A Place to Stand

I have received this from Mr Kohli which is phrased in terms perhaps more restrained than I have used:

hi there. Just came across your blog. Thought you might want to correct a couple of factual inaccuracies.

"Looking up wikipedia on him I see that he started his career at the BBC on their "diversity graduate production trainee scheme" where he produced the comedy Meet the Magoons which I will admit to never having heard of but the critics raved "woefully unfunny" "once was enough", "your sides will be safe from harm" which classes it as alternative."

The training course I attended at the BBC was in fact The Graduate Training Course. It was NOT a diversity training course. The other six graduate trainees were white in terms of their ethnic origin. 1500 people applied for 6 places. I have never attended a diversity training course.

Meet the Magoons was produced for Ch4 some seven years after I had left the employ of the BBC. Your quotes while accurate are selective. There were plenty of positive crits, even from AA Gill and Nancy Banks Smith. The series rated more highly than Peep Show.

"once again representing the typical Scot will be London cook/alternative comedian/non-political columnist/diversity graduate Hardeep Singh Kohli, for the 2nd time."

I do live in London and was forced to come here because there was so little work in Scotland. The issue is about the centralisation of the media in London and you are quite right to rail against that. More media power needs to be decentralised then maybe some of us can come home. I am not an alternative comedian. Never have been. I am not a stand up comedian either. I have written comedy but have never been paid to perform stand up comedy in public. by extension therefore i cannot be an alternative comedian. unless the alternative is never having been one. I also have never been described as a political columnist by anyone other than you. I wrote a column and sometimes write about m politics, but I have no training or qual;ification in politcal journalism and therefore have never been so described. I am simply a columnist.

And i have appeared on Question Time on three occasions.

I look forward to your corrections. I am reassured by your reference to there not being any personal antagonism harboured against me. I realise you are carrying out a valuable public service for which you receive no fee. this is why i am so keen that you carry fact rather than fiction in your blog. I await your reply

BW

HsK

I did indeed rely on Wikipedia for your career details & having previously complained about Wikipedia's wholesale lies about Srebrnica, Milosevic & co am perfectly willing to accept that you know the facts infinitely better than they do. I note also the Wikipedia entry no longer says these things. I therefore also accept that the BBC programme, whatever it was, was not an official diversity graduate one.

On my main point, that you are not a representative Scot, which is what the BBC presented you as, but a representative of those who control the media who can be trusted to say what they want while being portrayed as a representative Scot I'm afraid I cannot change my mind. That you do not claim to be a political writer, though there is a regular column in SoS & a number of Guardian articles, makes it even more statistically improbable that you would be chosen as a representative of Scotland on a major political programme 3 rather than 2 times (& I first ran across you writing on an article in the Guardian whom they said was weiting as a representative of Scots, about devolution & independence, just before the earlier QT episode). From memory you were introduced on QT as an alternative comedian but I grant I haven't seen that used since.

My problem is not just that media control is concentrated in London but the broader point that it is concentrated in the hands of people who will censor any fact & tell any lie to promote state power (which is not quite the same as party power). That real alternative views are completely excluded & people like you used to provide the illusion of diversity. That such facts as the Dragodan Massacre (as bad as My Lai) or even the dissection of 1,300 teenagers while still alive for their organs (as bad as any act of Hitler's) by our "police" are wholly censored by media so keen to give you space. It may be hypocritical but if, next time you are on QT, you accuse Mr Dimblebey & all the politicians present of being personally complicit in these acts of genocide I would be happy to consider you a representative Scot. However I suspect, like Professor Bellamy, telling the truth would mean the end of your media career.

I very much appreciate your comment about me providing a valuable public service - having myself been banned from Guardian & C4 discussion groups I am quite certain there are a number of people there & at the BBC & MSM generally who do not share this appreciation. I appreciate your corrections since The BBC generally do not respond when errors of fact are pointed out (or obviously correct them). Indeed the only time they did so was to ask for evidence of the Dragodan Massacre which they had censored & when I did so their communication ceased.

I am also happy to confirm that I bear no personal ill will to you. Indeed I have said worse, on another blog, about recent QT guest Monty Don "as somebody who can be relied on to say the right duckspeak - He duly obliged by being one of the 4 to say that freedom of speech was less important than stopping Geert Wilders getting into the country & by saying that "99%" of scientists support the global warming lie." (in fact no warming alarmist document bears nearly as many signatures as the 31,000 scientists who signed the Oregon Petition saying CO2 rise is a good thing - this has gone unreported by the whores running the BBC). Though this was not, I fear as bad as Mr Devil's Kitchen had already said of him.