black men by police in America — Race Riots USA — and what is the Guardian's chief concern? "Yates can’t seem to decide if he’s supposed to go with the poker face or let rip with his own opinions." Or as the headline has it, "an impartial observer's indignance leaks through." (Did they mean 'indignation', by any chance?) Uppity Reggie! Heaven forfend that a journalist is able to tell this story from the inside out like a human being, not a robot. What does he think this is? Jezza's vestgate? He's reasonable, puzzled, enquiring and moved rather than the easy-to-dismiss raging black man some of the media might prefer.

In case that didn't convince you to move along, nuthin' to see, the Guardian chips away with the flimsiest justification: ' ... “It could have been me” pronouncement while a driver holding a “Reggie Yates” sign meets him at the airport and takes his bags to the car. It confuses his status: is he the inquisitive everyman, there to guide us through the subject, or a celebrity who doesn’t carry his own bags?'

Perhaps it shows him as an ordinary dude who has booked a cab to meet him at the airport and, as is common practice, the driver's waiting with a hand scrawled sign of his passenger's name. It begins the story with his arrival and makes the point that he is from the outside ... and yet not.

Unarmed men and women are being murdered by white police and will never receive justice because of the colour of their skin, a skin they share with Yates. Some 176 in one year alone. Neither are women and children safe: a pregnant woman thrown to the ground; a bikini-clad adolescent manhandled by a cop at a pool-party; the boy with a toy gun shot dead; the teenager killed in the back of a police van. And still they keep on coming.

It is a scary, distressing and enraging catalogue of horrors. But the author of the Guardian review is most concerned about Yates getting above himself at the airport. Such was her snide hostility that I thought this couldn't possibly be a white writer as any halfway competent editor would have spiked such naked spite by a representative of drearily dominant whiteness, and that this must have been written by one of the house slaves. But no, Julia Raeside is white. And protecting her patch.

It is a bullshit piece. Obtuse, deliberately not understanding the issue. How could a journalist write something so hostile, so blatantly ignoring what Yates has done here? He's taken us into the belly of the beast and introduced us to its ugly complexities so effectively that, despite herself, Raeside almost praises him, but then catches herself and has another snipe in parentheses:

'When the rally is approached by two young black men, one in a Peace & Unity T-shirt, both of them filming with their phones, the unease is palpable. But a quick intervention by Yates (he gets away with a lot here by having a camera crew in tow) begins a dialogue between a blonde woman and the T-shirt pacifist, in which they largely agree on the need for cooperation.'

Yates also performs a fine journalistic function (unlike Raeside) in revealing that filthy lucre, not just blind prejudice, plays a key role in the collective tragedy that is Black America. The police force, which is around 94 per cent white, pays for itself with the fines on the Ferguson community, which is 70per cent black. Some of the people dragged into court owe five thousand dollars in what is an institutional shakedown with menaces. And on the day that Yates visits the court, they are all black. See what happens when you have a service based on profit? Which brings us neatly full circle to Jeremy Corbyn and yet more reason Labour must make the crucial challenge to austerity, exclusion and privatisation.

How often do you see a black person in Yates's position with a VOICE, who isn't a white person's stereotypical creation? The Guardian piece, people of colour, is the slap down you get for doing white folks' job and doing it well. Can't have young black people inspired like this. They might start demanding equal rights and opportunity. By the way, I'm delighted to note that Reggie and I went to the same school: Central Foundation Boys (in Old Street) and Girls (Spitalfields).

One question I would like answered is whether this wave of killings of unarmed black men and women has risen since Obama became President. His ascent to power seems to have driven Republican whites mad and you wonder if, unable to reach the interloper in the Oval office, the grim truth is that any black person will do.

EDIT: even sweeter, this was filmed, directed and produced by Ruhi Hamid and produced by Kandise Abiola, two women of colour aiming to "reflect the mood of Ferguson ten months after the riots and protests that followed the fateful shooting of Michael Brown by officer Darren Wilson."

Postscript: Julia Raeside thought it was a good idea to advertise her nasty clickbait piece with this tweet. I looked from Guardian to Daily Mail and back again and already it was impossible to tell which would look better in a cat tray.

BBC gladiatorial combat and poverty porn in Britain's Hardest Grafter

Beyond satire! The BBC has commissioned Britain's Hardest Grafter, a "game" series described as "Benefits Street meets The Hunger Games" which pitches the poorest among us — the unemployed and the low-paid — against each other for a cash prize. They Shoot Horses, Don't They? is an early model for this latest hate-fuelled poverty porn but they should actually be shooting (metaphorically, anyway) the inhumane nobs at the once-great BBC who are making this garbage.

In one fell swoop, BBC controller Kim Shillinglaw flushes any remaining dignity enjoyed by her employer down the waste-pipe.

Few members of a civilised society would derive pleasure from the suffering of the weak unless they were either only an inch away from falling through the gaps themselves and harbouring a lot of fear, or else they were themselves doing well off the backs of such inequality. As the master of ceremonies (played by Gig Young) says of his revolting audience in They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, "They just want misery to make them feel better."

In case we need reminding, it is the government's job to run an economy that provides proper jobs, housing and health for Her Majesty's subjects (for we are still denied the grown-up status of citizens). It is neither moral nor ethical to have their propaganda wing sow even more hatred for Brits laid low by the failings of their own government.

Emboldened by the Tory victory in the general election, all sorts of creeps are crawling out from under their stones and revealing themselves. Not that it should have come as much of a surprise to see Prince Harry, the druggy, womanising second-born to Prince Charles and the sainted Diana, (he who threatened to have his inferiors beheaded when he was at school), demanding that the lost generation of youth on whom the government has given up be compelled to do "national service"; fight and be killed in his granny's army.

The wealthy heaved a sigh of relief when the Tories won. No mansion tax, no extra homes built or protection for hard-working, rent-paying tenants. Instead, Foxtons, the rich persons' estate agency, saw an immediate jump in their stock value of 14 per cent while the buy-to-let sector rolls on like a big tax-sucking juggernaut. Especially ripe for picking under the proposed new Right To Buy rules, is the last remaining sector of semi-public affordable housing now fated to end up in the hands of private landlords via Housing Association residents who've lived there for three years or more.

And yet it is still the poor who have to pick up the bill for bankers' profligacy. To people using food banks as a result of institutional misfeasance, cruelty (hello, IDS), and a bad case of couldn't-give-a-fuck-itis, our rulers are asking, "Do you want relish on that?"

BBC output stormed to the right under Chris "Lord" Patton's reign as chair of the BBC Trust, and the odious former Director-General Mark Thompson. Barely a day passes without the glorification of the armed forces in drama and documentary, or the promotion of demagogues like Nigel Farage and shrink-the-state tycoons such as vulture capitalist Jon Moulton given airtime way beyond that accorded to left-of-centre progressives such as the Greens. Now that we have a Culture Minister in John Whittingdale who is virulently opposed to the entire raison d'être of the TV license that allows the BBC to produce quality without commercial pressure, we can wave bye-bye to the glory days of a benign public service (up to a point!).

I hear that there's more blue-sky thinking at the Beeb concerning an exciting new witch-burning series. A cross between Judge Judy (for it must always be a woman who is seen to do the patriarchy's dirty work and, as they couldn't find Witchfinder General Matthew Hopkins, they're getting Katie Hopkins to front it), Jeremy Kyle and It's A Knockout (the hilarious ducking-stool section of the show), with a star of ISIL regularly on the panel.

