"Frankly what Ofcom should do is shut it down"
Broadcaster Adam Boulton tells #Newsnight regulator Ofcom should shut down GB News for disrupting Britain's 'broadcast ecology'https://t.co/P0zxS1DNGF pic.twitter.com/BSE3CoPXbj
— BBC Newsnight (@BBCNewsnight) September 27, 2023
Adam Boulton is a journalist and broadcaster who is a regular panelist on TalkTV, a competitor to GB News.
Some background: GB News presenters Laurence Fox and Dan Wootton both are currently suspended while the station investigates some crass remarks from Fox about a female journalist for Joe News, Ava-Santina Evans. You can hear what he said on the clip embedded in this report by Metro magazine: Dan Wootton suspended and investigated by GB News over Laurence Fox’s misogynistic Ava Evans remarks.
Fox’s sexual comments about Evans (“Who’d want to shag that?”) and Wootton’s sniggering at them were oafish, but I do not see what Evans has to complain about given that she has made almost identical remarks herself:
So a woman is ok to say I’m not gonna shag you…
But when a man says it, it’s misogyny?I know Laurence Fox shouldn’t have said it on TV and should just apologise.
Sacking him for this childish beef is stupidity. pic.twitter.com/Z6g9BNIZlT
— 𝕍𝕠𝕚𝕔𝕖𝕆𝕗𝕋𝕙𝕖𝔽𝕠𝕣𝕘𝕠𝕥𝕥𝕖𝕟 🇬🇧 🇿🇼 (@GiftCee) September 27, 2023
But, as ever, it’s OK when the Left does it. Last week the Guardian ran a piece by Alexandra Topping called “Russell Brand and why the allegations took so long to surface”. She said, rather defensively I thought, that “multiple experts” had told her it was from fear of Brand suing for libel. OK, the experts do have a point about Britain’s libel laws, and that is why I am making absolutely no comment about the criminal accusations against him and ask you to do likewise, but fear of libel does not explain why Brand remained a star for years despite making on-air sexual remarks about a woman in a manner far worse than anything Laurence Fox has done.
The truly disgusting behaviour of Brand and Jonathan Ross towards Andrew Sachs and Georgina Baillie in 2008 did not stop the Guardian’s George Monbiot calling Brand one of his “heroes” in 2014 and saying “He’s the best thing that has happened to the left in years”.
Brand did not cease being on the left. Until these allegations came out on September 16th, he was due to contribute to book called “Poetry for the Many” edited by Jeremy Corbyn and the trade unionist Len McCluskey. But Brand’s views had ceased to be an asset to the left, certainly to the sort of left that flourishes in the current broadcast ecology.
Sarah Hoyt, frequent contributor to Instapundit, had what I think is a valid take on Russell Brand: “I’ll start taking allegations about Russell Brand seriously when you start taking Tara Reade’s allegations seriously…”
did not stop the Guardian’s George Monbiot calling Brand one of his “heroes” in 2014 and saying “He’s the best thing that has happened to the left in years”.
In due fairness, I don’t think Monbiot has been right about literally anything in the quarter-century-plus I’ve been familiar with his utterly predictable and mindless output.
So, it’s not like this is an outlier for him.
I disagree. Twice to my recollection, Monbiot has changed his mind on issues in a way which must have made him unpopular with his peers.
In an article dated 21st March 2011, he wrote,
The other one is even older, from 24th June 2003. Monbiot wrote,
You may say that two instances of changing his mind from wrong to right does little to tip the scales when set against the umpteen instances of Mr Monbiot being staunchly and resolutely wrong. And I’d agree. But two is more than zero.
Natalie,
Two being more than zero is simply a result of the coercive power-complex of white cis-gender non-queer patriachal capitalist monopolism.
You have simply failed to disassmble the casserole.
Now, if Suzy Izzard was in charge…
In the Islamic world, a lapsed Muslim is far worse than a person who never knew Islam. Progressivism is much the same.
Brand became a lapsed progressive at some point, and he became a ticking time bomb. You can jump ship and get away with it if you have a clean, unquestionable past. He had no such past. He should have expected this.
Maybe he did expect it, in which case his uttering of various conservative themes was a brave thing. But maybe, instead, he thought he had risen above such risk through his fame and money.
He hadn’t. Oops.
Monbiot wobbled slightly on Climate Change after the Climategate email leak but was soon firmly back on track.
The only good thing to come out of this is that the totalitarian aim of the “Progressive” establishment has been made obvious.
They lying mask of “we support a free society” “we are part of the free world” has been removed – and the snarling face of the totalitarians has been revealed.
