That is the maxim followed by whoever wrote this article. It prompted this post from Squander Two, who says:
The level of duty on diesel is a fact, not an opinion. It is published every year in the Budget, and the BBC report on it then. All they need do to get the facts of the matter is to check their own archives. But they don’t. Instead, they report the claims, the opinions, of two lobby groups, without then telling us whether those opinions are right or wrong. This isn’t a discussion about the nature of the soul or something. It’s a real, easily discoverable fact, but the BBC seem unable to tell us what it is.
I am taking a break from being enraged with the BBC today. I would like to feed the writer of this article a nut.
Verity: no, I am plain Rob. The other rob manfully changed his name to suit me, for which I salute him.
Richard Galpin – not Gilpin
Susan, I don’t know what you don’t like about Susan Statler. I think it sounds rather racy, although frankly, it might be better if you changed the Susan to Suzy. Suzy Statler – fashion editor or gossip columnist.
Personally, I quite like Verity Waldorf, as long as it refers to the hotel and not the towers or the salad. If I had to say, “Hello! I’m Verity Waldorf, of the salad Waldorfs,” it wouldn’t be much fun.
Rob – Grimer doesn’t seem to have posted since he had the name change operation.
Susan: “I also don’t get why you call me “Susan Statler.” Have no idea what’s that about, but assume it’s meant to be derogatory”
Not just a braggart, but a humourless one too! But no, I don’t intend to be derogratory – merely derisory. Click the link!
Susan, how do you know that Natalie, Andrew, Kerry and Ed aren’t just too polite to ask you and your chum to calm down a bit?
Good comment BB! Great example for the way-way-way-OT twitterers!
And, no, Rob – Sybil isn’t in the prediction game, unlike Hank Scorpio, to whom I presume you refer!
Sybil,
Shrinking violet is not any description that I would apply to Natalie. If she didn’t like me she’d tell me where to get off, like she does to lots of people here.
I see now that Statler and Waldorf are the names of the two old guys who comment from the balcony on the Muppets. I didn’t know that, but I like those two old guys so no problem with your “derisory” comparison.
As for me being a braggart — I see you still obviously don’t get my point about poverty in the US. Never mind, I guess it is beyond you.
Gotta go pick up the moppet. See ya later guys.
Rob
Sheesh, you have to be desperate to allow the human abbatoir known as the NHS to treat you. I have long experience from friends who both work in it and those who have been unfortunate enough to be treated (“ehem!”) by it. Avoid the NHS at all costs. Last year it killed 5-10,000 patients due to lack of hygiene (depending on which survey you believe.) Imagine enough BA aircraft dropping out of the sky to kill thousands, imagine enough trains crashing to kill thousands. The outdry would be long and loud, led by our favourite broadcaster. The more I hear about the non-existent health cover for the poor in the US the clearer it is how superior it is to our socialised system.
Sybil –
You’re a plain talker so you’ll appreciate me saying that I like to read what Susan and Verity have to say. They’re obviously intelligent, lucid and make a worthwile contribution. Your one, single post, by contrast, was boring and chippy. So it must be just you who’s bored by their ‘twittering’.
You’re a plain talker so you’ll appreciate me saying that I like to read what Susan and Verity have to say. They’re obviously intelligent, lucid and make a worthwile contribution.
I second that Pete :+:
Sybil it would be more constructive if you contributed to this forum, which presumably you otherwise enjoy.
Just a thought.
Here is the reply from the BBC regarding my complaint.
“I am so sorry. Seems I am Stooopid.
Here is the reply from my complaint (see above)
Dear Mr. White,
Thank you for your email.
The BBC World Service is funded by a Parliamentary grant-in-aid, administered by the Foreign and Commonwealth office of the British Government.
The majority of our funding comes from the licence payer in the UK, though some of our money (as with the World Service) comes from the Foreign Office. You may be interested in the link below:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/info/licencefee/
Regards
BBC News Website
http://news.bbc.co.uk/
”
Pissed off. Of to bed.
…but not quite yet….
Remember a couple of weeks ago I told you all that I had requested “UN Corruption” be a subject on (D)HYS?
Well… blow me.
Guess what has been chosen?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/talking_point/4265626.stm
…really of to bed now. If you never hear from me again I have died due to blood pressure.