Watch this kids — THIS is your future ...

Here's a petition to sign.

Britain's "liberal" media and UK Chinese: from London Chinatown to the general election

The Guardian has always been sloppy about China matters, but its publishing stable now appears to have given up any pretence of writing about UK Chinese issues informatively.

"It was a genuine community built by the emigrants from Hong Kong who, having been bombed out of Limehouse in the East End in the 1940s, made this patch of London, with its cheap commercial rents, their own," writes Daniel Boffey in the Observer about Soho's Chinatown

Er ... I don't think so. I know we all look the same to the "liberal" media but it was Cantonese and Shanghainese sailors and their families living mainly in the two streets of Pennyfields and Limehouse Causeway, not Hong Kong migrants, who were bombed out during the war: a large number were rehoused in Poplar.

My father was an early Chinese occupant in Soho's Chinatown from 1947 when it was mostly Indian and Jewish. It wasn't until the 1950s — but really the '60s — that waves of Hong Kong migrants got the takeaway industry going after the domestic washing machine rendered laundries largely obsolete. They bought up the fish 'n' chip shops that were going under and started serving their own food.

You wouldn't find many HKers in that early Soho mix. A few Kuomintang diplomats finding new ways to make a living and former Cantonese and Shanghai sailors, but hardly anyone from HK.

In the ten-part series Chinese in Britain, which I presented on BBC Radio 4 in 2007 (repeated last year), we looked at the history of UK Chinatowns including Limehouse and Soho, but the pattern of not allowing ethnic minorities to tell their own story persists in some organs which continue to get it wrong.

At best, invisibility is thrust on us; at worst, the Chinese are still defined as villains. From the yellow-peril Fu Manchu books by Sax Rohmer to the BBC's Sherlock reboot, where even innocent Chinese passers by in Soho Chinatown were portrayed as sinister and "other", the Chinese are dehumanised and excluded. Yet none of the liberal media paused for breath between BAFTAs and plaudits to question why, well into the 21st century, the publicly-funded British Broadcasting Corporation was breathing life back into what should be moribund racist tropes.

In Channel 4's recent  debate concerning the role of the ethnic vote in the imminent general election, chaired by Krishnan Guru-Murthy, only one single solitary east Asian face could be seen in the audience — placed on the corner in the seat nearest to Krishnan where he stood more chance of being picked up by the cameras, presumably after someone panicked on the night at the oversight. None on the platform. Yet Chinese are Britain's third largest Black and Asian minority ethnic minorities (BAME) after South Asians and African Caribbeans.

In a piece for the South China Morning Post magazine last October, I outlined how the ethnic vote could swing results in the marginal seats, with the Chinese key to the outcome in 36 seats including Barnet in May. Still, here are the Chinese being excluded yet again.

So when the Chinese are next accused of being the authors of their own exclusion ... think on.

My article on the Ming Ai Chinese in Britain project for the South China Morning Post magazine.

Pic from Red Scarf

BBC Newsbeat crocodile tears over anti-Chinese racism

While it is always uplifting to see the wicked repent and mend their ways, the BBC Newsbeat item — acknowledging how racism against Chinese Brits is largely ignored — is in danger of providing the corporation with bleeding-heart cover in the absence of measures to rectify the injustice.

The Newsbeat article quotes Michael Wilkes of the British Chinese Project as saying:
"Essentially Chinese people don't like to worry other people. There's a mindset within the Chinese community that we need to keep our business within ourselves, within our own family unit. I'm saying to young British Chinese people now that we can speak out. It's our responsibility - when you're being prejudiced against, you've got to speak up."

Well, that's a powerful get-out-of-jail-free card, allowing the protectors of Jeremy Clarkson's Top Gear petri dish to wriggle off the hook. Blame the victims and take a bow.

It's hard to ignore the utter hypocrisy of the publicly-funded BBC (barring a few enlightened individuals fighting the good fight for genuine balance and justice). The corporation notoriously runs its employment of women along the lines of Logan's Run, where we're mostly bumped off at 50, but also renders east Asians invisible. It declines to cast us in normal roles, which would show us as part of the fabric of British society — which is exactly what we are.

I mean, no regular Chinese characters in Eastenders? Really? Still?

There are plenty of examples of the establishment's fear and loathing of East Asians in general and the Chinese in particular. In Beebland, we are either invisible and excluded or else we turn up once in a blue moon to embody the ugly stereotypes lurking in the fantasy world of the white-bread powers ruling that particular roost.

Their nadir for many was the  Sherlock: The Blind Banker episode: a vivid illustration of the routinely-ignored racism against us. Instead of acknowledging and tackling the glaring and hateful dehumanisation contained therein, they gave the creeps a BAFTA.

The BBC is a BIG part of the problem, rather than even a part of the solution. If the corporation was sincere, there would be east Asians on their channels every night, depicted as normal folks alongside everyone else. The media are lagging way behind the advertisers, who've included increasing numbers of us in the past years because the ad men and women understand that we are not only human beings deserving of equal treatment and representation, but also (in purely monetary terms) a worthwhile slice of the market.

Our absence reflects the prejudice of media gatekeepers, management strata and the theatre establishment (hello, Royal Shakespeare Company). When you create a vacuum, this in turn creates space for nightmares: a blank canvas for the most ghastly of projections. The sleep of reason produces monsters and the BBC has played its part.

It's encouraging to see journalists, editors and producers finally taking this on in the Newsbeat article. However, in context, that piece is a sop thrown to the youth market (which has a more enlightened attitude towards issues of race, gender and sexuality, as well as growing numbers of east Asians) by one hand, while the other ensures the continuation of the conditions that allow such racism to maintain its foothold. Enough of the crocodile tears. Let's see some action.

BEA FAQ for the BBC, casting directors and general media

Originally posted along with the BBC robo-letter, British East Asian FAQ for the BBC, casting directors, the media and anyone working in areas where diversity is an issue gets its own page here.

FAQ about BEAs for the benefit of the BBC, casting directors and reviewers.

Q: Is it true that East Asians can only play East Asians?

A: East Asian people are said to possess a wide range of human emotions. If you are nice to them, they are often nice back. If you are horrid, they may very well get cross. If, for example, you are in an accident, you may be lucky enough to find East Asians willing to call an ambulance, staunch the bleeding and tie a tourniquet, clear your airways, crack a joke to cheer you up and phone your mum to let her know you may be some time. In real life in the UK we find Chinese bus drivers, Korean traffic wardens, Thai teachers, plus scientists, lawyers and doctors from a whole slew of East Asian origins. Look out for them — we're sure you'll find them.

Q: Is it true that only East Asians can play East Asians?

A: Yes, when white actors play East Asians — such as John Wayne as Genghis Khan, Mickey Rooney as Mr Yunioshi or Jonathan Pryce as the Eurasian pimp — it is called "yellowface". Like "blackface" before it, it is considered bad form by nice people who would not kick a puppy or drown a kitten or otherwise do anything horrid to another sentient being.

Q: Do East Asians have lives outside the takeaway, snakehead gangs and business?

A: Should the takeaway, the restaurant and the casino in your drama already have their full complement of ethnic characters, you may well find other areas where East Asians would fit right in. Having a complicated romance, for example. Discovering a cure for cancer. There's a Chinese doctor whose mitochondrial DNA research proves we all walked out of Africa 70-100 thousand years ago. Think of any human endeavour and we bet you could find an East Asian who has already done it or who is working on it.

