Was Radio 1 really making the right choice when it opted for Black Eyed Peas’ “Where is the Love?” as the backing music for a report on Arnie’s election to the California governorship, and potential future ambitions? Is the lyric “terrorists in the USA, the big CIA, the bloods and the crips and the KKK” really appropriate? Ignorance or bias, you decide…
Was Radio 1 really making the right choice?
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OT: In this report about Amnesty’s campaign for greater control over arms sales, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3176416.stm, their defense correspondent Paul Evans carefully singles out Bush as being “unlikely” to support the move; the article does admit that the UK, Russia and France are also large scale weapons suppliers but does not speculate on their willingness to restrain sales.
The French are notorious for their arms selling, and lest we forget the Chinese, selling their arms and ideology to the likes of Mugabe and many other African thugs.
Both Andrew Sullivan and Instapundit reported the discovery by Polish troops of four almost new French missiles in Iraq. The French Govt insisted that none could possibly have come from France for well over a decade. Interesting, in the light of what we know of Ch-Iraq.
As for the B.E.P’s, I’ve always thought that right-on DJ’s were the firm opponents of the right-of-centre, whatever they are doing, let alone when there’s an unpopular war sort-of-on.
Also OT: somewhat ambiguous (to say the least) wording here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/low/education/3177968.stm
The headline says “Anger over Letwin school ‘insult'” with the opening lines:
‘Shadow home secretary Oliver Letwin has declared he would “go out on the streets and beg” to avoid sending his children to an inner city comprehensive, a report says’
Sounds like a right nasty stuck-up Tory snob, right ? It’s only when we get to paragraph 3 that we see that far from talking about generic inner-city schools Letwin was talking about a *specific* school, which is indeed towards the Titanic end of the scale.
Of corse, this doesn’t matter so much on-line, but the broadcast bulletins have been pushng the same line: Orrible Ollie insults comprehensives, and here it is far more likely to mislead, unless (like me) you’re sufficiently sceptical to check the details on-line.
DunmbJon –
1) Letwin’s rejected school is in the top 100 “value-add” comprehensives, which admittedly makes him ignorant rather than your point wrong.
2) It is, however, unfair to single out the BBC here – almost every newspaper from the (Daily Mail-esque) Metro leftwards reported his speech in the same way.
More on the Letwin saga:
First item on the Friday’s Jeremy Vine Show covered similar ground, but the selection of guests left something to be desired. First up was the Head of the school concerned, which is fair enough, albeit he was not so much interviewed as provided with a publicly-funded soapbox. This was followed by a debate between (inevitably) Polly Toynbee and a bloke described as a ‘writer’ [James Digeman ?], followed by the sinisterly-titled Commissioner for London Schools, who gave us a further dose of unchallenged Edudrivel. Finally, there was the usual man-in-the-street type deal with a couple of callers: one who sends his child to a private school, and one who claimed to be a private tutor teaching students from private schools who he described as not-so-hotso.
Now, my problem with that is not only the numbers, 4-2, but the fact that the choice of speakers gave the impression of committed professionals vs ignorant moaners. Letwin might have been tied up, and Chris Woodhead may have been up a mountain, but surely the BBC could find some Tory MP, or some educationalist who was pro-vouchers ? Someone who could take on issues such as the actual value of ‘value-added’ scores ? If you didn’t know already, that program wouldn’t have told you that many well-informed people, deeply committed to education, are pro-choice.
John b,
Even though it’s true that the school adds value that does not necessarily make Letwin irrational or ignorant in not wanting to send his child there.
It’s one of those cruel facts that people are reluctant to speak about. The school might indeed be wonderful at getting immigrant children up to speed in their English – and yet still be very bad at helping a native speaker with, I presume, a fairly academic background to get lots of GCSEs and A Levels.
I haven’t seen this point made either in the BBC’s coverage or elsewhere.
Wo ist der “comments” for der Radio 1 post, bitte?