A few months ago, I received an email from someone with whom I shared an apartment 40 years ago when I was an exchange student in England.  "Are you the same Andrea Widburg who writes for American Thinker?"  Why, yes, I am.

It turns out that my friend did the same thing I did: she became a conservative with the passing years.  She cheered on Brexit and has been unhappy with England's totalitarian lockdown.

We've been corresponding regularly for months now, and she sends me fascinating grumbles about life in 21st-century Britain.  Not that she's a grumbly, negative person; it's just that she, like the rest of us, is a sane person living through insane times.

Today, though, my friend sounded a happy note:

I was going to share the wisdom of Robert Louis Stevenson with you, but I also wanted to tell you about one ray of light in the gloom and that is — we have a new radio and TV channel in the UK called GB News.

The TV channel had a few teething problems on its inaugural night, with the sound very much out of synch with the presenters' lip movements and so it ended up being a bit like Lina Lamont and Don Lockwood in Singin' in the Rain — "Yes, yes, yes!" "No, no, nooooo!"

However, quite satisfactorily, it's already got up the noses of the MSM and some woke companies because it's a conservative news channel. I am sorry I have to make the link an article from the BBC but GB News own website will ask you for your permission to read it, which is annoying.

The "up the noses" to which my friend refers is the fact that several woke companies have already pulled advertising from the channel — and Piers Morgan is not impressed:

Broadcaster Piers Morgan has attacked Ikea after it became one of a number of companies to withdraw advertising from newly launched news channel GB News.

The former Good Morning Britain anchor said the Swedish furniture makers were "pathetic virtue-signalling twerps" and that he would now be boycotting them.

Ikea said it had not knowingly booked slots on GB News, saying it was not in line with its "humanistic values".

Andrew Neil, GB News' chairman, issued his own response to the decision.

"Ikea has decided to boycott GB News because of our alleged values," he wrote on Twitter.

"Here are Ikea's values - a French CEO who is a criminal with a two year suspended jail sentence for spying on staff."

[snip]

Octopus Energy and cider firm Kopparberg are among the other brands that have withdrawn advertising since GB News' launch on Sunday.

[snip]

The Open University and Ovo Energy also said they were pausing advertising, which they said had been placed by a media partnership without their knowledge.

So what is it about a new channel that twisted the knickers of all these companies?  The same article explains:

GB News has vowed to fight cancel culture and reflect voices not heard in the media.

But it has faced criticism from campaigners such as the group Stop Funding Hate, who say its launch brings highly partisan Fox News–style programming to the UK.

Neil, the BBC's former political presenter, has dismissed the Fox News comparisons as "nonsense".

As chairman and a presenter, he has promised to challenge the "echo chamber" of the "metropolitan" news.

In an opening monologue to viewers on Sunday night, Neil said GB News would aim to "puncture the pomposity of our elites in politics, business, media and academia and expose their growing promotion of cancel culture for the threat to free speech and democracy that it is".

What's incredibly funny is how the BBC article describes "cancel culture."  It's not real, you see.  Instead, it's "an idea generally promoted by right-leaning commentators."  These obviously biased people say people on the left "are seeking to suppress free expression by permanently shaming and ostracising individuals deemed to have transgressed."  You can tell that the problem is actually on the right because "woke culture" is a good thing, at least as the BBC defines it: it's "a call for an increased alertness to social justice."  It's only those unfeeling right-wingers who "feel [it] has strayed into stifling political correctness."

The manifest bias in the BBC's writing, which renders it incapable of honest reporting, explains exactly why it's a great thing that Britain finally has even a mild version of an alternative medium.  No wonder my friend is celebrating.

Meanwhile, that group mentioned above, "Stop Funding Hate," is engaged in the hate-filled activity of trying to stop companies from advertising on GB, thereby strangling it:

The group has begun compiling a list of brands advertising on the fledgling channel - urging its 120,000 followers on Twitter to exert pressure on them on social media.

May I strongly suggest that our British readers fight back by boycotting any company that refuses to advertise on GB?  I know that, here in America, I'm jettisoning my plan to buy some new sheets from Ikea.  My search for affordable, good-quality sheets that are not made in China will continue.

For now, everyone should take comfort from the fact that 336,000 people tuned in to see GB News's launch, more than watched either the BBC or Sky News.  May its audience continue to grow.

Image: GB News's first broadcast.  YouTube screen grab.

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