Q: Is it true that some East Asians have regional British accents?

A: Human beings tend to absorb and reflect their environment. With over 500,000 Chinese and East Asians in Britain, we think it is likely that some of them will speak Cockney, Scouse, Brummie, Glasgie and so forth.

Q: Do all East Asians do kung fu?

A: Yes. This is something we try and deny to throw you off the scent that we are coming for you.

Q: Is it true that East Asians are all clever?

A: No. Emphatically, no. Did I mention no?

Q: Do East Asians have hobbies or do they unplug themselves when they aren't working in the takeaway or selling dodgy DVDs or hacking?

A: Pertaining to the answer above, you can find them writing poetry, painting and drawing, having tragic romances, raising children, keeping pets and fighting da man.

Q: Are there any East Asians training to be actors? We just don't have a wide enough pool of talent to draw from.

A: Ah, you must be a casting director. Contrary to the myth, there have been Chinese actors in Britain since Burt Kwouk was in short pants and Tsai Chin's dialogue was conducted mostly in short pants for the very varied roles afforded her as Suzy Wong and Juicy Lucy, neither of her characters rocket scientists, sadly. We are confident that a cursory investigation of our drama schools will appraise you as to the number of trained East Asian actors emerging to join those who have been here long time.

Q: European actors have so much character — how can East Asians possibly compete?

A: Acting is a very competitive business but East Asian actors are certainly able to “compete” with their Caucasian counterparts. They no longer have to do this by scrunching up their eyes and doing that buck-tooth smiley thing so beloved of Hollywood back when the world was black and white, and the BBC right up to Sherlock: the reboot. There are more roles in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than the Spooks, Fu Manchu and China dolls dreamt of in your philosophy. A cunning ability to make bad Mandarin sound like good Mandarin to BBC ears will also ensure that one day the said East Asian actor will certainly be able to “compete” with the likes of Benny Cumberbatch and Olly Coleman for all those fantastic quality drama roles once you realise that China is a juicy ol' market, a piece of which you might just want one day.

Q: How come East Asians do submissive nookie so well?

A: We learned this at our grandmothers' tiny lotus feet, grasshopper, and imbibed it with our mothers' milk. Or our wet-nurses' milk if you happen to be a Chinese oligarch. Ha! Only choking. Some might say you were just too darn lazy or lacking in imagination to create, say, a working-class Chinese woman, bright, sparky and political with no business sense whatsoever, who dreams of a better world where we are all equal. Oh ... that would be me.

Q: Doesn't the actor have to reflect the character they portray and include things like ethnicity as well as wider considerations of age, gender, physical appearance and so on?

A: Sometimes we suspect you are just too stupid to do this job and perhaps you shouldn't be clogging up the works with your seething prejudice. At other times, we just think maybe you should get out more. To answer your question, yes, which is why Laurence Olivier made such a good Othello.

The Fairy Princess Diaries: When the BBC told the BEAs to take a Slow Boat to China….

Open letter from the British East Asian Artists in response to the BBC letter.

British East Asian FAQs for BBC, casting directors and media

Intrepid tweeting British East Asian (BEA) Bess Chan (AKA Katherine Chan) wrote to me attaching a letter she'd received from BBC about lack of BEA representation on the airwaves. She and her friends had been wondering why it was that American East Asians (Asian Americans) are seen as American, whereas BEAs (East Asian Brits) are seen as foreign.

So they asked the BBC. Back came a letter, long-winded where it should have been enlightening, and gleefully patronising, as if addressing a slow six-year old. In light of the many, many, MANY words we BEAs have written to try and communicate our views about cultural participation, depiction and fairness to the various institutions, we find ourselves puzzled and muzzled. What's a po' BEA to do?

Bess wrote, "We realised that it's all American and wanted to find out why British East Asians don't have same opportunities. We decided to find out why and started with BBC as they're funded in part by the people they won't represent."

Good point.

Now: savour the put-downs! Marvel at the total wilful lack of comprehension by this bureaucrat! Gaze aghast at the Orwellian Ministry of Truth in full effect!

Highlights and lowlights from BBC letter Reference CAS-2709995-Y9CFXK

The first thing to assure you of is that the BBC does take all aspects of diversity incredibly seriously, and we have dedicated personnel, policies and protocols all of which help us to achieve our overall aim of fully and fairly representing and reflecting our diverse audiences from across the UK.

As we mentioned previously, yes there is more to do and things simply cannot change overnight [good frikkin' grief! Overnight? Try 'decades'.], especially in the area of television programmes which as you will appreciate can often be made or parts filmed some considerable time, months and years in some cases, before being broadcast. Nevertheless, we have a strong, public commitment to all issues surrounding diversity both on-screen and on-air, behind the cameras and microphones, and across our workforce, partners and suppliers.

You mention ITV holding open castings for disabled actors, and actually although the BBC is structured very differently to ITV of course [dear god!] - for example they are simply one, smallish company which just operates television channels whereas we are a much larger, much more complex and massively more separated multimedia broadcaster with many different and separate departments and divisions as opposed to one all-encompassing department which oversees absolutely everything.

We do undertake a huge range of initiatives to help us achieve our goals, indeed we have done so in partnership with ITV upon occasion. Some people believe that we as a publicly-funded public-service broadcaster should be subject to formal quotas on diversity, but the reality is that this cannot happen as it would be contrary to the Equality Act and would actually result in unfairness to everyone. This is often called "positive discrimination" but as the name itself suggests, it is still "discrimination" and thus still illegal. Of course any of the theatrical industries including television must be able to maintain artistic choice and discretion in what they do. To put it simply the actors hired are employed on the basis of their judged suitability for the role which has been written. You'll understand that the actor does have to reflect the character they portray and, yes, this includes things like ethnicity as well as wider considerations of age, gender, physical appearance and so on. But that's not to say that there is any bias against or in favour of any group of society in terms of television drama productions, which you mention specifically. Something like EastEnders will over time, aim for a very wide range of characters and thus actors to portray them, but as mentioned above what we couldn't do is simply shoehorn a British East Asian family of characters in for no reason or relevance as that would equate to what we've touched upon above, "positive discrimination". [Shoehorn? SHOEHORN? Speaking as an East Ender ... Limehouse, much?]

Things like storylines and future characters in long-running drama serials are very fluid and constantly evolving, and are not an exact science at all. There is absolutely no discrimination by writers and producers against any section of society when considering such things, it's simply about characters, relevance, what can be brought to the wider context of the show and the series as a whole. For something like EastEnders, producers would consider the reality of the east end of London upon which depictions are based, thus questions would be is there a sizeable British East Asian population/presence/culture in the type of area Walford is meant to reflect. The answer might be that whilst there may be a presence, it perhaps doesn't specifically equate to something that could necessarily be part of storylines. Clearly something set elsewhere where there might be a much more prominent and well-established presence, would be handled differently. So, as you can see, there are very many things to consider in this area, and whilst we are naturally sorry to learn that you feel we do not yet have things quite right on-screen, we can assure you that in everything we do, we are all very mindful of not only our obligations in terms of diversity but also the fact that we want to get these things right for exactly the reasons you suggest, ie that we are a broadcaster which serves and thus must reflect our audiences. [We are your audience. Well ... not me, maybe, as I can't stand thickie fodder like Eastenders.]