Pete_London, Teddy Bear: Thank you for your feedback on my comments, but don’t assume that I’m new around here (even if my current nom-de-plume is) or that I haven’t contributed here before, okay. I’m just tired of seeing the comments facility here littered with waaaay-personal stuff that’s soooooooooooo-far off-topic and so distracting from the message of Biased BBC (the blog that is, rather than the comments). Sheesh, people who want that have plenty of other forums for their personal chit-chat.
A ridiculous piece on Newsnight about the violence in southern Thailand.
To nearly quote the writing on the wall in the Jack the Ripper case, it seems
The Muslims are
The men that
Will not
be Blamed
for nothing
The correspondent tries his best to avoid linking the Muslims to a “Separatist Movement” & he plays big allegations of police & state violence.
Buddhists, including monks, are being killed everyday, but as this article would have it
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/3955543.stm
Analysts say police corruption, drug running and theft by local criminal gangs have often been responsible for the violence.
Why would these “culprits” target Buddhist monks?
But at least the article, if not the Newsnight reporter Jonathan Head, suggests the Muslims might be in the frame after all.
But there is an increasing suspicion that Islamic separatists – perhaps allied to international militant groups such as Jemaah Islamiah – are behind the attacks.
Sybil,
Are you Hannah by chance?
dan
That Newsnight piece on Islamic terror in Thailand was one notch above a whitewash. A complete waste of time. That Islamic terrorism is widespread in the south of the country is a fact, yet the BBC can do barely more than interview muslims cleared of terror charges in court and allude to police violence. As Jack said, the men that will not be blamed for nothing.
Pete_London and Teddy Bear, Thank you.
Sybil, one of the less than shrinking violet owners of this site cut me back the other day. I didn’t think it was justified, but this is a privately-owned website, not a court of appeal, so I accepted the reprimand with good grace.
However, attempts by you to decide levels of tolerance and to censor fellow commenters are over-aspirational to say the least.
Rob White, the utter arrogance, the refusal to address the point of the writer, the overweening loftiness of these sinecure-holders whose salaries and pensions depend on the industry of the wealth-creating sector is absolutely intolerable. This is obfuscation writ large and I hope within my lifetime we see this edifice razed to the ground and all of them scampering around clutching their worthless cvs looking for interviews with people they’ve insulted. May the day come soon. (My personal choice would be to have the edifice razed with them still inside smirkingly batting out emails to angry licence-payers, but this may be against their human rights.)
Hell no Susan! Hannah works for the dark side! She’d hardly have the best interests of Biased BBC at heart, would she?
Verity – I think you’re likely heading for another reprimand – enunciating a desire to raze buildings to the ground, complete with their occupants, is hardly rational, let alone good form.
Hell no Susan! Hannah works for the dark side! She’d hardly have the best interests of Biased BBC at heart, would she?
Well, I thought of that too, but the sheer mean-spiritedness of your attack on me was very Hannah-like.
My apologies.
Sybil, I suggest you remove the burqa, as you’re in the enlightened West. It gets in the way of clarity of not only vision, but thought.
Of Hannah, obviously from before my times, you write “she’d hardly have the best interests of Biased BBC at heart, would she?” And you do? To what effect? Trying to hiss commenters you don’t like off the site?
Heavens Susan – it seems I owe you an apology too – being as mean-spirited as Hannah is much, much, much meaner-spirited than I intended. I am suitably appaled with myself.
As for hissing people off the site, Verity, no, far from it. Speaking for myself, I’d just ask that people don’t use the Biased BBC comments facility as their personal web forum – there are hundreds of readers of this blog, yet a very small number of people seem to post most of the comments, a good deal of which aren’t even tenuously connected to the BBC.
Anyway, I have said my piece. TTFN.
I think Sybil used to post as Basil
Interesting guess Lurker, but no.
Great comment posted on the Anti BBC Bias Petition site from someone called Mike Hunt that I think you’ll all appreciate
Hey guys, I know the charter has that section about “Independent journalism” but I don’t think they were asking you to imitate the newspaper…….😆
A reminder to all that haven’t yet signed it to please do so and spread the word.
Teddy Bear writes > Great comment posted on the Anti Bias Petition site from someone called Mike Hunt< Suggest he changes his name. Imagine his secretary looking for him in in the office canteen - "Has anyone seen Mike Hunt?"
Sybil lurking in a burqa humbly, not to say prostratingly, pleads: “Speaking for myself, I’d just ask that people don’t use the Biased BBC comments facility as their personal web forum.”
By what right?
Would common courtesy do as justification for such a request, Verity dear?
