“Undignified”, “humiliating”, “belittled”—BAME experience at the BBC

A source at the BBC has leaked us this resignation letter that someone sent out to all employees. The experiences described herein stand in stark contrast to the commitments the BBC made towards its BAME staff.

Dear all,

As a woman of colour I already know what it’s like to live in a world of systemic sexism and racism. Being a freelancer at the BBC brought another layer of discrimination, culminating in the current neglect of freelancers during a global pandemic.

I don’t want to continue at the BBC in this undignified capacity; undignified because management has undermined mine and PAYE freelancer’s dignity. We feel our concerns over furlough, our livelihoods, our health and financial security, have not mattered. Hiding behind feigned sympathy for our plight and tossing us a few shifts – that could only be acquired through a humiliating process given the machiavellian antics of our scheduler – and knowing full well we were struggling to make ends meet is not how a caring employer behaves.

Having experienced the language services who did not offer their producers much better than a glorified translator’s role while also subjecting them to different social rules than the country they’re working and living in, I was hoping my time in the world newsroom would be more fulfilling.

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Exodus: Our Journey to Europe

n 2015, we gave cameras to some of the people who smuggled themselves into Europe, to record where no-one else can go. The result is a terrifying, intimate, epic portrait of the migration crisis.

All three episodes of Exodus: Our Journey to Europe are available on the BBC iPlayer here.

I, Claudius

I, Claudius is a 1976 BBC Television adaptation of Robert Graves’s I, Claudius and Claudius the God. Written by Jack Pulman, it proved one of the corporation’s most successful drama serials of all time.

It starred Derek Jacobi as Claudius, with Siân Phillips, Brian Blessed, George Baker, John Hurt and Patrick Stewart.

Graves’s I, Claudius is in the List Muse 100 Best Novels of All Time and the Modern Library’s 100 Best Novels.

For the DVDs try here in the UK and here in the USA.

Source: Wikipedia; For an episode guide see here. There’s a documentary on the series here and there’s a humourous tribute to the show by Sesame Street here.

1. A Touch of Murder

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For Omar Misharawi: Killed by Israeli Airstrikes on 11/14/12

BBC journalist Jihad Masharawi carries his son’s body at a Gaza hospital. (Associated Press)
BBC journalist Jihad Misharawi carries his son’s body at a Gaza hospital. (Associated Press)

Omar Misharawi (Jihad Misharawi, via Paul Danahar)
Omar Misharawi (Jihad Misharawi, via Paul Danahar)

by Shadab Zeest Hashmi

At death you measure
no more than our arms
When we rise
to blow a prayer into your charred lung
we find resplendent
butterflies
milling about — lapidary
punctuations of our time
together
(eleven months in all)

Horror turned honey
and lustrous
as buds of new fruit

Ya Shaheed
You witnessed

Orson Welles on McCarthyism, Hemingway, Bullfighting and much else

Michael Parkinson of the BBC interviews the great Orswon Welles (1974). (He speaks about Hemingway around 15:00)

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Paul Krugman vs. Austerity and its Supporters

Nobel laureate Paul Krugman takes down a fat cat Tory donor Jon Moulton and a Tory MP Andrea Leadsom on BBC Newsnight, comprehensively demolishing their arguments for austerity and cuts.

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