Our approach, as mentioned, covers everything from fairness and openness in our staff recruitment and employment, through our many dedicated programmes and schemes and partnerships all of which help us to try and attract and retain personnel especially from groups which may be currently under-represented in our workforce, be that people with a disability, older people, women in particular roles, a broader range of backgrounds and ethnicities and so on. All these things of course help level the playing field and, ultimately, benefit us by making a better, more rounded workforce. The same ideas apply to on-air personnel as explained earlier, in that we want the best and most suitable person for the requirements of the role but whilst no-one is excluded or discriminated against, as mentioned a medium like television does have to allow programme makers the ability to have a very wide choice based on the dramatic and artistic requirements upon them. [War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength, all you Orwell lovers.]

What the BBC cannot possibly do, of course, is be responsible for the talent pool of actors out there, put simply we ourselves cannot create British East Asian actors, we have to rely on schools, colleges, drama clubs and schools, the theatre and so on to identify, train and nurture young talent which then feeds through to the wider British cultural scene including BBC TV and Radio.

We are simply one broadcaster and programme-maker amongst many including countless independent and commercial production companies and so on, all of whom share the responsibility for casting and employing. The BBC does not oversee or govern such things itself, nor should we, as it is not our role to create actors, nor is it our role to guarantee acting work to anyone not least based on their background or ethicity. But what we can and do do is work with many different partners across the country and support emerging talent through schemes, initiatives and projects to encourage talent to come forward, ie to encourage applications and approaches from people from groups which might be under-represented.

Again, this goes back to the notion of wishing to encourage and inspire without "positively discriminating". So, British East Asian actors can compete against any other actor, but the key word is compete because this is one of the most - indeed, perhaps the most, competitive industries there is thus there is huge competition for every role and every position with countless people being left disappointed of course, but that's the reality of the performing arts.

All the above said, British East Asian actors and presenters have and continue to appear across a wide and diverse range of BBC programming. One only has to think of the wonderfully bubbly and popular Pui Fan Lee who of course made her name in CBeebies' international hit Teletubbies and subsequently appeared as herself fronting our children's programme Show Me Show Me amongst many, many others often alongside Chris Jarvis. Indeed she was the first person who appeared on CBeebies when we launched the channel thus she enjoys a hugely high profile on the BBC having also acted in our Chef! comedy series and our gritty drama State of Play. Daphne Cheung has been a film and television regular for many years including on the BBC, most recently in the dramas Holby City and Spooks, and our wonderfully dark comedy series Psychoville but more recently of course in Channel 4's wonderful Friday Night Dinner; Jing Lusi as the inimitable Dr Tara in BBC One's fantastically popular Holby City - across two series; the fantastic and critically acclaimed actress Jessica Henwick as the Bafta-nominated lead in our award-winning Spirit Warriors, plus work across BBC Radio including the Sony Award-nominated North by Northamptonshire, BBC Four's internationally-acclaimed The Thick Of It, BBC One drama Silk of course (and the planned future companion series); the super-stylish Scottish actress Katie Leung in the BBC's GK Chesterton adaptations of the Father Brown crime mysteries, who is also set to appear in an upcoming BBC Two drama; the wonderful Benedict Wong has had many and various roles in a huge range of TV programmes often with Channel 4 but also in a number of BBC roles including Spooks and State of Play plus Peter Serafinowicz's comedy Look Around You followed by BBC Two's The Peter Serafinowicz Show of course; Yao Chin, who is of course more well known now as being a television news journalist made his television acting debuts, after many stage appearances, in BBC programmes including Dalziel & Pascoe and Casualty early in his career.

We did mention Burt Kwok {Er, that's Burt Kwouk to the rest of us.] previously but it is worth reiterating that he has appeared on countless BBC programmes over the years right back to Tony Hancock's radio shows in the 1950s, he was adored by many millions in Last of the Summer Wine for many, many years of course, plus many other high profile BBC series over the decades from Judge John Deed to Silent Witness, to the award-winning Spirit Warriors alongside Tom Wu and others, most recently of course over on ITV as Harry Hill's long-suffering comedy sidekick; and one must not forget the fabulous David Yip in the seminal BBC drama The Chinese Detective all those years ago which remains as a truly groundbreaking, artistic masterpiece of television, a central work in British culture, which led to many and various roles with the BBC and elsewhere, including of course a successful global film career. [This is sounding like BBC Stepford.] The above is simply a tiny snapshot by way of a few examples to try and demonstrate that clearly there is no lack of opportunity for British East Asian actors across the BBC, and whilst some of the above examples are of course historical, we wanted to make the point that some of the biggest and best BBC programmes over many years have featured these wonderful actors including in lead and award-winning and -nominated roles in award-winning and -nominated programmes across all genres from children’s to one-off and serial dramas and comedy to political satire. [And that's it?]

We appreciate that you feel more could and should be done and we share your ambition for more British East Asians to appear on BBC programmes and be part of our workforce to ensure that we continue to work towards becoming fully and fairly reflective of all aspects of modern British culture. In closing, we're again sorry that our earlier reply missed the mark thus requiring you to get back in touch, but we would like to thank you for doing so thus affording us another opportunity to reply to your concerns, concerns which we hope we have allayed to some degree at least here.

Kind Regards
BBC Complaints

That ain't a response — that's a software programme gone wrong.

So bereft of comprehension was it that Madam Miaow felt compelled to write a FAQ U BBC.

FAQs about BEAs for the BBC, casting directors and reviewers:

Q: Is it true that East Asians can only play East Asians?

A: East Asian people are said to possess a wide range of human emotions. If you are nice to them, they are often nice back. If you are horrid, they may very well get cross. If, for example, you are in an accident, you may be lucky enough to find East Asians willing to call an ambulance, staunch the bleeding and tie a tourniquet, clear your airways, crack a joke to cheer you up and phone your mum to let her know you may be some time. In real life in the UK we find Chinese bus drivers, Korean traffic wardens, Thai teachers, plus scientists, lawyers and doctors from a whole slew of East Asian origins. Look out for them — we're sure you'll find them.

Q: Is it true that only East Asians can play East Asians?

A: Yes, when white actors play East Asians — such as John Wayne as Genghis Khan, Mickey Rooney as Mr Yunioshi or Jonathan Pryce as the Eurasian pimp — it is called "yellowface". Like "blackface" before it, it is considered bad form by nice people who would not kick a puppy or drown a kitten or otherwise do anything horrid to another sentient being.

Q: Do East Asians have lives outside the takeaway, snakehead gangs and business?

A: Should the takeaway, the restaurant and the casino in your drama already have their full complement of ethnic characters, you may well find other areas where East Asians would fit right in. Having a complicated romance, for example. Discovering a cure for cancer. There's a Chinese doctor whose mitochondrial DNA research proves we all walked out of Africa 70-100 thousand years ago. Think of any human endeavour and we bet you could find an East Asian who has already done it or who is working on it.

Q: Is it true that some East Asians have regional British accents?

A: Human beings tend to absorb and reflect their environment. With over 500,000 Chinese and East Asians in Britain, we think it is likely that some of them will speak Cockney, Scouse, Brummie, Glasgie and so forth.

Q: Do all East Asians do kung fu?

A: Yes. This is something we try and deny to throw you off the scent that we are coming for you.

Q: Is it true that East Asians are all clever?

