Does Giles Fraser have something on the producers of the Thought for the Day slot? What other explanation can there be for his ubiquity on BBC Radio 4? Again, apologies if you are reading this outside the UK and have no idea who Giles Fraser is. He is the trendy left-wing vicar who seems to predominate on the short religious slot at 7.50am on the BBC’s premier current affairs radio show. If it is not him it is usually John Bell of the Iona Community.
Indeed, TFTD has become so left-wing that I recently launched Thought for the Day Watch to campaign for the restoration of some balance (and possibly an outright ban.) Regrettably, there is already a split between campaigners seeking the reform of Thought for the Day and those wanting it scrapped.
Such splits are a distraction from the core work of the campaign. First, we must keep the focus on how dreadful Thought for the Day is and then work out what to replace it with after we have won concessions from the BBC. Goodness knows there is so much material. I keep saying that Thought for the Day has hit a new low and then the producers out do themselves. It happened again this morning.
Today, Giles Fraser tackled high taxation (he’s a big fan) and private property (not so much). If I followed him correctly, everything on earth belongs to God, but someone has to look after everything for him, which should be the government. The government owns everything. It’s just easier that way, he implied. Fraser did envisage some limited role for private property, but not much of one. Private property should only be allowed if it serves some greater common good, presumably defined by the government which owns everything. This is how Fraser fuses theology with far-left, high tax statism and student Marxism.
Incidentally, Fraser was on the Today programme on Tuesday too. This was clever of the Thought for the Day team. They had lulled the listener by getting Anne Atkins to do the main gig at 7.50am. Ostensibly, Anne is more conservative but one cannot discount the possibility that the Thought for the Day producers had booked her to discredit conservatism. Either way, it was bamboozling stuff. I had no idea what she was talking about.
Then, right after that – when this listener was still trying to work out what Atkins had been saying – they went straight bang into the next item. Incredibly, it was a discussion about wicked bankers featuring… Giles Fraser, who had been smuggled onto the proper Today programme. In this way, Fraser gets to give us his thought for the day even when he is not presenting Thought for the Day. They’re cunning, the Thought for the Day team. They must be stopped.
