There's a few options missing there. I want one for: "He tried to make a joke about 'the BBC has to be balanced', by giving two views that were balanced either side of the line of 'I don't actually know or care about the real issues so I'm just going to (a) enjoy the unintended benefits to people like myself / (b) condemn these people for disrupting my cosy priveleged life... and severly over-egged the pudding on the latter one, probably because he's utterly insulated from how genuinely scared and up-against-the-wire the people he's talking about are right now. But on the other side, the unions are clearly milking it for all its worth, and certain sectors of the press are playing along by only quoting the latter half of what he said."

Basically, there are times when it's OK to be a walking parody of the archetypal insular priveleged and bigotted git... and a period of genuine austerity and social unrest when such gits are actually at the helm is not one of them. Especially not by referencing specific detail of a method of violent repression that is *actually being practiced* in some parts of the world for protests not so very different from the strikes here.