A: No. Emphatically, no. Did I mention no?

Q: Do East Asians have hobbies or do they unplug themselves when they aren't working in the takeaway or selling dodgy DVDs or hacking?

A: Pertaining to the answer above, you can find them writing poetry, painting and drawing, having tragic romances, raising children, keeping pets and fighting da man.

Q: Are there any East Asians training to be actors? We just don't have a wide enough pool of talent to draw from.

A: Ah, you must be a casting director. Contrary to the myth, there have been Chinese actors in Britain since Burt Kwouk was in short pants and Tsai Chin's dialogue was conducted mostly in short pants for the very varied roles afforded her as Suzy Wong and Juicy Lucy, neither of her characters rocket scientists, sadly. We are confident that a cursory investigation of our drama schools will appraise you as to the number of trained East Asian actors emerging to join those who have been here long time.

Q: European actors have so much character — how can East Asians possibly compete?

A: Acting is a very competitive business but East Asian actors are certainly able to “compete” with their Caucasian counterparts. They no longer have to do this by scrunching up their eyes and doing that buck-tooth smiley thing so beloved of Hollywood back when the world was black and white, and the BBC right up to Sherlock: the reboot. There are more roles in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than the Spooks, Fu Manchu and China dolls dreamt of in your philosophy. A cunning ability to make bad Mandarin sound like good Mandarin to BBC ears will also ensure that one day the said East Asian actor will certainly be able to “compete” with the likes of Benny Cumberbatch and Olly Coleman for all those fantastic quality drama roles once you realise that China is a juicy ol' market, a piece of which you just might want one day.

Q: How come East Asians do submissive nookie so well?

A: We learned this at our grandmothers' tiny lotus feet, grasshopper, and imbibed it with our mothers' milk. Or our wet-nurses' milk if you happen to be a Chinese oligarch. Ha! Only choking. Some might say you were just to darn lazy or lacking in imagination to create, say, a working-class Chinese woman, bright, sparky and political with no business sense whatsoever, who dreams of a better world where we are all equal. Oh ... that would be me.

Q: Doesn't the actor have to reflect the character they portray and include things like ethnicity as well as wider considerations of age, gender, physical appearance and so on?

A: Sometimes we suspect you are just too stupid to do this job and perhaps you shouldn't be clogging up the works with your seething prejudice. At other times, we just think maybe you should get out more. To answer your question, yes, which is why Laurence Olivier made such a good Othello.

The Fairy Princess Diaries: When the BBC told the BEAs to take a Slow Boat to China….

FAQ about BEA for the BBC, casting directors and media.

In 2005, Ofcom allowed public service broadcasters to keep their equality monitoring "confidential". BAME participation fell off a cliff. BAME workers in the TV industry have fallen 30.9 per cent 2006-2012. In 2010, Ofcom dropped their Broadcasting Training and Equality Programme which evidently didn't help.

Open letter from the British East Asian Artists in response to the BBC letter.

Jimmy Savile strikebreaker at Broadmoor: Panorama tonight 8.30pm

Watch Savile: The Power to Abuse - BBC1 Panorama 8.30pm, Monday 2nd June 2014. 

As we wait for the BBC's own report into the Jimmy Savile scandal, shocking but unsurprising insights into how Jimmy Savile held onto power emerge in tonight's Panorama investigation.

Edwina Currie went along with Savile who was blackmailing Broadmoor nurses for subletting their accommodation, threatening to grass them up if they went on strike.

A Tory agenda and sex abuse united in crushing a nurses' strike using blackmail threats. One wonders what other blackmail was going on.

A sex abuse carte blanche in return for oppressing labour — as good a metaphor and expression of capitalism as you're likely to get.

It is hoped that the BBC's Panorama Savile investigation gets it right at last and vindicates Meirion Jones and Liz Mackean, even if the corporation had to be dragged kicking and screaming into the open.

Panorama 8.30 tonight on BBC1.

Savile notched up at least 500 victims, some as young as 2. More here.

British East Asian Artists cheer on Somi Guha's Top Gear racism complaint & BBC apology

BRITISH EAST ASIAN ARTISTS

PRESS RELEASE 23RD APRIL 2014

British East Asian Artists congratulate Somi Guha for winning an apology from the BBC over racism

Doubts remain about contradictory BBC statement

The British East Asian Artists group (BEAA) are supporting actor Somi Guha's formal complaint to the BBC for the broadcast of racist material and are delighted to see that this has resulted today in an apology from Top Gear's Executive Producer, Andy Wilman. A broadcast is a service and it is unlawful to produce racist services.

The trigger for Ms Guha's case was an exchange on the BBC's Top Gear Burma Special programme where, filming in Thailand, a native person on the bridge was referred to as a "slope", a term used by American GIs in Vietnam for the Indo-Chinese people being killed in their own country in the 1960s and 70s, and which evokes the full horror of that brutal period.

However, in a contradictory statement issued today, Wilman claims: "When we used the word ‘slope’ in the recent Top Gear Burma Special it was a light-hearted word play joke referencing both the build quality of the bridge and the local Asian man who was crossing it." And yet he also states: "We were not aware at the time, and it has subsequently been brought to our attention, that the word ‘slope’ is considered by some to be offensive."

We await clarification as to whether they knew and were joking, or did not know and were not making a joke. Our inference is that the apology is less than fulsome and that Ms Guha and her lawyer Lawrence Davies shouldn't lay down their arms just yet.

Ms Guha says in her statement:
"I have taken a stand against the broadcasting of racist slurs in the name of 1950s school boy humour by raising a complaint to the BBC through Lawrence Davies, the director of Equal Justice who is dedicated to fighting discrimination.

"I am an actress of Indian origin. I have grown up both in the UK and in the US and have dual citizenship. The way I describe myself is 'A brown-skinned American of Indian origin with a British accent'.

"I have influences from different backgrounds, as do so many people today. Although the 'slope' slur is not necessarily targeted at those from my background, it makes no difference. The point is that it is targeting someone based on their racial heritage and this was broadcast, which legally violates the Equality Act.

"If this matter had gone to court and we'd won, all proceeds would have gone entirely to the Stephen Lawrence Trust and the Stairway to Heaven Memorial Trust (the Bethnal Green tube disaster of 1943 where 173 people were crushed to death while trying to enter the air raid shelter at Bethnal Green Tube).

"All old institutions wish to carry on their practices unchallenged, but there comes a time when people say, 'Enough is enough!'."

The BEAA group has felt moved by Ms Guha's solidarity and courage in pursuing this action out of principle. It was not her racial origins that came in for such dehumanisation from the BBC and we acknowledge and commend her spirit of humanism and internationalism which crosses racial boundaries.

We are pleased to see others who are concerned supporting her, such as the Left Unity party and Chinese for Labour, and we hope that anyone similarly alarmed by the rising level of casual racism in British society stands with her to challenge it.

We expect that producers of the Top Gear series, which is the BBC's most profitable export, will have cut the offending "slope" comment from the American version, presumably because they know that this would not play at all well.

The Top Gear presenter's use of racism as entertainment is not an aberration. A recent anti-Mexican rant was deeply shocking. Jeremy Clarkson's dehumanising comments about the 23 dead Chinese cocklepickers at Morecambe Bay were grotesque.

We hope that this incident marks a speedy exit point for Top Gear, a BBC dinosaur that has become an embarassment well past its sell-by date by several decades.

