. Study this BBC Views Online article, Ex-Minister fined for being drunk, then complete the following sentence:
The ex-Minister is a member of the ________ Party.
Clue: See this Times article, Ex-minister in wine frenzy, which does manage to mention Twigg’s political affiliation – yes, it’s the same party that’s just pushed through 24-hour drinking legislation.
For advanced players, The Times also provides many more details than the BBC article, with which you can create further examples of BBC Views Online Blankety-Blanks!
The point, Steve, dear, since it obviously escapes you, is that were Twigg a Conservative the headline would have been Tory ex-Minister fined for being drunk – but in this case, the BBC have, curiously, managed to omit his party affiliation entirely, even as an afterthought.
This has already been explicitly pointed out by others above (for the benefit of those for whom my original post was just too subtle!) – do try to keep up! 🙂
Mora
Many thanks from me too for posting the Dyke article, no way would I pay the Independent a bean for anything.
And thanks to Zakki Cooper of the Chief Rabbi’s office for his reply.
All I want to add to what people have said about Dyke is:
1) when young, he was employed by Marks and Spencer on a management traineeship and lasted 6 weeks. I wonder if he was fired and if so for what.
2) Since being sacked from the Beeb, he doesn’t seem to have found himself much of a job, again, I wonder why, does the establishment just find him rather unsavoury or just plain unemployable? Writing a whingeing column for the national newspaper with probably the lowest readership in the UK, says it all.
Kulibar Tree,
yes, typepad (which hosts several of those blogs – definitely adoloyada, oliver kamm, normblog) was down yesterday (which is why only archived versions of sites hosted by it were accessable), unusually, but normal service appears to have been restored now.
Ritter,
The BBC claims to welcome complaints but that silly ‘you work for the Sun’ line just shows how much of a lie that claim is. It also shows how pathetic Peter Barron is as an editor (and so does the Newsnight show trial).
“If you can’t tell he’s Labour just from the BBC news item, you must be particularly thick.”
If you can’t tell that the point that was being made here is that Conservative (ex)MPs who transgress have their party affiliations explicitly pointed out while Labour MPs often don’t, then you are the one who is as thick as a plank.
Andrew: cue music, “Waltzing Matilda”. Didgeridoo optional.
Once a jolly swagman camped by a billabong,
Under the shade of a Kulibar tree,
And he sang as he watched and waited till his billy boil,
You’ll come a Waltzing Matilda with me.
Waltzing Matilda, Waltzing Matilda,
You’ll come a Waltzing Matilda with me,
And he sang as he watched and waited till his billy boil
You’ll come a Waltzing Matilda with me.
Kulibar tree = Billy Boyle (actor in LoTR)???
Venichka – many thanks for solving the mystery; I have since been able to read their respective current entries.
JohnOfBorg: close, but no cigar. The spelling in the song is “coolibah”. I am, in fact, the Anglo-Indian great great great nephew of Herbert Beerbohm Tree, the famous early 20th Century theatre manager.
Cheers.
http://www.haaretz.com/error404.html
Britain’s chief rabbi comes under fire for praising BBC,
By Sharon Sadeh, Haaretz (Israel), February 2, 2004
“A senior British rabbi yesterday harshly criticized Britain’s chief rabbi, Dr. Jonathan Sacks, who, on Saturday praised the BBC for its “integrity, honesty, fairness [and] balance.” Sacks devoted his latest “Thought for the Day” program to expressing his admiration for the work of ousted BBC director-general Greg Dyke. Dyke was forced to resign last weekend in the wake of the findings of a royal commission of inquiry that determined, among other things, that the corporation had broadcast unfounded reports against the British government, criticizing its intentions to go to war in Iraq. In his program, Sacks praised the BBC for viewing broadcasting “not as a business, but as a service,” adding that “news doesn’t have to be sexy or sensational. All is needs to do is to tell it the way it is – impartially, objectively, without taking sides.” Rabbi Dr. Jeffrey Cohen, the rabbi of the Jewish community of Stanmore, the largest of the United Synagogue communities (an organization headed by Sacks), however, expressed rage and disgust with the chief rabbi’s statements. “The chief rabbi’s statement runs counter to the almost universal belief within Anglo-Jewry that the BBC has shown almost unremitting bias in its reporting of Israel’s case,” a response from Cohen said. “Such bias may well have contributed significantly to the anti-Israel sentiment that is growing apace around the world, and which has, in turn, fueled the naked anti-Semitism that parades as mere opposition to the policies of the government of Israel.” According to Cohen, “Not only was the chief rabbi’s fulsome praise of the BBC’s `integrity, honesty, fairness, balance … impartiality, objectivity’ misplaced, to say the least, but to suggest that, somehow, it was fulfilling a sacred purpose, a `service’ is quite preposterous.” Israel boycotted the BBC for five months in response to reports with anti-Israel overtones, some of which included false particulars about the activities of the Israel Defense Forces in the territories. Others in Britain’s Jewish community also expressed anger and wonderment at Sacks’s remarks, noting that the chief rabbi’s statements were a mortal blow to efforts to balance the BBC’s “hostile and one-sided” coverage policy. A few weeks ago, one of the leaders of Britain’s Jewish community, Stanley Kalms, called for Sacks to be removed from his post, charging him of being unworthy of the position of chief rabbi.”
[Bernard Lewis, long a Zionist activist and apologist and ideological nemesis of Edward Said, epitomizes how Zionism has poisoned American culture, including academe. He is one of the best known American “scholars” of the Arab and Muslim world who really functions as a propagandist for world Judeocentrism. What kind of authentic “scholar” advocates military invasion of the world of his supposed expertise? What kind of scholar advocates the destruction of the cultures of his lifelong study? The model for Lewis’ “irrational” Muslim “hater” of America is of course the “irrational” anti-Semitic “hater” of Jews. The questions Lewis poses below about Muslim society’s “hatred” of America are exact echoes of the Jewish questions about the evil, stick-figure “anti-Semite.” Lewis’ influence in American culture, to the highest levels, is yet another case of brutal, racist Zionism leading the blind American people by a rope at the nose.]
Not quite sure how the two items above – Dr Sacks and Bernard Lewis – tie together. Did two separate postings somehow get accidentally conflated?
Cheers
you right. my bad i copy pasted it from a blog