What a choice to be presented with by our national broadcaster! Or any broadcaster, indeed, whether you fund them through gritted teeth or not. Helen Szamuely raises the question through her vivid first hand account of trying to get a eurosceptical word in edgewise.
(ps. at the moment I seem to be channelling the EURef blog in my posts here, which is probably because Helen and Richard have turned a portion of their considerable knowledge and forensic abilities towards such a juicy europhile turkey as Aunty Beeb. Long may they continue to do so.)
‘A conspiracy to keep an important subject under wraps or a completely shambolic inefficiency, unprofessionalism and ignorance?’
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“It’s the space on the EM Spectrum that’s for sale, the format of broadcasts that use it is another matter altogether. There will be great demand for the analog air space, believe me.”
“For radio possibly, not for TV…I could be wrong though.
theghostofredken ”
Whether you’re wrong about the radio spectrum , I wouldn’t know , but you certainly are wrong about the analogue TV frequencies.The reason the government are pushing for an early end to analogue broadcasting is so they can sell them off – they expect to raise significant sums. This is of importance to a government who are spending money like water + know they will be very unpopular when taxes go up yet again -they are expecting another windfall ‘3G style’ to partially get them off the hook.
Just a post against Sky News. Anyone who comes here knows of my opinion of the BBC, it’s not in question. In recent times I feel that Sky News has been getting a free pass. My opinion is that its coverage of the American election was shaky, its coverage of Iraq has been more and more BBC-like and its coverage of Bush’s inauguration was abysmal – I saw it; the main commentary came from Mark Seddon (well known lefty and Editor of Labour’s ‘Tribune’ Magazine) and Sydney Blumenthal (ex advisor to Clinton and well known Democrat) yet in neither case did Sky state who they were. Over time it has gone downhill, indisputably. The final straw for me happened tonight with Sky showing a car bombing in Baghdad. According to Sky it was prime evidence for the chaos/disaster/calamity that is Iraq today. Of course Sky showed the standard one-camera, 5 second snippet and it’s difficult to argue against what they showed, although I had an odd feeling in the old 34 year old bones about this story.
… cont’d
After all, Sky’s camera was there to record the actual exploson, which is odd …
Well I happened upon Instapundit, who linked to this:
http://obsidianorder.blogspot.com/2005/01/very-special-effect.html
and an explanation for Sky’s revelation is clear … it was staged. Either by the media or by terrorists in cahoots with the media. In any case, it seems that Sky has been a party to a fraud.
The telegraph reports that the Burns panel reviewing the regulation structure for the BBC recommends abolition of the Board of Governors and more stringent arrangements to ensure it sticks to its Charter requirements :
http://telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/01/29/nbbc29.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/01/29/ixhome.html
OT –
This from the BBC News website. Apparently Margaret Gilmore (she’s up there with Barbara Plett in the objectivity stakes) thinks we cannot rely on the autobiography as evidence. That’s a perfectly valid view. So is the opposite. She’s a BBC reporter. She’s not paid to give us her highly tendentious views – she’s paid to report on what has happened. What has happened is the US Government has released documentary evidence backing up claims Abassi was an Al Queda operative.
The Tories once again are asleep they should seize on this and lambast the Government for ever taking this non-Briton back.
(…continued)
(…continued)
This the quote from teh BBC website:
The documents also included the handwritten autobiography of Mr Abbasi, with a note explaining that he wanted to get his side of the story on the record.
It ranges from his childhood in Croydon to his time in Afghanistan.
The autobiography details Mr Abbasi’s anguish, low self-esteem and that he felt people walked over him and treated him like dirt.
Of his time in Afghanistan, Mr Abbasi draws a picture of how a jihad group works, writes about weapons training and firing a Kalashnikov, and targeting and destroying an enemy vehicle.
But the autobiography cannot be relied upon as accurate and could not be used in a British court as evidence, said the BBC’s Margaret Gilmore.
The BBC Chairman makes some sensible criticisms of the manner in which the BBC designs its news services :
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1455186,00.html
It strikes me that maybe the motivations of the far left, and the jihadis are not too disimilar?
Not sure if it was intentional or not but the last posting was not from me – someone signed off as David Field but that wasn’t me.
David Field,
Sorry that was me! How did that happen?
OT
Is anyone else extremely annoyed with those ‘Carbon Trust’ adverts?
Re Sky. It certainly has gone down hill rapidly.Apparently they have a new ‘boss’ , a woman I think , don’t know her name.One of her first acts was to drop ‘Littlejohn’ , which was a breath of fresh air.The general coverage has become much more PC + BBC like ,and is much the worse for it.Odd behaviour for a channel that was the ‘news channel of the year’ for at least the last 2 years.
Andrew –
I am (a) annoyed if they are ineffective and (b) not annoyed if they are effective.
Global warming is not a leftie myth*. It is happening and we have to deal with it by reducing carbon emissions – quick. Whether these ads. will help is perhaps more questionable.
The most interesting suggestion I’ve seen recently is that we could pump the carbon gases from our power stations through pipelines to the depleted oil and gas fields in the North Sea. I think this is probably the way forward combined with hybrid engines in cars.
* There were swarms of gnats in my garden today – in the middle of January!
David, the debate isn’t over whether global warming is happening, the debate is whether it’s down to humans and I don’t believe it is. The climate changes of its own accord, we’re just coming out of a mini ice age (fact) and therefore (suprise, suprise) temperatures are rising. Early middle ages Kent was covered in vineyards for example, our climate changes all the time in the long run.
I read in an issue of the daily Telegraph from last week that a report from a meteorological institute in the US stated that the burning of hydrocarbons may have averted a new ice age. Obviously there are many caveats present – who funded the report etc. – but there are at least as many in the case for restrictions of hydrocarbon consumption. As a contributor succinctly put it on another thread recently – the Earth’s climate was perfectly stable until Bush came along and refused to sign the Kyoto Accord.
Andrew
Spot on. Yes, the temperatures in some parts of the world are rising, but the earth’s climate is in constant flux. In fact in certain regions temperatures are falling. Glaciers in New Zealand are expanding and the Antarctic ice sheet is growing. Do you remember that hole in the sky where the ozone layer was? There is no longer a hole; it has closed up. I’m 34, I recall the dire predictions of an ice age in the 80s. Twenty years later ‘experts’ tell me the opposite is true. Its my opinion based on some fact that the global warming based catastrophe is a monumental fraud and politically motivated. Kyoto is not an environmental treaty but a political measure. The Gramscians have hit on a very persuasive way to cut the industrially advanced West down and are pushing it as far as they can. As redken said, it’s bol and locks.
Amen, Pete. You hit the nail right on the head. My brother was just recently telling me that scientists were saying that the holes in the ozone layer is earth’s way of getting rid of pollutants on it’s own and then closes back up. The earth has been through so much over all the years it’s existed. No way is our very existance going to kill the planet. Have any of you seen the movie The Day After Tomorrow? It’s a load of crap. You can read between the lines and see the political motives behind it. And as far as all these natural disasters we keep having, well, they’ve been happening for many many years. It’s just that so many years ago we didn’t have the technology we have today to track every single cloud rotation, earth tremor, etc.
I’m in Georgia and we’ve just had an ice storm. I’m stranded and can’t go anywhere. Temperatures won’t get above freezing for a while here. How’s that for Global Warming?