For further information, please contact Lawrence Davies at Equal Justice Solicitors who represent Somi Guha (AKA Somi de Souza).
Bloomsbury House, 4 Bloomsbury Square, WC1A 2RL

NOTES TO EDITORS

1) British East Asian Artists (BEAA)
The BEAA group was formed out of the Royal Shakespeare Company's The Orphan of Zhao casting controversy: http://madammiaow.blogspot.co.uk/p/rsc-orphan-of-zhao.html
BEAA Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BEAArtists
BEAA Twitter: https://twitter.com/BEAsianArtists
www.britisheastaa.wix.com/beaactors

2) This case is also being supported by Left Unity.
www.leftunity.org
Contact: press@leftunity.org

3) Chinese for Labour
http://www.chineseforlabour.org
Email: info@chineseforlabour.org

4) Please see the links below for newspaper articles:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2591500/BBC-sued-1-MILLION-Jeremy-Clarkson-racism-allegations-presenter-makes-slope-remark-Top-Gear-Burma-special.html

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2083806/Jeremy-Clarkson-slammed-mocking-deaths-23-Chinese-cockle-pickers.html

Even the Radio Times is looking askance at Top Gear.

Salman Shaheen talks to Somi Guha about her legal action in the Huffington Post.

BBC axes The Review Show

This Sunday sees the last edition of The Review Show, ending a longstanding BBCTV arts strand. Already shunted from its weekly Friday spot on BBC2 to a monthly graveyard shift on BBC4, even that has proven too much for the philistines at the top who have decided to axe it. All those ginormous management salaries in return from destroying our common cultural experience. Well done.

The Review Show was a must-watch for sharp informed cultural debate anchored by Kirsty Walk and her regulars: Germaine Greer, Tom Paulin, Tony Parsons, Paul Morley and Mark Kermode. Alison Pearson may be an unpleasant right-wing idiot but her flaws could be absorbed by her panel peers.

Before that, its forerunner, The Late Review, was a nightly event on BBC2 from 1994, presented by Tracy McCloud.

We used to have Arena, The Old Grey Whistle Test, Top of the Pops (pre-scandal), Melvyn Bragg, and Newsnight Review down from its weekly slot.

Now BBC2's The Culture Show and Later With Jools are the last men standing. Jools Holland is increasingly looking like a fish caught in a tiny pool as the tide goes out.

What happened to regular doses of animation, dance, silent movies, international cinema, movie greats, Play for Today and all the other cultural coverage that was woven into the fabric of the media reflecting our rich and illustrious arts mix? You used to be able to get a solid education in the arts just from watching the BBC. Now it's wall-to-wall Simon Cowellesque copies and business shills.

The BBC promises better arts coverage just as they drop their arts show. I guess there's not enough room for reality shows, soaps and ghastly "talent" contests harking back to They Shoot Horses, Don't They? Make us stupid, why dontcha? Capitalism demands it and the men and women running the media are serving it up with a spoon.

Culture & politics attacked by plutocrats and oligarchs nicking our stuff

Wake up. Take the red pill.

Government spinners appear to be borrowing from Dr Who's The Silence. As soon as you look away, you forget them and what they're doing. For everyone looking away from the main action in the current catastrophic reshaping of our society, I'd like you to know that we're being attacked on a cultural front as well as economic and political.

Greg Dyke, former Director General of the BBC and one of the few bosses with any sort of old fashioned integrity left, warns that BBC "Trust" Chairman Lord Patten is a busted flush:

"The BBC is very good at regrouping and sustaining itself. In the end it has the support of the country and it always has had. That's why Thatcher never took on the BBC – because it has the support of middle England."

Tory Lord Chris Patten has presided over the Savile scandal; allowed Mark Thompson a destructive free-hand, manipulating a lurch to the right (enough of the militarised drama and content, already); turned a blind eye to unearned pay-offs to BBC management including a million to outgoing deputy Director General Mark Byford to which he wasn't entitled; and blocked publication of documents relating to the corporation's £100m Digital Media Initiative (DMI) fiasco. Excellent facilities including the iconic TV Centre with its rich history and state-of-the-art studios are lost while workers are crammed into inferior facilitates at the new Broadcasting House and transport-guzzling Salford (thanks to New Labour for initiating that move).

It's as if the malign forces now in the ascendent wish to decapitate us and separate us from our memories of the long post-war period in Britain when the mass of society enjoyed unprecedentd access to education, health, housing and jobs, when pride and confidence was standard. It wasn't perfect: there was racism, sexism and all sorts of phobias but it was something British society was building on. There's an intensifying agenda at work attacking our cultural memory in order to ease the take-over by the Super Rich. One tactic has been to pick off the weak men who used their star power to abuse children but strip the events of context that might shed light on the power nexus (Margaret Thatcher, health minister Edwina Currie and so on) that created the opportunities. Who next — our rock gods?

While sex offenders and expense cheat politicians should certainly be held to account, one wonders why household names from showbiz and Labour politicians dominate the lists of shame. Where are the swinish Tory grandees? What about the seriously rich and their little perversions? Money can buy anything and insane amounts purchase insane fantasies. Did the horrors of the Jersey boys' home and Elm Guest House move to superyachts and private islands — decadent settings for degenerate lifestyles made possible by taking our assets? It's a logical link that if the class at the top has no conscience when it comes to cutting us loose and destroying lives in order to acquire even more wealth, that they'd exhibit no qualms of conscience when it comes to gratifying other needs as well.

Does the system really care about Stuart Hall and Jimmy Savile abusing children? It didn't during their reign. How many knew about the abuse at the Haut de la Garenne home on Jersey? Who gave Savile a free run in Broadmoor? Justice for the abused victims never seems to touch those holding the keys and hosting the dinner parties.

Like the NHS — privatised by MPs, ministers and Lords with financial interests in its destruction — the BBC is another one of our institutions established in kinder, more democratic times, whose days seem numbered. Just watch the looting and pillaging taking place at the top. It's everywhere. To have rail companies who already make 147 per cent PROFIT each year demanding even more from working people is a vivid illustration of the dynamic at work.

Unfortunately, while Greg Dyke may be one of the few remaining good men running things, Marx was right and the capitalist system is a juggernaut whose inbuilt dynamic swallows everything by brute force.

I'm not surprised the Centre For Economic And Business Research (CEBR) and their media shills are supporting George Osborne's austerity for the masses, tax cuts for the very rich. The economy would indeed look wonderful, a perspective dependent on an exalted position, if you suddenly ditched the civilians and nicked all their stuff. Where's Labour's instinctive rebuttal of this garbage? Is this yet another Tory narrative they're allowing to set like concrete?

Here's a nuanced and intriguing warning from Michael White (not someone I'd nornally quote) that we dump our politicians — our last defence against the feral elite — at our peril:

"For all their (much exaggerated) faults, elected politicians in a country like the UK are still a barrier that protects us from the rising power of unaccountable oligarchy and rampant plutocracy which clearly threatens the democratic gains of the last 200 years. Who do you think whips up much of the voter anger against MPs? Why, the oligarch-owned press whose owners and their lapdogs rail against wasteful use of taxpayers' money without paying too much themselves – even as they seek to persuade us that plutocracy is good for us all. Check out Priyamvada Gopal's excellent piece about the cult of the super-rich."

Michael White was a New Labour enthusiast who often facilitated them in the pages of the Guardian but a thing can be true even if the freshly awakened White says it is true.

