From: word_chemist@hotmail.com   
      
   You might imagine, given the BBC is the biggest - possibly the only -   
   broadcaster of radio drama in England, that it would produce radio plays of   
   excellence or at least a certain standard recognisable as good drama:   
   imagination, energy, wit, honesty. You might also imagine that, given the   
   BBC is deeply committed to mulitculturalism-as-policy that any drama   
   concerned with race relations would be sharply observed and reflecting the   
   many nuances around this troubled subject.   
   Well, you'd be wrong.   
   'Ties' was the sort of race morality tale that is being produced wherever   
   public money is spent on drama. The only useful description of it that will   
   do is agit-prop. A sort of forty-minute bildungsroman as produced by Dave   
   Spart.   
    Yasser is a cheerful, hard-working Pakistani taxi driver in Birmingham with   
   a big family and kids. Dave is a demoralized second generation Irishman,   
   separated from his partner and child, on the bottle and pretty miserable.   
   Yasser picks Dave up and they realise they went to school together. They   
   become friendly and then one of Yasser's Pakistani friends is beaten by a   
   crowd of football fans, Dave among them - though he tries to stop the   
   attack. Dave and Yasser argue, Dave accepts that he's living a bad life,   
   turns his back on his brother Karl (who was in volved in the attack) and his   
   friends, denounces them as racists and resolves to makes amends with his   
   child and partner, who, he reveals, is Asian. He also says that Yasser is   
   now his brother.   
   So much for the plot. That was the McGuffin for a broadside of   
   multicultural, anti-white propaganda that beggared belief. The official   
   BBC/British Left line on race and immigration was put into the mouth of   
   Yasser at the earliest opportunity: 'Everyone in Britain comes from   
   somewhere else'.   
    This was swiftly followed by a general reduction of the white working class   
   to three things: booze, football and violence. The horribly unpersuasive   
   dialogue had Yasser inviting Dave to Pakistan to show him how wonderful it   
   was there. An honest dramatist at this point might have seen fit to   
   illustrate the 'argument' of the piece by having Dave (who, it is   
   insinuated, has been infected with white working class boorishness) say:   
   'Then why don't you live there?' This of course didn't occur. Many snide   
   swipes were given by the dramatist to Yasser, but none were given to Dave:   
   he was broken and penitent from the first. Yasser gave Dave advice on family   
   (it was funny: a Pakistani was allowed to hold forth a deeply conservative   
   view of life and family that would never be given to white male characters   
   in, say, The Archers), twits booze culture several more times and sagely   
   notes that there 'are two sides to the climbing frame'. He invites Dave   
   round for 'fish fingers and mash' and generally takes pity on the feckless   
   white male.   
    In a real drama of opposing ideas - and to have drama you need real   
   conflict - you might have expected the words 'Islam', 'suicide bomber',   
   'multiculturalism', 'Osama Bin Laden', '9/11', ' radical mullahs on   
   benefit', 'cultural differences' etc. But none of those words were   
   mentioned: the cards were stacked, as always.   
    At the climax, when Dave was contrite, Yasser launched into a diatribe   
   about how 'nobody ever made it easy for us'. Students of local govt and the   
   benefits and immigration system may beg to differ on that point.   
    Propaganda must have a target audience and I wondered who on earth this   
   piece of propaganda was aimed at. The average Radio Four listener will   
   either nod indulgently at the reiteration of familiar prejudices, or   
   recognise it for the ragbag of orthodox left-wing/PC tropes it is. The main   
   point is that an opportunity for real dialectic (and then real understaning)   
   has been missed.   
      
   You can listen to the play here:   
   http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/afternoonplay/pip/3xtbv/   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)