Midsomer

There is no place on this earth like Midsomer where inumerable murders take place - on TV, that is. I am informed that it's not only very popular in this country but the world over; maybe the same as Dickens was popular in Russia some time back because the Russians thought that was how England was then in the 1900's, not, when Dickens was writing, in the 1800's.
Well, the series producer of Midsomer Murders has been naughty and said that he doesn't want black or Asian faces on the show because it would take it away from it its Englishness. He's quite right, it would. That is not to say that its Englishness is like what Englishness is like in reality. The Englishness of Midsomer Murders is the Englishness of a fictional idea of Enghland with its rolling green fields and its Constable skies and its Elgarian tone and its Miss Marpole-like daintiness.
But while the producer was right to point this out he worded the remark in such a way that it seemed racialist: he said that his series was the last bastion of Englishness by which he inferred, if not actually meant, that the England of his programmes was a fine place until the foreiners with black or dark faces came here.
He is, of course, on dangerous grounds because you can't, these days, make any remark that might, just might, hurt the feelings of a "new Englishman".
One is now almost frightened of speaking one's mind lest the politically correct come down on you like a ton of bricks for making a racialist remark when all you've said is something like "I saw a black man peeiing in the street". "Why did you say he was black?" "Because he was." "Would you have said it about a white man doing the same thing? "No, probably not." "Why not? Are white men superior to black men?" "No, I ... er I... didn't mean.... er to say... Please forgive me. Don't take me away to prison. Please." And so on.
Dyke who left the BBC a couple of years ago said that the BBC was too white. Now that is a racialist remark. He is saying that anyone who is black is better than a white person. Isn't he? Would you put a black violinist in a symphony orchestra to have a black face there if he wasn't much good on the violin? Dyke was saying you should.
Sorry to see John Nettles leaving the show since he's the only man I know who can speak without opening his mouth. Could get a new job as a ventriloquist I suppoe.