Sadly this is not just about the United Kingdom – “liberals” (or whatever other lying name they hide behind) support tyranny, the utter crushing of liberty, in many Western countries – they are totalitarians, their claim to support Civil Liberties is a lie.
Adam Boulton and co (there are many of them – they are Legion) are the true face of the “international community” – and Mr Orwell explained their aim log ago, the aim of the modern “Progressive” establishment is stamp their boot down on a human face, for ever.
By the way – President Calvin Coolidge understood that the aim of “Progressives” was to destroy liberty long before Georg Orwell understood this, and Mr Coolidge understood the ECONOMIC basis of liberty, which Mr Orwell (being a socialist) did not understand.
Women, who to a (wo)man, take inordinate care of their appearance, are uniquely vulnerable on that score. To suggest that one might be a munter, who, another woman ( note, the nod to woke mania ) wouldn’t touch with a ten foot barge pole, is a crime more heinous than suggesting the Arch Bishop of Canterbury might, by his actions be thought well disposed to recidivist paedophiles, and not think so much of ‘the children’.
Anyway, like a lot of his ilk, Brand got fame and fortune without much talent, but it seems to have been conditional on ‘toeing the party line’, lately, thinking he’d grown his own organic following and managed his own independent finance sources, he perhaps, perhaps became a bit of a reactionary.
Not acceptable to his former paymasters, and he will be destroyed.
In the mid-1980s I attended college to study history. One of my fellow students was Angie Hunter. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anji_Hunter She gained a first class degree in history after wrangling with her tutors to get her grade increased. (Prior to this, only one other person that year got a first in history in that exam – yours truly.) She demonstrated early on a capacity for using sharp elbows to get her way.
Why do I mention this? At Brighton Polytechnic, she was very nice to me, and very leftwing. I kept in touch and she ended up, to my astonishment, in working in Downing Street for Tony Blair. I then read that she had left her husband to shack up with Adam Boulton. I’ve met him a few times.
Such people can be, and are, quite agreeable on a personal level. But their views are often absolutely terrible, a sort of “Islington, managerialis we-know-best” attitude that absolutely grinds my gears. Brexit, Net Zero, all of it. (Hunter, in her defence, loathed Corbyn and had no time for anti-semitism, and like some of a certain age, got less ideological as she got older.)
Boulton, ironically, works at a Sky News outfit largely created by Rupert Murdoch, a buccaneering entrepreneur whom fashionable opinion loves to hate. But he crushed the Fleet Street unions, broke the print media out of its fusty environment, and embraced the technologies changing the media today. Whatever is wrong with our culture cannot really be laid at his door, although he was a bloody fool in thinking that Blair was good for the UK.
A few days ago I was invited by a friend to listen to a debate at The Reform Club, on the subject of “does the BBC have a future?” What encouraged me was that, while all those on the panel were broadly singing the praises of the BBC, there was pushback from the audience. One gentleman made the point that the BBC’s sense of entitlement to its perpetual existence and sense of its own wonderfulness was what was so grating to the public.
Yes APL – when Mr Brand was “on the left” was “Progressive”, i.e. supported the total-state, he could say and do anything he liked sexually. Now Mr Brand has started to question the totalitarian narratives of the international establishment – they will try and destroy him.
The idea that the “Progressive” establishment give a damn about what Mr Brand may or may not have done sexually years ago (when he was on their side) is absurd – what they hate is that he has started to question their pro tyranny narratives.
Sky News is an example – anyone who thinks it is an alternative to the pro Covid lockdown, pro toxic injections, pro “Net Zero”. pro wild government spending (and on and on) BBC has never watched it – it does not matter that it is “privately owned” it follows the same Collectivist “international community” line as the BBC – on everything.
The international establishment is happy with there being a few “private companies”, vast corporations backed by fiat money and Credit Bubble finance, as long as these “private companies” back the same evils as the state – that is the core of “Private-Public Partnership” in “Stakeholder Capitalism”, i.e. the Corporate State dreamed of by Henri Saint-Simon long before Mussolini or Dr Klaus Schwab.
The ruthlessness of these people is extreme – for example when a BBC journalist was killed by the toxic injections the BBC were pushing, they did not care, the lady just became a non-person. Sky News is the same. Individual human life has no value to the “Progressive” establishment – only pushing Collectivism, only POWER, matters to them.
Mr Boulton could work with someone for years, be their “friend”, go to their home, meet their children, and so on – but if that person questioned any of the pro tyranny establishment narratives, Mr Boulton would join the pack of rabid dogs tearing them to pieces.
That is what the “Progressive” establishment are like – and most certainly not just in the United Kingdom.