Listen to the lively discussion on Madam Miaow's Culture Lounge Resonance FM radio programme about the Super Rich with Aditya Chakrabortty and Kate Belgrave for more on the self-indulgence of our masters.

We should keep our eyes on the Super Rich and watch out for the smoke and mirrors used to divert our attention from the all-out frenzied thieving of everything that was publicly owned. After criminal activities and staggering incompetence by A4E, Serco, G4S; aggressive tax avoidance strategies employed by some of our biggest companies; the emergence of forced free labour and zero-hours contracts; the explosion in food banks, how can any intelligent person with any ethics, integrity and basic fellow humanity, continue to champion the upward suck of our assets, wellbeing, our culture and our planet?

Stay awake. Happy new year.

Aditya Chakrabortty's Guardian article on how champagne-swilling councils are selling off our housing to developers.

John Kampfner on the history of the super rich.

Overwhelming China: Philip Dodd on the roots of sinophobia, BBC R4

I just appeared on BBC Radio 4's Overwhelming China, presented by Philip Dodd and produced by Simon Hollis of Brook Lapping.

What a wonderful intelligent take-down of the all-pervasive sinophobia for a change. It's like a grown-up walked into a playground full of preening bullies.

Programme contributors included Daniel York, Ben Chu, Dr Ann Witchard, Paul French, Martin Jacques and Will Hutton.

Philip Dodd explores China's continued haunting of British intellectual and cultural life.

He traces current anxieties about global economic takeover back through the political sinophobia of the Cold War period to earlier, pulp fantasies of Yellow Peril, Limehouse Chinatown and the 'discovery' of the enemy within.

The British media report daily on China's economic clout, its ability to buy up land and businesses here (from yacht makers to the Lloyds Building), its willingness to mount cyber attacks on our commercial enterprises, and the rise of viruses such as bird flu coming from China. If Britain feels besieged by China, perhaps this should come as no surprise. What is more surprising is that the current panic attack about China is just the latest episode of a century long concern.

This programme looks back at earlier moments when Britain's sinophobia was rampant. In the '50s and 60s, there were worries about China's political clout from the Korean War to the insurgent counter culture of the 60s that some believed was Maoist influenced. This was the time when Sean Connery's James Bond was facing the 'Chinese' Dr No, dressed up in Mao gear. The programme also goes back further, to the turn of the 20th century, when the Yellow Peril was at its height, with the fear that the 'yellow race' would overwhelm us physically by sheer numbers  — the time of Fu Manchu.

In 1904, the arch anti-imperialist JA Hobson wrote that he feared China would economically undercut prices and undermine our living standards. If China is haunting our dreams now, it has been so for a very long time.

For me, Top Three fails on the sinophobia naughty step are:

Julia Lovell diminishes Britain's role in the Opium Wars in her book.

Freudian sinophobia alive and (not) well in Niall Ferguson: "Lock up your daughters".

A blind eye turned to sinophobia in the Blind Banker episode of Sherlock on BBC TV.

With a (dis)honourable mention for "national treasure" Clare Balding who, as far as I am aware, has never apologised for unfairly accusing 16-year old swimmer Ye Shiwen of cheating when she won her gold medal in the London Olympics last year.

Why we need to look at the Super Rich: BBC's Britain on the Fiddle is a disgrace

LISTEN TO MADAM MIAOW'S CULTURE LOUNGE "THE SUPER RICH" ON RESONANCE FM

You'd suspect all that talk about the BBC being left-biased is a crock designed to take our eyes off what the corporation is doing in service to the Tory mindset.

Their new series, "Britain on the Fiddle", sticks it to the poor again. Their blurb implies that we lose £20bn per year to benefit cheats. (It's actually £1bn while £16bn goes unclaimed.)

It's a national disgrace - £20 billion stolen from the state in 2012 by fraudsters. Richard Bilton goes on the front line with investigators chasing a woman who won £95,000 in a game show but did not stop claiming benefits.

The disgrace is that this is more smoke and mirrors taking our eye off who's wreaking havoc with the economy. Only this month, the Royal Mail was sold to private interests at a loss of an estimated £1.6 BILLION while the banks advising the government received not only a £17mn fee, but sold the shares they bought at the knock-down price for a profit of £29mn.

Vodaphone, Boots, Amazon, Ideos, Starbucks all escape paying proper tax while people already on the breadline are charged more than £60 per moth for a measly extra bedroom. Building more homes might be a more civilised solution to the housing crisis.

And pressure on companies to pay a living wage to their workers would do wonders to get people off the dole ... if only the government, whose job it is to create jobs, would do their job instead of blaming desperate people for not finding jobs that don't exist because the government isn't doing its job. Big jobs all round.

Join me for Madam Miaow's Culture Lounge this Tuesday 5th November when Aditya Chakrabortty and Kate Belgrave will be looking at the Super Rich. With Charles Shaar Murray.

Madam Miaow's Culture Lounge
The Super-rich
Resonance FM
5.30-6.30pm, Tuesday 5th November 2013
Listen live
or
listen afterwards online.

Above: Tax the Rich: an animated fairy tale narrated by Ed Asner, produced by the California Teachers Association and recommeded by the Ripped Off Britons blog.

Aditya Chakrabortty's Guardian article on how champagne-swilling councils are selling off our housing to developers.

John Kampfner on the history of the super rich.

Thatcher dies, Judy Garland banned: BBC asks Wizard for brain, courage and heart

Flying monkeys force Wizard of Oz to ban "Ding Dong, the Witch is Dead". Munchkins furious and appeal to Glenda the White Witch to intercede.

Judy Garland banned, the Lollipop Guild crushed. Rainbow privatised and handed over to the chaps in the Emerald City.

It would take a heart of stone not to laugh at the right in general and the Daily Mail in particular, with their foaming at the mouth over the widespread lack of respect for Baroness Margaret Thatcher on her demise, as rebel Munchkins respond with raucous celebrations rather than a frenzy of forelock tugging.

Yes, I know that Thatcherism lives on but her spawn have left us so few opportunities to feel happy, that it would be a shame to waste this one.

We're crashing into the limits of free speech as the BBC bans all but 5 seconds of Ding Dong, the Witch is Dead on their Radio 1 Chart Show this weekend. An innocuuous piece of material has become subversive through the meaning its listeners give to it, not what it actually is. Suck on that, Tom Stoppard!

It's the greatest bit of recontextualisation since Stanley Kubrick's "Singin' in the Rain" in A Clockwork Orange.

Double and triple standards all round as Thatcher's funeral is mostly paid out of the public purse instead of being put out to tender to the lowest bidder — funny how it's always socialism for them and capitalism for us. And, even though the market has propelled Ding Dong into the charts, the state has decreed that we can't hear it on the the radio. 'Cause we have, like, you know, freedom of expression in this country ... unless they don't like what it is that's being said.

So three cheers for Edgar Yipsel Harburg, the leftist who wrote the lyrics for The Wizard of Oz. Let's see the Mail string up THAT name with his own piano wire.

Let us show the respect due at her funeral. There should be no violence on Wednesday. Just line the route and sing the Thatcher Death Song.

Here's my poem for the occasion.

