You couldn’t make it up, but BBC can

The British Bolshevik Cabal (BBC) is in the make-believe business, but what it makes is increasingly hard to believe.

Contrary to a belief widespread in conservative circles, I don’t think the BBC is consciously out to destroy our civilisation. However, I’m not sure how different its policies would be if it indeed pursued such an objective.

After our faux Tories won their landslide, persistent rumours made the rounds, speculating that the BBC was up for a rehaul, complete with a whole raft of reforms designed to wean it off its left-wing ideology. However, as Eastern European and Soviet communists found out, a rigid left-leaning structure can’t be reformed. It can only be demolished.

Since demolishing the BBC doesn’t seem to be on the agenda, it’s continuing to chart a course to a bright woke future. That this future is going to shine even brighter than our already dazzling woke present is evident from the reforms put in train at the Beeb.

Sorry, did I say it’s unreformable? My fault. What I meant was that structures like the BBC would resist any reforms aimed at making them less subversive. When it comes to the other kind, no such problems exist.

Lefties are masters of semantic larceny, wherein words are used in a meaning antonymous to their dictionary definition. One such word is ‘diversity’, which in woke cant means ‘uniformity’.

To support this observation, the BBC has issued a new diversity directive designed to make its staff uniformly brainwashed – the better they can then brainwash the public. Thus, effective immediately, 95 per cent are to complete ‘unconscious bias’ training, an initiative I find perplexing.

If the bias is unconscious, it’s so deep-seated that those hacks must be unaware of it. So first that bias must be extricated from the lower depths of their subconscious and brought up to the surface. “For nothing is secret that shall not be made manifest” seems to be the motto of this programme, although its authors can’t possibly know the provenance of this saying.

I wonder what the training will involve. Hypnosis? Electric shocks? Waterboarding? Perhaps Pavlov’s experiments on dogs, humanised to include word association, could serve as the model.

Electrodes could be attached to the sensitive parts of the employees’ anatomy, as they watch images flashing on the screen. If, for example, one such image is of Nelson Mandela, and the employee blurts out “banana”, he’ll receive a painful shock to his privates or, if he says “necklacing”, two shocks.

That way the bias will first become conscious and then, when the conditional reflex kicks in, expunged – or rather expertly concealed. Job done? Don’t be silly. We haven’t even started.

But before we go on, why just 95 per cent? Does this mean that five per cent of our cherished national institution will be allowed to remain racist, homophobic, transphobic, misogynist, Tory-voting global-warming deniers? A speedy reply is imperative: the public has the right to know.

The next part of the directive is even more permissive: a mere 80 per cent of Beebers will be required to declare their social class. I don’t know about them, but I’m confused.

One would think that all those people are broadly middle class, if such categories are defined in strictly economic terms. If defined in any other way, then those both below and above middle class should be instantly identifiable by their accents, clothes, manners and so on. And if they don’t bear such stigmata, then all class distinctions have been erased. In any case, a declaration of class seems redundant.

Or do they mean one’s class at birth? If so, that would be consistent with socialism. Its founders divided all people into ossified classes, correctly assuming that, under socialism, no upward mobility would be possible. Everybody would be a proletarian – completely, equally and irreversibly.

The BBC’s ideological ancestors in Soviet Russia solved the problem of class with an elegant simplicity that always marks greatness. They summarily shot anyone who a) came from an aristocratic or gentry family, b) had a university degree, c) didn’t have calluses on his hands, d) enunciated long words in refined accents, e) didn’t like the Bolsheviks.

Alas, this must remain a nostalgic memory for time has moved on. Very few Beebers have a noble pedigree, most have been to university (who hasn’t these days?), only the tennis or golf players among them can ever develop calluses, practically none speak in refined accents, although almost all misuse long words, and they all adore woke modernity.

Hence the BBC has its work cut out, and I’ll be curious to see how it’ll solve those problems. But, as Lenin said, there are no fortresses Bolsheviks can’t storm. Onwards and forwards, comrades.

Another new requirement is that 50 per cent of LGBT employees must come out of the closet. That’s another surprise. Does it mean that half of them are currently concealing their predilections even though such ‘lifestyles’ can only turbocharge a career?

Also, one would think that, for the T part of the acronym, any outing would be superfluous. If I were to undergo certain procedures to stop being Alexander and become Alexandra, you’d notice the metamorphosis without my explicit declaration to that effect.

Then of course there are a raft of measures aimed at making the BBC staff reflect the demographic makeup of the whole population. In addition to ensuring an even male and female split, the Corporation will launch a “staff census… that will for the first time capture non-binary or non-conforming identities”.

Anne Foster, BBC’s head of diversity and inclusion, said: “I am passionate about working to create a BBC that reflects the diversity of the UK and is somewhere people feel proud to work. Every aspect of our plans are shaped by extensive consultation with staff to ensure we can lay a strong foundation for a modern, transsexual BBC…” Oops, sorry, my lapsus manus. She actually said ‘transformed’, not ‘transsexual. Still, it’s good to see that Anne leads the way in mastering diversely universal grammar. 

The directive also calls for commitment to “identify and champion 100 diverse role models”. I’m secure in the knowledge that neither I nor any of my friends will be among those 100.

Come the revolution, we’ll probably be liquidated. For the time being we just know better than to apply for jobs at the British Bolshevik Corporation.