Johnathan Peace – as you know, Mr Murdoch was not allowed editorial control at Sky News, so his creation of it counted for nothing. Not that Mr Murdoch was ever 100% reliable himself – as Glenn Beck pointed out years ago, Rupert Murdoch would always personally be nice – but if you offended the Deep State (sorry “Administrative State” – one must be polite and they prefer to be called the “Administrative State” rather than the “Deep State”) too much, a manager (not Mr Murdoch himself – some underling) would fire you – a “friend” who is only your friend when you are NOT in trouble, is not much of a friend.
And what is the point of getting rid of the despicable BBC if we are just left with “Ofcom approved” stations such as Sky News?
Mark Steyn did not make “sexist comments” – but Ofcom hit him anyway.
And the same people who pretend to be upset about Mr Fox using the word “shag” (even though the lady used the word “shag” first – and in relation to Mr Fox) could-not-care-less about the industrial scale rape of young girls in English cities and towns – indeed they declare it is “racist” and “Islamophobic” to complain about this cultural enrichment.
The Guardian claiming that they did not attack Mr Brand, over sexual matters, when he was on their side (the side of the total state – international tyranny) – because of “the libel laws” is a LIE.
I admit to cynicism here, but I suspect Murdoch was perhaps more concerned that Mr Blair was good for his business interests rather than what as good for the UK.
As others have said here, where was Adam Boulton (who is a father) when Brand and Jonathan Ross – a couple of guttersnipes – left that disgusting voicemail on the phone of Andrew Sachs?
Charles Moore, former Telegraph editor and biographer of Mrs Thatcher (a fantastic three-part series) refused to pay the BBC licence fee until Brand was fired. Moore was fined by magistrates for this. I suspect he was not alone in objecting to the BBC’s failure to fire Brand immediately.
But then of course the BBC is a part of our “national life”, and all that. Like the Church of England – an increasingly ridiculous organisation – it staggers on with its sense of entitlement, but decreasingly sure of a core mission to spread something approximating to culture. I was disappointed when the BBC 4 Channel – which had genuinely interesting documentaries – got canned, but then again, most of even that you can get on the Discovery Channel.
By the way, in my view today, Sky News is actually worse than the BBC, which just occasionally lets sensible views get an airing.
The GB News comments are no more offensive than anything Gary Lineker has ever said
Male incels are wicked and need to be marginalized even more.
Female incels are victims of The Patriarchy®.
It can’t be long now, before one of the Samizdata authors pens an article about the Canadian Parliament giving a German war veteran and an actual real life NAZI; Yaroslav Hunka, who served in the 14th Waffen Grenadier division of the SS, and by implication responsible for / implicated in, numerous atrocities against Jews, Hungarians and other Ukrainians, a standing ovation.
From the linked article, both the Speaker of the Canadian Commons and Trudeau ( for both their approvals would have been necessary to allow such a fellow into the Canadian Commons ) have decided to ignore this war criminal’s history. I must admit, I have some sympathy for Yaroslav, weeping as he did in the visitors gallery, this must have been the first time he’s been able to hold his head up in Public, and feel pride in his murderous past. On the other hand the grinning idiot Trudeau has attempted to build a ‘fire break’ between himself and the scandal by sacrificing the Speaker Rota.
By accident and largely through volume. Too many hours to fill with whatever fear and propaganda they pass off as “News”.
A bit like the old Soviet joke about Pravda and Izvestya:
Not sure what any article might add other than to observe Trudeau really is a twat.
The thing I find troubling about this story is not what the BBC did, I mean, big surprise, right? Rather it is what GB News did — genuflecting so easily for such a trivial reason. I am also really disappointed in Wootton’s groveling apology. I have liked a lot of Wootton’s work in the past so I find it surprising that he folded like a cheap pantsuit. Nonetheless, a guy’s gotta eat, right?
It is also worth pointing out that Wootton is gay, and so I doubt, under the best of circumstances, he’d shag that.
What I find shocking is the microscopic size of the “violation”. All Wootton did is give a rather uncomfortable smirk and nanoscopic laugh. Apparently it is not only our words that convict us for cancellation, but also our facial gestures and guttural noises. Though perhaps I am forgetting “silence is violence.” Except that I am not, since Wootton did immediately offer up the “other side” and say some nice things about the lady.
Moreover what the other guy said? Seriously, deserves the ruination of his life? He said he wouldn’t shag that? Presumably he isn’t allowed to say he would shag that, so what? Are we not allowed to talk about shagging at all? It is shocking how liberals seem to have turned into the most ardent of Puritans.