Margaret Thatcher Died at the Ritz
8th April 2013

Margaret Thatcher died at the Ritz.
It fits. Her blitz on the poor,
national assets thrust into the mitts
of corporate bandits.
Wealth trickled-down like a horse shits
undigested grain for birds that flit
round what it is its rear end emits.
Compassion deficit, dried out tits,
the country in bits, run by greedy gits.
Her fans omit the price
of crimes her class commit.
Her legacy is the pits.
(And she closed them as well.)

Thatcher's blue touchpaper stayed alight
til the nation was run by her acolytes;
she took a look round at pauperised Brits,
said, "My work here is done," and called it quits.

Madam Mao's Golden Oldies: Anna on the Chinese model operas, BBC R4

MADAM MAO'S GOLDEN OLDIES
BBC Radio 4 11:30am, Tuesday 17th July 2012
Presented and co-written by Anna Chen
Produced by Mukti Jain Campion for Culture Wise

In Madam Mao's Golden Oldies, I revisit the Chinese Cultural Revolution Model Operas that I first heard as a child in the 1960s and 70s and discover how they are, somewhat surprisingly, enjoying a new lease of life.

Growing up as a London-born red-nappy kid with Beatles and Bowie as my soundtrack, I was occasionally dragged by my parents to the Chinese legation in Portland Place (it had lost its official embassy status due to the cold war ruckus) for screenings of the latest movie spectacular to emerge from the arts commissar, Chariman Mao's wife, Jiang Qing. These were the Yangbanxi, the Eight Model Operas; films with titles such as The Red Detachment of Women and Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy.

These state-sponsored works combined opera and ballet with simple plots about brave peasants uniting to defeat evil landlords, Japanese invaders and other enemies of the revolution. Heroes looked like heroes with rouged faces, kohl-lined eyes and great hair, while villains were easily identified by their sneaky demeanor and bad porn moustaches.

My Hollywood sensibility found these crude melodramas puzzling and somewhat turgid but then they weren't made for (relatively) pampered East End kids like me: they were made for the peasants and workers who had rarely if ever been represented in their own culture.

Within living memory, mass starvation, imperialist conquest and the horrors of the Japanese invasion had devastated the nation. Barely twenty years into its communist revolution, the population was struggling to get back onto its feet.

Madam Mao not only banned the traditional Beijing opera and their stories about emperors and princesses, but also cast out decadent western music and movies as being a corrupting influence on the masses. Quelle surprise when it later transpired that the former actress was fond of indulging her tastes in the privacy of her own screening room. But Jiang Qing was canny enough to harness the emotive power of these works with the help of the Chinese cultural intelligentsia who hadn't fallen out of favour.

In the programme, a variety of people who were intimately involved in the model operas recount their experience. Among them, Anchee Min, author of Red Azalea, had been plucked from working in the fields because she was used to "carrying 300 pounds of manure". Jingdong Cai is now conductor at Stanford but learnt his trade in Madam Mao's army of young musicians

Madam Mao's favourite films? The Sound of Music and Jane Eyre. No, not the classic Orson Welles and Joan Fontaine version, but the crappy George C Scott remake. Now, what does that tell you about arbiters of taste?

MADAM MAO'S GOLDEN OLDIES
BBC Radio 4 11:30am, Tuesday 17th July 2012
Presented and co-written by Anna Chen
Produced by Mukti Jain Campion for Culture Wise
Available for seven days after broadcast on iPlayer

Before I say "enough of me", if you are around, I'm giving a talk at the China In Britain event on Wednesday 18th July at Westminster Uni, Regent St, with poetry, music and everythang. 4.45pm. Free but you have to book.
E: anne@translatingchina.info

And keep an eye open for my upcoming collection of poetry, REACHING FOR MY GNU, out as an ebook on Aaaargh! Press very soon.

Working mother scapegoated on Newsnight while bankers rifle world finances

Hopefully we've all seen the BBC Newsnight clip (above) and signed the petition demanding an apology for serious misrepresentation of Shanene Thorpe, portraying her as a benefit scrounger.

What started off innocently enough as an investigation into "what it's like being a working mum struggling to pay rent and housing costs" turned into an interrogation with political editor Allegra Stratton as chief inquisitor and Shanene as one of the irresponsible unemployed who should be living with her child in her mother's two-bed flat.

Shanene is, in fact, a working mother who pays taxes and can't make enough from her job at Tower Hamlets Council to house herself and her children. Like many others, she is dependent on the state to support her landlord – there being a decided lack of public housing in these here parts – but you don't see many of them put through the wringer.

The questions which should have been asked: where is the social housing and where are the decent liveable wages?

Allegra Stratton has been a reporter I've generally trusted, so it's difficult to know whether the final cut of the piece is the work of an editor with an agenda or simply that of a wealthy woman sufficiently privileged to lack any notion of what it's like to have to struggle to make ends meet.

However, there's a bigger issue here than a journalist exploiting and humiliating a young woman: in the current economic climate, the media is simply serving as a shill for the ruling classes when they act like this While the bankers run riot, stealing everything that isn't nailed down, have we noticed an upsurge in demonising the very people who are being made to pay?

Owen Jones's book Chavs makes us all aware of what malicious forces exactly we are invoking when we hurl that "c" word around. But the upholders of the status quo are shapeshifters, mutating and changing tack, coming at the working class from different angles, undermining our understanding of how the world works and turning us into rats in a sack. Because, while we're fighting each other, our eyes are off the culprits who got us into this mess and continue to wreck lives.

Former Newsnight reporter Greg Palast is, thankfully, not in the same mould. Rather than kiss up and kick down, Palast takes on the powerful and puts them under the scrutiny that Allegra reserves for young women with no social or economic power.

In his new book, Vultures' Picnic, we see the pattern take hold across the world. In countries from Brazil and Ecuador to Greece, the World Trade Organisation acts as the battering ram for deregulation of the banks, smashing up economies and privatising state assets. The World Bank makes demands on the beleaguered governments to impose brutal budget cuts and policies on their own people such as raising the price of cooking-oil in Ecuador thirty-fold.

The women in Ecuador who protested on the streets, banging their cooking pots, were quickly silenced (although the story of how their government broke ranks with other underling nations and fought back successfully is a fascinating section in Palast's book). The Greeks are blamed for what damage the banks wrought, not the rich who didn't pay their taxes; the British working classes are bashed for daring to have decent pensions and public sector wages. It is all the victims' fault.

And it blinds us to what's happening in the highest echelons. Palast cites economist Joe Stiglitz as seeing "despots turning World Bank privatization programmes into bribery free-for-alls ('briberisation,' Stiglitz called it), cruel demands on nations begging for food (Ethiopia still bothers him), and the Bank's pathological desire to tear down finance regulations in nations that barely had finances."

They even anticipated the social unrest that would inevitably follow the rape of entire economies and prescribed methods to crush revolt. Stiglitz: 'We had a name for it: the IMF riot. ... They turn up the heat until, finally, the whole cauldron blows up."

Palast continues, "And we could see the squeeze, explosion, and crackdown repeated from Greece to Thailand."

According to this year's Sunday Times Rich List, the top 1,000 in Britain are worth over £400 BILLION and their profits have risen since 2009, so the tired old mantra that there's not enough cash in the kitty simply won't not do. In fact, it's just plain old-fashioned lying.

Shanene finds herself collateral damage in the lie-spinning. But, like Ecuador and Brazil, she's fighting back and deserves all our warmest respect and support.

Like the song goes: It's the rich what gets the pleasure, it's the poor what gets the blame.

Follow Shanene on Twitter.