even the bbc

are pushing

their own agenda

That bloody woman on the BBC – what’s her name, the one with the funny face, you know who I mean, the one who asks the questions – she doesn’t want to know the facts, she just wants to sensationalise it. Laura Kuenssberg, that’s her!… The media then, in this country, the media just whipped it up and had their own agenda… The big problem is that we’ve got in this country now, even with the BBC – and I even say the BBC, it’s like this Jeremy Vine show, I don’t know if you ever listen to that but just tune in at some point – this is the BBC and, when you listen to it, even the BBC are pushing their own agenda. You know, twenty years ago the BBC would just report; it would be on the ten o’clock news and it would just be news, but now it’s gone to almost a – what might you call it? – more of a magazine show. 

Tim is a white British man in his 50s. He lives in a market town in the East Midlands. Tim voted to leave the EU. interview November 2020.

AGAINST GROUPTHINK

Tessa: And but they [family members] are all Remainers and I was trying to explain to them how we felt that this, that this sporadic European Union was no good for the UK, it was stifling innovation, it was holding the country back, it was disadvantaging and all these things and [daughter in law], who is really quite woke.

Cathrine: what is “woke”, what does it mean?

Tessa: Woke is able to shut the mind to argument, not to want to engage in uncomfortable discourse against groupthink. I’ve got several copies of 1984 spread around the house…She’s educated me, given me a big education about how much planet damage meat does. So, I am eating much more expensive meat, less often. Because if the beef eats proper grass it’s not as bad. Oh, she’s been all through it, and she’s taught me, and so I’ve listened. And I’ve adapted my diet so we are eating much, much less meat.

Tessa is a woman in her mid 60s. She identifies as white middle class. She lives in the rural North East and voted to leave the EU.