The Website of the BBC Young Pioneers

The Song of the Pioneers

The people’s flag is brightest red - it helps us earn our daily bread
Though skinflints mock and Tories jeer - the licence fee’s not really dear
The licence fee! The licence fee!
It pays the bills for you and me!
From single mums in Bethnal Green - for expense accounts and limousines

If they don’t pay the licence fee - it’s jail and chuck away the key
For posh school fees and winter sports - we need to add a few more naughts
Our pensions are inflation free - all paid for by the licence fee
The licence fee! The licence fee!
Don’t take away our licence fee!
A hundred and thirty odd quid a year - will keep the red flag flying here!
-


Sunday 3 February 2008

A couple more NULAB Spin Doctors - from your favourite broadcaster, of course.

It's like Michael Caine in Zulu.

As soon as you think you've got 'em nailed down - another wave come over the hill!

Today - two top Beeboids who leapt enthusiastically onto the New Labour bandwagon, but sadly came unstuck.




Martin Sixsmith - BBC Foreign Correspondent 1980 - 1997



Martin Sixsmith joined the BBC in 1980 and worked as a a foreign correspondent in Brussels, Geneva, Moscow and Washington.

Following the 1997 election he left the BBC to work for the Labour government as Director of Communications.

He described his enthusiasm for his new job, when he later told the Independent :- "It was May 1997, it was a new start after 18 years of Tory misrule.....".

He was later Press Secretary to Labour Ministers Harriet Harman and Alistair Darling.

After a brief period in the private sector, he returned to the government in 2001 as Director of Communications for the Department of Transport but left after an acrimonious dispute over ethical issues. He said - "Over the 10 years since 1997 there has been this chipping away at the confidence of the civil service, and I don't think it's the impartial, honest organisation it used to be....."

He is now once more a regular broadcaster for the BBC.








Joy Johnson - BBC Political News Editor 1992 - 1995


Joy Johnson was a BBC political journalist and became Political News Editor in 1992 at the Millbank centre.

Polly Toynbee said of her "...feeding the many bulletins' limitless appetite for soundbites - 20 seconds and not a nanosecond more. It's a tough skill and she was the best".


In 1995 she was recruited by Gordon Brown to join New Labour as Campaigns Director, responsible for winning Labour's 80 target seats.


She fell victim to Blair/Brown tribal warfare and left acrimoniously in 1996.
She is now chief spin doctor for "Red Ken" Livingstone at the GLA.







Keep watching this space for many more to come and, by the way, many thanks to those of you who've nominated your own Socialist Heroes - especially those within the bowels of the beast at the BBC.