How's About That Then?

                                      Talk about hiding in plain sight!

Even those familiar with the BBC’s twisted morality were stunned.

The leaked £10m investigation into Jimmy Savile’s four decade career of paedophilia, sexual assault and rape at the BBC finds that absolutely nobody was responsible. Apparently no manager up to and including the Director-General himself could have done anything to stop this monster pervert stalking the corridors of the BBC. In the words of Dame Janet Smith who wrote the report, “I do not think that the BBC can be criticized for failing to uncover Savile’s sexual deviancy.”

Just think about how stunning that is. Decades and decades of the worst sort of abuse was tolerated and even enabled. A mammoth inquiry took more than 3 years and painstakingly interviewed hundreds. And then the result of all that effort is leaked. Nobody in charge can be held responsible despite the report’s evidence that just about everybody at the BBC knew what was going on. In short the report’s conclusion is a £10m version of the standard policeman’s rebuff “Nothing to see here. Move on!”  

Just imagine what the BBC’s own journalists would make of such a story if the abuser was Willliam Hague and the organization was the Conservative Party? At the very least they would be pushing for the abolition of the Conservative Party and probably of the very concept of conservatism itself. Somehow I don’t think they’ll be taking such an uncompromising line with themselves when the report is officially released.

Dame Janet’s investigation revealed 45 victims ─ 3 just nine years old ─ including 4 rapes. That means if we accept the usual rule of thumb applied in such cases (not least by the BBC) that just 10% of abuse and rape victims come forward, at least 10 times that number suffered at this man’s hands. Savile attacked “in the corridors, the canteens, the staircases and dressing rooms of every BBC premises”. Knowledge of what Savile was up to was so widespread that jokes about it were doing the rounds. Even I with no connection whatsoever to the BBC heard the necrophilia rumours back in the mid-80s. From the report we hear that senior bosses were told of Savile’s activities but failed to act. The only real concern they felt was about the danger to the reputation of the BBC.

At this point it’s worth remembering that central to the identity of the BBC and the wider liberal elite is the belief that they are more moral and caring than the rest of us. Only they really care about the poor, the unemployed, women, and ethnic minorities, etc, etc…. That’s why liberals first resort to criticism is to accuse their opponent of racism, sexism or some other hate crime. But the reality is that they only care about generalities and nothing about individuals. Faced with endless evidence of Savile’s perverted molesting of children, scrub that, faced with young girls in terrible distress (and at least one suicide) not a single BBC boss ever felt compelled to do the right thing, the human thing. To take on Savile and end his evil reign.

That is liberal morality. Real abused women and young girls count as nothing against the larger picture. What were a few crying low rent rape victims against the glittering reputation of the BBC as the caring, and trustworthy beacon in the nation’s march to a socialized future? BBC managers may have been mildly uncomfortable about what Savile was doing, but they all thought and they always thought there were bigger issues at stake. Nobody in any position of trust ever did the right thing in decades.

As to whether the BBC has changed since what its current Director-General, Tony Hall, calls “a dark chapter”, consider the following:

Exhibit A is, of course, Dame Janet’s bloated excuse for an investigation that now ex-BBC man Meirion Jones has called “a whitewash”. Ten million pounds, that’s 68,729 licence fees, just to conceal their moral bankruptcy from the British people. If the BBC was really reformed they would organize a real inquiry and fire those responsible for the Savile outrage.

Why, you may wonder in a cynical mood, don’t the BBC just identify a couple of scapegoats near retirement and throw them to the wolves? Give the public some red meat to get their teeth into. They’ve no doubt considered this, but the insurmountable obstacle to such a visual and cathartic gesture is that they are all guilty. If they targeted just one or two BBC managers to take the wrap, those thus singled out would instantly point the finger at several other more senior bosses who had done the same. And those pointed out would drag in others. Where would it end? Before you know it the truth that they are all guilty and that the entire BBC is a fetid swamp of moral depravity would be out.

                 

That’s why they have spent £10m on selling the ridiculous proposition to the British people that absolutely nobody is responsible for Savile’s four decades long paedophile orgy on BBC premises.

              

But you shouldn’t run away with the idea that nobody at the BBC has been held accountable. In the wake of the scandal the BBC has forced out at least 4 employees. It turns out that there are limits to what even the BBC will tolerate. And that limit isn’t the practice of paedophilia on the premises but disloyalty to the cause. The BBC constructively dismissed those who actually had done the right thing and (very belatedly) exposed Savile. Meirion Jones and Liz Mackean who worked on a Newsnight piece which was blocked by their editor Peter Rippon, and Tom Giles and Peter Horrocks who made a Panorama episode on the same subject were left in no doubt that they had no future at the Beeb.

This is an even greater scandal in its way than the original Savile outrage. After all, the only defence of senior BBC bosses over their inaction on Savile was that they were unaware of his crimes. But if  that were true, how can they justify destroying the careers of those people who fought to bring those crimes to light?

Incidentally, the one senior BBC manager actually caught holding a smoking gun, Peter Rippon, the Newsnight editor who blocked the Savile expose, has not been fired. Instead as this Guardian article informs us, he was moved sideways and given an “exciting opportunity” to work on the BBC’s online archive.  

But if you still remain hopeful that lessons have been learned and that no Savile could be wandering BBC corridors unchallenged just consider the weird way the world’s premier news gathering operation covers up spectacular news that contradicts its ideology.

For years the BBC dismissed rumours of the existence of Muslim rape gangs as merely hateful far-right propaganda. Then when the truth of Rotherham came out they treated the scandal of the decade as of merely passing interest. First there was the sheer scale of the depravity. At least 1400 mainly underage girls were raped, tortured and intimidated. Then there was active complicity of hundreds of police and the local and central governments in the rape gang’s crimes. That should have been catnip to any self-respecting journalist. And then last but not least was the extreme reluctance of the authorities to prosecute those who allowed it to happen.  It should have been the story of the decade. It should have run and run. Fourteen hundred victims should have provided an inexhaustible supply of shocking detail. Instead it sank without trace in a couple of weeks. At least as far as the BBC was concerned.

             

Then earlier this month the entirely new and shocking phenomena of mass sexual assault appeared on Europe’s streets. What could be more newsworthy? It’s the story with everything: helpless pretty victims, lots of them, official suppression of the truth, implications of the Islamisation of society, and the strong likelihood that it marks a new wave of the future. But if you relied on the BBC you would have learned the opposite: that the perpetrators were unknown, that it was nothing new, that blaming it on Islam was both evil and stupid, etc, etc…

Savile’s four decade long paedophile rampage did not happen despite the best efforts of his liberal bosses. It happened because of their best efforts. They enabled him and protected him. The only hope for those very many girls he abused was that just one person in authority at the BBC would care more about them than his own career or the image of the BBC. The unintended revelation of Dame Janet’s report is that through all those decades of Savile’s paedophile crimes at every BBC location he worked at he never encountered a single BBC manager who had the moral fibre to stop him.

So as the BBC is fond of saying in a different context: the science is settled. They are all guilty. The BBC is rotten to the core. Dame Janet’s report may not say that, but it proves just that.

The one good thing to come out of the whole disgusting mess is the weapon it gives to all of us who hate the hypocrisy and lies of the BBC. Now whenever a BBC admirer or journalist gets too sanctimonious to bear, all you have to say is  “Jimmy Savile” and watch them squirm or better still, get angry.

Or maybe we could shorten it to simply “Jimmy” and display both palms below our chins with our face set in a frozen smile just like Savile did at his most creepily endearing.

 

I'll smile and smile and be a villain

It’ll drive them insane, with any luck.



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