Open letter to Stephen Nolan: can I have your job?

Dealing with different opinions - Nolan style

Hi Steve,


I was quite disappointed that you blocked me on Twitter, this week. Yes I was rather harsh in my criticisms but then I wasn’t abusive, and I surely can’t have said anything you haven’t heard before. After all, you are a talk show host on the BBC, no less. Truth be told, I envy you so much that I want your job.

You have it so much better than most of the world. Take the amount of people-juggling the rest of us have to do, for example. I’m a teacher in a private school, I have to walk a tightrope between expectant parents, management, students and the way that I actually think I should do my job. I swing too far in any direction, I have to answer to someone.  But you? You are not constrained by such petty, plebeian worries. You only have to answer to one party, and answer in the simplest terms possible. Nowhere was this more evident than those controversial couple of days on your radio show last week. Your behavior, your incessant pious judgments of your callers - you know, those people that actually pay the BBC licence fee - was utterly staggering. The was self-evident from the deluge of complainants that called you in response.

In almost any other industry or media company, you’d be hauled before management with a demand to explain how you managed to insult and anger so many customers in one arrogant swoop. Instead, you swatted away the indignant callers requesting you apologise to the elderly man you so righteously questioned on his moral right to have a view on migrants and flippantly told them to complain to the BBC instead of calling you, the person responsible. When you told one caller: “Complain to the BBC rather than calling me.”, the translation was clear to the world: “Go ***** yourself instead of calling me”.

Why take that approach? Simple, you know that as long as you are talking the right political line for the BBC, you will never, ever be punished or forced to apologise for your treatment of dissent. You’re as safe as Fort Knox in your job, and you know it. You degrade callers because you can.

Secondly, you don’t really need to do that much in your job. I know, people say teaching is not a real job either, but at the very least I need to have some idea of what I’m teaching and how I’m going to teach it each day, so there’s basic standards to follow. You on the other hand, apparently don’t actually need to explain your view or even to quiz the callers on theirs. All you need to do is talk about the headline of the day, let people call and then simply perform your own moral inquisition of their right to disagree with you.

On that “migrants” show, you asked one man: was he Christian? Did he consider himself a good Christian? Was he charitable in any way? Did he practise any form of charity? All that in response to the concerns  he voiced about the migrants inundating Europe, the topic he was actually invited to call in and share his feelings about. At one point you even claimed he said all migrants were paedophiles and terrorists when he actually said nothing of the sort. You didn’t actually address his or anyone’s concerns but then, why would you? You get paid anyhow. You’re Stephen Nolan, dammit! You’re big in Northern Ireland, I’m told.

Thirdly - and yeh, this is the no-brainer-  you’re on much more money than me. According to Jon Gaunt - who is in a position to have a good idea - you’re on the best part of three hundred grand a year, courtesy of the licence payers who call your show to be morally interrogated.  That’s the thought that crossed my mind when you asked another of those pesky: “I’m not sure we should let everyone in” type-callers the rather bizarre question: Are you sitting comfortably in your chair tonight?.

Well Stephen, I guess the same question isn’t necessary for you. Your chair is probably leather (or fake leather, I bet most BBC staff are PETA members) and replaced every year. But your odd line of debate was when I had my brainwave. Stephen, I have a halfway decent voice and face for radio myself, why don’t I take your job? No, seriously! Think about it: you could finally live that dream you put out on the airwaves last week. You could show the world how charitable you are by giving away your public-funded salary to anyone who shows up at our borders (no checks need, right?). You could show the fella from Swansea how Christian you are by letting the first lucky migrant into your home - I bet you have a bigger telly than me - at your own expense. And as for comfy chairs? I bet one of those fighting-age Syrians arriving on European shores is in need of a luxurious recliner right now.

Don’t worry Steve, I’ve got you covered. I’ll bring my own wooden stool and scrutinise the moral fibre of any cheeky Joe Public who “takes up the airwaves” while you’re out practising what you preach, and you know what? I’ll do it for half price. I’ll fleece licence-payers for the bargain sum of 150,000 per year.

Let me know what you think. You’ve gone a bit quiet lately. You blocked and ignored the Breitbart editor’s request for a debate with a neutral moderator and venue, and Gaunty says you went AWOL from your own show this week. Hey, maybe you beat me to that brainwave! But then you would, wouldn’t you? You always know best. That’s why you work for the BBC, where morality is checked at the door, and salaries on the way out.  Might there be room for one more in there?

That Boy in that Picture

goodreads.com

time.com

That image of the girl in Vietnam running from napalm still haunts the world today. It was one of the most cogent case of war’s horror being captured in a single frame. (Fewer people realise she has a book, however). As we ponder the newer generation of a snap that changed the world, can we consider if the father of the child that was tragically drowned could produce his own harrowing account of his life? Unlikely.

Abdullah Kurdi has suffered the greatest emotional pain a human can endure. It’s something I don’t know how or if I could cope with. Is there any way to discuss his loss without sounding hideously callous? We have to try, because the harrowing picture of the poor boy is transforming Europe and there is something not right.

Should anything happen to my own children, I think one of the first things I’d ask myself is: could I have stopped it? Kurdi could have. He was leaving Turkey, not Syria, where he’d lived for three years,  well away from war. He undertook a journey he surely knew was dangerous for reasons not entirely clear. At some point he claimed he wanted to go to England (not a nearer, safer country) to get his teeth fixed. This claim was later amplified to explain his teeth had been removed by torture. Why did he not mention this in the many interviews he sat? Surely something so terrible, so compelling a reason would be the first thing he tell the world? Instead it appeared later in an unsourced blog.


Why did his aunt lie? She claimed his appeal for asylum in Canada was rejected. In fact, it was never submitted, and she surely knew this. Again, this isn’t a small lapse of memory, it’s a deliberate attempt to mislead the world at a very crucial time over an incredibly emotive subject. Finally, was Abdullah Kurdi  a people smuggler as a reputable Australian newspaper has claimed?

These are exceptionally difficult queries to raise at a time when every European is competing with each other to show they have more compassion for young Aylan than the next person. As Brendon O'Neil says, it’s almost become a form of moral pornography. As such, it’s become the perfect political weapon for the left wing to push for more and more immigration. They were less (as in, non) vocal when Christian children were being beheaded in Iraq.

Are there genuine refugees, escaping from the mess that we created in Syria? Technically, no, not in England., A refugee seeks the nearest available safe haven. (Saudi Arabia have not taken migrants but have offered to build two hundred mosques in Germany).

Are there people who need and deserve our help? Yes , of course.  The true compassionate person would seek to help them, by avoiding the ISIS insurgents they have openly admitted to sending, by encouraging the separation of those who discard their passports, are taught to lie or who perhaps are men of a fighting age (57 percent), fleeing their country to enjoy the freedoms that our men of fighting age actually fought and died for.

Until we can reach some level of realism and pragmatism rather than seeking to indulge ourselves in cheap goodwill, we will only guarantee that further conflicts and a far wider spectrum of misery is guaranteed at some unspecified point in the future.

The image of Phan Thi Kim Phuc transformed the world, probably for the better. Twenty or thirty years from now, I’m not sure Abdullah Kurdi will view his own tragic loss, his circumstances or his (or his aunt’s) reactions as unavoidable. As a father, my heart goes out to him. As a rational person, I fear for the long term consequences of our despicable actions in Syria and the domino effect it has set in motion.