Emily Maitlis, stop acting like a student with an ‘I-Heart Jeremy Corbyn’ badge – The Sun

ISN’T it about time that the BBC sacked the Newsnight presenter Emily Maitlis for her relentless, undisguised, vitriolic, left wing bias?

The woman doesn’t even pretend to be neutral any more.

Puffed up with her own self-importance, she spews out bile against the Government on pretty much a daily basis.

It is like listening to a slightly deranged sixth-form student with an­ I-Heart Jeremy badge and clothes smelling of patchouli oil.

On Tuesday night she opened the reliably awful programme with a diatribe against the Government.

This was over the Dominic Cummings affair.

Cummings had “broken the rules”, she said. No, he hadn’t.

“The country can see that and it’s shocked the Government cannot,” she added, before accusing the Prime Minister of “blind loyalty” to Cummings.

Then she added, for good measure, that the country had reacted with “fury, contempt and anguish”.

I suppose she thought she was speaking for the country with this tendentious, pompous bilge.

She was not. She was speaking for herself and those in her North London liberal bubble.

The BBC demands that its presenters remain neutral on political matters.

Obviously, they don’t. But at least they usually pretend to. Maitlis can’t even manage that. Anyway, the complaints flooded in to Auntie.

CROSSING THE LINE

If this was the first time she’d crossed the line then maybe we might be a little lenient. But it’s not. Far from it.

Last September, for example, she managed to force the BBC into that very rarest of things — a public apology, for her appalling behaviour and bias.

In an interview she conducted on the programme she was, the BBC concluded, “sneering and bullying”, she was “too persistent and bullying” and “failed to be even-handed”.

That was a landmark judgment. I have it framed on the wall of my downstairs khazi. Because the person she had been interviewing was ME.

I had turned up to do a debate about Brexit. I was met with a wall of vituperation and abuse that even embarrassed the bloke I was supposed to be debating with, an affable Remainer chap called Tom Baldwin.

The BBC warned Newsnight, its hopeless editor and Maitlis that such a breach of neutrality must not happen in the future.

It has happened again. So what are they going to do about it? The BBC has admitted Newsnight got it terribly wrong.

And will do nothing. Again.

BREACHING NEUTRALITY

Here’s the other thing. I was sacked by the BBC for breaching its code of neutrality. Rightly.

I had written an article about how much I hated fox hunting and fox hunters, right at the time the Government was planning to ban the cruel, obnoxious sport.

The BBC was right then. But at least I hadn’t broadcast those views on the BBC itself, or allowed them to influence the programme I edited, the Today programme. It was just stuff I wrote in a leftie newspaper.

Maitlis broadcasts her idiotic views on her programme!

The BBC has to be consistent about this or drop the pretence of neutrality altogether.

And for Emily — have some guts, woman.

You want a platform for your views? Go work for a radio station in the private sector, or get a newspaper column, if you can.

The BBC has, in the main, behaved well over Covid. But always with the exception of Newsnight.

Always with the exception of Maitlis.

My ears will be Covid

IF you remember, just before lockdown, it was rumoured that the Spice Girls might get back together.

There were gigs planned for next month.

“Christ help us,” we all thought. And then we all got down on our knees and thanked Covid for scuppering that idea.

Now, however, lockdown looks like it will be eased. Which means they might well fix some new dates. Yikes, etc.

I suppose we could tell them the latest scientific news. Singing, apparently, is really bad for spreading the virus everywhere.

Choirs and stuff have been banned in some countries. So we could try that line.

But then I suppose Sporty and Co might well reply: “You could hardly call what we do singing.”

A missed chance

DID you see those hacks questioning the Prime Minister’s adviser, Dominic Cummings on Monday?

One after another they all stepped up, wreathed in self-importance.

And all asked exactly the same question. Over and over again. And therefore got exactly the same response.

What the hell is the point of that?

Did they all think that they would be the only person to ask: “Why is it one law for you and one law for everyone else, Mr Cummings?”

Did they think they were dead clever coming up with that line?

Incredible. Thick as a plate of mince, some of us journos.

Lincs to the Danes

GLORY, glory. Denmark is to open its borders once again.

You can travel to the country if you can prove that you’re dating someone Danish.

In my case I think I’d choose one of the models Maja Krag or Terese Pagh Teglgaard – crazy names, crazy girls. I don’t know how I’d prove it to the Danish customs people.

Maybe just show them a photoshopped picture of me and Maja out on the town.

Anyway, that’s if you WANT to visit Denmark.

I went there once and was pretty underwhelmed. It was like a middle-class version of Lincolnshire.

I can't match Newton

SO what exactly have YOU accomplished during lockdown?

A few jigsaw puzzles and watched the entirety of Netflix?

Listen to this. In 1665 the Bubonic Plague struck London once again. Cambridge University was closed down.

And so the young Isaac Newton was forced to leave his studies and return home to Grantham, Lincs, under lockdown.

And during this spare time he invented the branch of mathematics known as calculus. And then he discovered the laws of gravity.

Oh, and formulated a theory of light which dominated science for the next century and beyond. All done under lockdown.

And what have I done? Put out the patio furniture and completed a giant jigsaw puzzle of my own face.

Depressing, innit?

Church is mean spirited

FUNNY, isn’t it, how most of the people screaming blue murder about Dominic Cummings were fervent anti-Brexiteers?

Cummings was the key architect of the Vote Leave campaign – and the Remoaners utterly loathe the bloke.

Among the Remoaners screaming their little heads off are a bunch of Church of England bishops.

These include Leeds Bishop “Nick” Baines, who has referred to the Prime Minister as a “liar” and a “bully”.

No wonder the Church of England’s attendances have collapsed over the past 20 years.

The Cof E is another institution that has lost its moral compass and is utterly out of step with the rest of the country.

Brutal bullies

THE Chinese government is bullying Hong Kong once again.

Thousands of armed police are on the streets, battling protesters.

The row is over a new law which makes it a criminal offence to take the p*** out of the Chinese national anthem.

Only a deeply insecure totalitarian state would create such a law.

Meanwhile, the Chinese President, Xi Jinping, has told his people to “prepare for war”.

I don’t know who against.

I think Xi has finally understood that the rest of the world is sick to the back teeth of his foul, bullying, communist dictatorship.

And once this Chinese pandemic is over we might be more inclined to stand up for ourselves.

Illegal immigrants

THE Home ­Secretary Priti Patel is determined to stop economic migrants flooding here from across the Channel.

She wants new powers to send boats back to France. Good for her.

Since the turn of the year more than 1,600 illegal immigrants have arrived on our shores from our neighbours.

Brexit Britain is an even more popular destination than it was before we left the EU.

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