Written by Geoffrey Bastin
We all need a good laugh from time to time and what better way to find it than on a Sunday evening on the BBC.
Now, I suspect already that you think I’m going to start on about the TV license but alas that poll tax contention is for another time. Like me you have probably been following the rather deep subplot of the Vigil drama. It’s got everything in it to satisfy all the Diversity Managers and more that for some time have ruled the BBC.
Even the storyline could have been set anywhere really but this time around it was a nuclear submarine that happens to have a forty-year-old protest area not more a than a mile from the Faslane Base at Gare Loch just off the Clyde and just up the road from Glasgow. That location has been there since the Polaris subs first carried our nuclear deterrent and has progressed through to the most recent Trident programmes over fifty years.
Now if you haven’t been watching the four episodes so far I suggest you stop reading as what I’m going to say could spoil it.
The plot is indeed complicated, as many like to say, and to imagine a suspicious death on a capital ship in British waters needs a police officer to investigate means the task can only fall to a woman. Now the Captain of the sub who happens to be a Commander and has three stripes on his epaulettes, who incidentally is a person of colour suddenly develops a fourth stripe after one episode and becomes a real captain. The police officer attempts to take over the boat and is advised to go and lie down whilst the body of the deceased is stored in a torpedo tube to keep it fresh.
Meanwhile back on land the police woman’s lady friend who is also a detective chases a Russian agent and brings him down with a tackle for which even Johnny Wilkinson would be proud. He is over six feet and 16 stone and she’s wafer-thin in high heels but hey this is BBC drama. So far, the best bit was the memorial service on board Vigil. All the off duty crew and captain on a stealthy submarine with millions of pounds of high tech to keep them silent, are heard blasting out “for those in peril on the sea” at the top of their voices. I loved it. Can’t wait to see if they can top that in the last two episodes.
Recently overheard in a BBC corridor: ‘What can we trash next’, one privileged BBC executive asked another privileged BBC executive (both highly paid you understand). ‘We haven’t trashed the Royal Navy for some time’. ‘Great, let’s do it. Lesbian Super Detective, Black Captain, Privileged White Officers, Racist anti-women other ranks. We can put in every alphabet group we like, that’ll keep the Race and Diversity people happy. If the Navy doesn’t cooperate it doesn’t matter we’ll make it up!’
Hence Vigil. And let’s keep all the bodies in a torpedo tube for freshness. Unbelievable.
With BBC drama you almost know the plot. There will be a catastrophe that is the fault of Donald Trump. We will suffer through not being in the EU. The situation will be saved by a gay Muslim asylum seeker who was just about to be deported thanks to a stupid white male who as it just happens used to be in UKIP but is now a Reform UK party supporter.
We must always remember that this is drama on a grand scale that makes us laugh and is the exact opposite of what we have had to endure for eighteen months from their news and propaganda department just next door.
Of course, it all comes at the high cost of that TV license but in the case of Vigil worth every penny.
We need a political reset. We need to be rid of the Conservative Party, Labour, Liberal Democrats, Green Party, and anybody connected with any of these self serving useless parties. We need a political party whose over riding principle is basic common sense, that works for the people, that believes in free speech and civil liberties, low taxation, personal responsibility, the abolition of entities like the BBC and the sovereign state outside the European Union. Please no mention of Reform UK being the answer, which is as bad as the rest under the present inept leadership.
Have you considered the SDP.. It’s unlikely you will find much to disagree with and it’s where Patrick O’Flynn went after leaving UKIP. He’s now their economics spokesman. I agree about Reform UK which has no members only supporters so is hardly a real political party in the true sense.
Geoffrey……….yes in the 1980’s I did. I voted for the real SDP several times until it decided to enter into a merger with the worse than useless Liberal Party, but the SDP of today nobody knows anything about unless one bothers to look at their website which I have. It is not high profile enough and the majority including me don’t know who the leader is and will never make an impression. At the local elections last May, their results were dire to say the least. As for Patrick 0’Flynn he was bland in UKIP, and I don’t suppose much has changed since. Political parties need to be led by people who have got a bit get up and go, drive and personal charisma. Now if the SDP or any alternative party for that matter appointed someone like Suzanne Evans as their leader, another old Ukipper, things may be a little different I feel. She was one of the best leaders UKIP never had, and if the members of that party had voted for her as I did when she stood for leader, I think things would have turned out a whole lot different than they have done.
Why do we need political parties? So that the extremely wealthy can control them through donations and loans and other means. Until MPs are funded by their constituents and fully accountable to their constituents this will not change. Only independent candidates are today electable, the rest are selected for (a) their controllability and (b) their ability to spout the party line ad tedium and convince the gullible what splendid chaps they are.
Hear hear. It’s alarming that the recall of Governor Gavin Newsom in California failed because Republicans didn’t go out to vote. In 2020 Trump received 6 million votes in California. Recall drew only 3 million. If people don’t think their vote will count they give up with the system. In France the regional elections had very low turn out for similar reason. Here we have just one Green MP yet we are being forced into Billy Bunter’s green agenda roadmap. Bring on your great political reset.
Oh but Ceri, many Republicans went to vote only to find that someone else had voted for them already….. more than likely for a Democrat. Surprise surprise. You will find this election is bent as a 9 bob note. Lets complain that the vote was bent, but the judges are bent too. So escalate it to the Supreme Court who are unable to do their job and decide if the bent election was performed in accordance with the law, as determined by the Democrats. Making judgement decisions we now find is not the responsibility of the Supreme Court… The ordinary Americans are stuck.
Don’t blame me. We caught up with all the back episodes of Not Going Out and then cancelled the standing order.
Free at last. Free at last! Great God Almighty, free at last!
JF
Congratulations and well done! I only hope that your example will be taken up by others. The Tories will never end the propaganda tax as it is regarded as being ‘too divisive’ thus better to play to the galleries by lambasting the BBC publicly whilst having no intention whatsoever of ending the licence fee.
Look not to the Tories to defund the BBC – look to thyself!