“There are none so blind as those who put both the telescope and the microscope to the blind eye.
Frank P | 21.09.05 – 5:29 pm | # ”
Those such as Nelson?
Grimer
You enjoyed my mixed metaphor and historical allusion then? As an erudite commenter, you will perhaps recall that Horatio was on OUR side and this year we (or some of us anyway) celebrate the bicentenary of his famous suicide mission and victory. Be warned, not all those ‘doing a Nelson’ and ‘cocking a deaf ‘un’ ARE on ‘our’ side.
For those who want further proof of Gramscian tactics and strategies, read Melanie P’s excellent and latest round up of the state of our universities (aka talent spotting and recruiting centres for BBC news and current affairs mechanics):
http://www.melaniephillips.com/articles/archives/001420.html
Sybil – I’ve had a look at quite a few blogs and the comments to the posts and it seems that discussion of personal issues is widespread.
Ain’t nothing you can do to prevent it.
Scroll.
All comments are ‘personal’ if signed (even by sobriquet) anonymous if not and spiteful if signed ‘Sybil’.
Can it be arranged for Sybil, Verity and Susan to let off steam, and who knows slap each other around a bit in one of those American style mud wrestling contests?
Ring side internet video cam for those of us stuck in out of the way places, please.
Make sure the camera lenses are fitted with wipers, don’t want anything to obscure the view.
Frank P – 😆
Hadn’t occured to me till you mentioned it. I can imagine Bart Simpson using it to get Mo to call it out in the bar.
Mr Salacious – Despite responding to attacks, neither Susan nor I has manifested the degree of aggression that accompanies Sybil’s presence on the site. I cannot speak for Susan, but I will not be categorised as being in some group that includes this individual.
I think you need to look elsewhere for your cameras in out of the way places. You may also like to stick to the remit of this site, which is why we visit it.
Appropo of Katrina: The MSM is ecstatic, the death toll has finally passed a thousand and they hopefully anticipate many more bodies will soon be discovered. Unfortunately the article does not make clear whether this is for NO alone or the whole five state area.
One thousand down, nine thousand to go.
Roxana – Good point. They are hugging themselves with glee. I believe the 1,000 figure is for the vast three-state area, but never mind. Now at least they can report grimly on “One thousand dead” as they stare accusingly at the camera, silently beaming the message, “Yes, I’m looking at YOU, George Bush!”
Verity: “…has manifested the degree of aggression that accompanies Sybil’s presence on the site…”
Aggression? My, what a precious life you lead, squatting daily on a blog about BBC bias, rabidly commenting on anything and everything you can think of, however unrelated to the BBC or this blog, blithely calling for the BBC edifice to be razed with the staff still inside (now that sounds aggressive – remind you of any recent events?), as if you think that furthers the cause of British residents and British telly-taxpayers fighting for an unbiased and accountable BBC – a BBC which, for all the faults of its news and current affairs drones, is still an important and valuable British institution for most Brits.
Pity we can’t get you Walled’orf in your own special comments thread dear!
Sybil,
Get of your high horse please.
Thanks,
Rob
An acerbic young lady called Sybil
With every comment seems to quibble.
She has manners quite vile
And a surfeit of bile;
Methinks what she needs is a nibble.
A desperate old codger called Frank
Thought Sybil a bit of a crank
So he wrote her a verse
Really quite terse
Hoping she’d give him a spank
That’s the polite version, anyway 😉
Gov. Perry of Texas (R) was on CNN last night. Looked and sounded calm and competent. He’s got his National Guardsmen and Texas State Troopers in place. Don’t know much about Perry but he seems like a good man.
They also showed the mayor of Galveston and city workers/volunteers loading people of all colors and socioeconomic levels onto rows of school buses and busing them out of Galveston.
What a contrast between these two and Blubbering Blank-o and Mayor Moron!
I saw none of this on the Beeb’s website though. The main focus is a gleeful account of traffic jams around Houston. They are hoping for another huge Katrina-style disaster, looters shooting at National Guardsmen and bodies floating in the water.
I suspect that Gov. Perry and the people of Texas will disappoint them.
Roxana
A couple of weeks ago the BBC coverage of NO/Katrina dropped off the radar the day it was announced that the death toll would be lower than first feared. It was a one week lead story to nothing, instantly, just like that.
Sybil
Now that’s more like it! Good response and nice to witness your sense of humour, too. 🙂
The BBC biased!! Good grief!!!!