BBC campaign – update and Sept demo

Jim Al-Khalili joins SELHuG Thought for the Day demo!

Next demo is Tuesday 11 September, back to the morning slot of 8-10am

Jim Al-Khalili joins SELHuG TFTD demo at Broadcasting House 14 Aug 2018

Guess who joined us at our August demo – Humanists UK Vice-President Professor Jim Al-Khalili OBE. His tweet says it all:

“Just left BBC Broadcasting House having recorded a Life Scientific for @BBCRadio4 and bumped into this bunch of lovely people campaigning for a humanist voice on #ThoughtForTheDay – about bloody time too.”

And he adds:

“And yeah, idea that a moral message on our morning radio can only be delivered by someone who believes in a divine creator is utterly insulting to millions of people. It really is time to change this.”

We rest our case.

This month we handed in letters, not just to James Purnell who oversees the BBC’s ‘Religion & Ethics’ programming, but to Director-General Tony Hall and Today editor Sarah Sands too. You can read the letter here.

Although people writing in support of the SELHuG campaign to James Purnell have got a standard response back (which you can read here), we have not received any response to our campaign letters. The BBC must think that any reply will add publicity to our cause. Yet the issues we raise are important to British society and, given that the BBC continues to say that it will not open Thought for the Day to the non-religious or reset its perspective of ethics from ‘religious’ to the more inclusive category of ‘beliefs’, it is reasonable to remind the BBC that this issue is not going away by standing quietly outside Broadcasting House holding banners. Dear BBC, please respond to us.

We are back to the morning slot for our next demo – always on the second Tuesday of the month – on Tuesday 11 September from 8am to 10am. Full details here, please do join us if you can.