I suppose I can follow the logic of cancelling someone for saying something terrible, though I think it is a stupid reaction, but cancelling someone for not saying something, for smirking inappropriately, for offering an insufficient defense? It is ridiculous. And this is from the supposedly anti-woke GB News? Truly, the heavens are falling.
Fraser:
Russell Brand shags any woman with a pulse = rapist.
Laurence Fox declines to shag a left wing journalist who makes light of male suicide = misogynist.
It’s almost as if you can’t win, if you are not part of the the metropolitan left wing elite. Amazing.
For the record, Adam Boulton = a face you could never tire of punching.
If you want the very embodiment of the smug, North London left wing chattering class elite, it’s him.
Trudeau is a twat, we can agree on that. He has employed the organs of the state to supress peaceful dissent, given that he is content to employ the force of the state in the interests of big business and the W.E.F. ( Schwab claimed him as a WEF ‘young leader’), he is also a fascist.
So, it’s odd to see Zelensky a Jew, standing next to a fascist, and applauding a NAZI, who was a member of the SS and thus implicated in genocidal crimes against Jews, but also Hungarians and Poles during world war two.
Then there is the Speaker of the Commons, who lied to the house in his introduction speech, when he claimed Yaroslav Hunka ‘fought for Ukrainian independence against the Russians‘, of course as a fully paid up member of the Waffen SS, he did no such thing! Hunka fought to further the aims of NAZI state. So the Speaker of the Canadian Commons knowingly lied to the house.
The speaker managed to insult Canadian veterans who knew we [ the allies, including Canada ] were fighting the NAZI state on the side of the Russians.
Then, during the ovation for this elderly NAZI, who is very probably a murderer, Zelensky snaps off what can only be described as the nearest thing to a full blown NAZI salute (0:26 seconds), audacious to say the least!
There is so much to discuss, it’s a veritable gold mine of topics.
Actually the motivation for most UPA as well as Ukrainians who joined Waffen SS was indeed to eject Soviets (Russia) from Ukraine, which was also the German aim (obviously). Has the Nazis not pursued such psychopathic policies that alienated many within Ukraine, they would have been more widely supported by Ukrainians. Just as Finland was an Axis German ally because they too wished to eject the Soviets from Karelia.
History is messy, doubly so when major elements of the Ukrainian anti-Russian resistance were no less ghastly than the Nazis supporting them. But clearly their motivation was indeed the ejection of the Russians from Ukraine. Had the UPA not pursued mass murderous anti-Semitic ends themselves, I imagine Ukrainian anti-Soviets on the Axis side would be seen by posterity much like the Finns. That (some) modern Ukrainians choose to gloss over UPA anti-Semitism in WW2 and focus on their core mission of ejecting Russia from Ukraine is not hard to understand, particularly as modern Ukrainian sensibilities are dramatically different (hence Zelenskyy being elected & the presence of Ukrainian Jews within the Azov Brigade).
Apart from you claiming to have unique knowledge of the inner workings of a fascist’s mind, that’s pretty much, completely wrong.
If he was a Ukranian nationalist he’d have been more likely to have joined one of the OUN factions like the Banderites – followers of the fascist Stephan Bandera. The aim of that organisation was explicitly Ukrainian independence. Yes, they were happily working alongside the NAZIs settling their ethnic, racial and nationalistic scores.
The task of the SS was the extermination of residual resistance in conquered territories. That is, to pacify the population and prepare the territory for the expansion of the German Reich to the East, so called ‘Lebensraum’. There is no room for Ukrainian independence in that scenario.
Yaroslav Hunka didn’t join any faction of the OUN, he joined the SS. He was a fascist and a NAZI, very likely, a murderer – we’ll never know for sure because the British gave him asylum along with hundreds of other one time Waffen SS personnel, in the colonies, after the war.
That’s the sort of guy Zelensky saluted, and Trudeau applauded.
First you write:
Then you write:
Which is exactly what I said 😀
That was indeed the job of the Allgemeine SS. That’s ultimately why so many Ukrainians stopped supporting the Germans, once the Nazis foolishly made it clear “no, in fact we’re not all in this together against the Commies, you Slav Untermenschen”
However, the role of the Waffen SS later in the war (i.e. when they stared recruiting non-Germanic people) had a broadly conventional army role. You have but to look at the propaganda to see the messaging was not “we’re going to exterminate the Slavs” but rather “this is a crusade against Bolshevism” (often “Jewish Bolshevism” to play up to the prejudices of the era).
Safe to say the people who joined Ukrainian (and Albanian, Latvian, etc. etc.) Waffen SS units, the memo they got was not “fight the Bolsheviks & once we’re successful, you’re next”. It’s really not that hard to understand from our position of lofty hindsight. You don’t need to be a mind reader to figure that out.
