Sign Of The Times

Not all my Rust colleagues are reactionary old coots. However, besides raging against the dying of the light and chronicling our personal observations upon the passing of time – and without ‘doing a John Major’ by being erroneously nostalgic for periods of our youth when life just seemed ‘better’ but wasn’t –  we are allowed to complain about strange, inappropriate and ridiculous aspects of modern life.

My subject today, which has been covered previously on this website but I make no apology for returning to it, is the BBC – its arch political-correctness to the Nth degree and the heavy hand of female executives seeking to ‘advance the cause’.

Overnight, following my normal practice, I went to bed – got up in the wee hours for a period on the back of an enforced comfort break and being wide awake, then returned to bed and something like slumber.

Throughout all the above I was listening to – or perhaps that should read ‘had playing in the background’ – the programme Up All Night broadcasting on Radio Five Live.

It became exceeding irritating to this listener that – twice an hour, i.e. when the news and sports headlines were visited – that the sports bulletin’s top story was that England’s women had opening their campaign to qualify for the 2017 European Championships by beating the plainly hapless Estonia 8-0.

In the world of sport right now there are all sorts of momentous things happening.

For example, I watched an excellent episode of Panorama, the BBC’s current affairs investigative flagship, last evening at 8.30pm in which former Scottish international John Beattie covered the worrying increase in concussion and other brain injuries in rugby union, for example.

There are major issues bubbling along in track & field, soccer (inevitably), tennis, American Football and Formula One.

And yet Radio Five Live trivialises its entire output and listening public by artlessly promoting the sport of women’s football.

Sorry, ladies – who actually cares whether the England women’s football team have won a match or not?

Okay, it might perhaps qualify as a ‘nice to be aware of’ that we do have a women’s team, but if you did a proper in-depth survey of British womenhood I doubt you’d find more than 15% to 20% of them gave a row of beans whether there was one, never mind what the score in any of their games was.

Meanwhile, sports fans of both genders  (oh, and we mustn’t these days leave out references to transgender, transvestite and indeterminate individuals either)  who are deeply interested in real sporting issues and/or news are regularly spoon-fed irrelevances by the PC-correct brigade.

Give me strength (again) please …