The horror: BBC hounded for inviting unvaccinated onto Question Time

Once again, it is those who are screaming ‘shhhhh’ that are the loudest.

Accusations of BBC bias always provide the unshakable proof that we live in a politically isolated and balkanised chapter in the country’s history. To the left, the BBC is a right-wing propaganda machine which directed a wave of negative press towards Jeremy Corbyn, with the BBC’s Political Editor, Laura Kuenssberg, once being described as ‘an unofficial spokesperson’ for the Tory Government. To the right, it is just another captured institution – a haven of strangling political correctness, discriminatory identity hiring, complete with one-sided partisan coverage of the world’s news.

Now the Beeb has garnered the anger of The Regime itself by daring to invite ‘the unjabbed’ onto its Question Time panel. The host of the show, Fiona Bruce (a presenter so impartial not even her own family can guess her political views), has called for unvaccinated members of the public to appear on one of the episodes, which will be filmed on the 3rd February in London, to gather their points of view and ‘explore some of the issues’.

How thoughtless. How dangerous. How blasphemous. The social media torches and pitchforks were quickly lit and sharpened, and descended on the BBC’s Twitter post which formally invited the lepers of today to apply. Mob outrage from pixelated social media armies is to be expected - and if you’re a fan of over-the-top and unfounded backlash, encouraged - yet this criticism of Question Time further unveils the unbridled fanaticism of pro-vaccine dogma and the sheer paranoia aimed at anyone who doesn’t inoculate themselves into this new-age secular faith.

The BBC has been hounded for threatening the ‘safety’ of the audience, even though vaccines do little to prevent the spread of the disease (one need only wonder why fully jabbed Gibraltar had to cancel its official Christmas celebrations). In turn, others seemed to believe that The Science™ is already settled, simultaneously dehumanising the unvaccinated by branding them guilty of moral crimes or being crackpots who hide under their unwashed covers all day believing in whacky conspiracy theories.

Once again, it is those who are screaming ‘shhhhh’ that are the loudest. It is not this mythical anti-vax serpent whispering into the ear of avid Question Time fan Eve that is sowing mischief, disorder, and (here’s an Orwellian term for you) ‘exaggerated statements’, but the mad crowd reprimanding the BBC for trying to reach out to ‘the other side’.

I feel sorry for the BBC in this day and age. It is either damned if it does, or damned if it doesn’t; as an official public service broadcaster trying to survive in an age of hyper-neoliberalism, everyone seems to thinks that the BBC must abide by every personal whim, however impossible this utopian dream is. But here, Question Time is pursuing the best course of action.

If the panel was unanimously jabbed, boosted, and dressed in hazmat suits, the BBC would (justifiably, if I might add) elicit the same wave of fury, albeit those from a different ideological stance, and however many masks you slap onto a host, guest, and audience, I doubt the vaccine fanatics would still be satisfied.

Recording a show in-person, in-doors, and without an ICU unit on stand-by next-door? You murderers!