They really should have been better briefed, but like I said, Trudeau is a twat & modern Ukrainian sensibilities are such it’s rather easy for them to airbrush out the anti-Semitism of the past. Clearly in the middle of a war of national survival, I’m sure Zelenskyy of all people grasps it’s not the best time to publicly ponder what once divided Ukrainians.
Azov does indeed have a radical Ukrainian nationalist agenda, but it’s quite an “inclusive” one these days rather than a confessional/ethno-slavic one. Hence the Muslim Tatars & Jewish Azov members wearing the historically unfortunate runic symbols that now just mean (to them) “let’s stick it to the Russians again”.
But not the point I was making, Yaroslav Hunka chose to join the SS and it was Yaroslav Hunka that Zelensky saluted, Yaroslav Hunka that Trudeau and Rota invited to, and applauded in, the Canadian Commons.
You claim that was just a mistake ( ‘they should have been better briefed’ ), a mistake anyone could have made. No, to get into the Commons as a guest, especially a guest of someone of the rank of Trudeau or Speaker Rota, you get vetted up the Wazoo. Your claim is just incredible. They knew Hunka was a NAZI, like you, they just didn’t care.
When Rota said Hunka, was ‘fighting the Russians’, that was in large part a lie**, the function of the SS was to make space ( an euphemism for exterminate the existing population ) in captured territories for Germans, Hunka wasn’t ‘fighting the Russians’, he was fighting unarmed Jews, Hungarians, and Poles.
There is a very good chance, that Rota knows Hunka, as he announced in his introduction that he, Rota was proud to say Hunka was from his Riding ( Constituency ).
It’s not credible that they didn’t know Hunka’s background.
** In order to have surrendered ( the 1st Galacian surrendered in Austria ) to the Western Allied forces, they’d have had to run pretty fast from the Russian Front. It’s unlikely Hunka encountered Russians while he was ethnically cleansing Jews, Hungarians, and Poles. But if he had, I’ve no doubt the NAZI would have treated them in exactly the same brutal manner the SS treated its otheer victims.
You greatly overestimate civil servants; some of the guest-related cockups in the Commons in Westminster are legendary.
I assume people are ignorant &/or stupid unless proven otherwise, but Rota & Trudeau are politicians, so if they did grasp what being in the 1st Galician Division actually indicated (i.e. that it was also known as the 14 Waffen SS Division), what did they think was going to happen?
I find it hard to believe someone sat Rota and Trudeau down and calmly said to them: “this bloke was quite literally a soldier in one of the ‘foreign’ divisions of Waffen SS. Are you sure saying nice things about someone who fought for the literal non-figurative German Nazis in World War 2 is a going to play well politically?”… whereupon Trudeau & Rota both said “Nah, it’ll be fine!”
I strongly suspect that conversation didn’t happen, because if it did, these people are far stupider & more politically inept than I thought.
As for the rest of your reply, I’ve already said what I think.
Probably false.
More likely, they stopped supporting Germans, because the Germans had gotten clobbered in the West by the Allies. And decimated in the East by the Russians. Supporting the Germans in those circumstances would have done the Ukrainian cause no good whatsoever. As it was, enough people survived the UPA, OUN, Banderites and other assorted fascists to hold a lot of grudges. Otherwise they were happy to roam around Hungary, Ukraine and Poland slaughtering random folk.
Yaroslav Hunka and his SS brigands demonstrated, once they realized the ‘game was up’ they ran through two ( three if you claim they were on the Russian front ) countries to get the opportunity to surrender to the Western allies.
Not so keen on summary death sentences, when their own necks are on the line.
But Zelensky saluted this man, Speaker Rota invited such a fellow into the Canadian Commons, and the ‘twat’ Trudeau, applauded him. By the way, the whole of the Canadian Commons gave him a standing ovation too, but that’s of a part with the orchestrated audiences prepared for Zelensky. You only have to compare the sitting in the UK Commons to hear Zelensky drone on – what ever other merits he may have, he is not a public orator, then compare that with Andrew Bridgen who would like to get some clarity about the vaccine injuries UK citizens have experienced.
Zelensky gets a packed house, Bridgen gets drummed out of the Tory party, but when he stands up to speak, every MP in the commons scuttles out like cockroaches when the light has been switched on.
Something is rotten in the State of Denmark.
As Mr Fox has pointed out – both women and homosexuals have used the word “shag” (including on television – and before the 2100 “watershed” whereas his own remarks were after the “watershed”) without being punished in any way.
The “outrage” is really nothing to do with the language that Mr Fox used – it is about hated of him personally and a general desire to crush “right wing” dissent.