For those that can’t play the clip:
“And it will also be the first test for the new LibDim leader, er, LibDem leader, Sir Menzies Campbell…”
Right on sister!
Martha Kearney slips up and tells the truth on Newsnight last night!
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And that’s called a comeback with a bang 🙂
More on Hitchens v Cole
Juan Cole is 10th rate…he is the embodiment of the mediocre…his sentences are syntactical train wrecks…it’s illiteracy, simply. – Christopher Hitchens
http://www.radioblogger.com/#001591
Today’s BBC report about CIA rendition flights completely fails to mention that no evidence of such flights was ever found by official EU investigators:
“He was responding to a European Parliament inquiry which concluded that the CIA had run more than 1,000 flights within the European Union since 2001, often transporting terror suspects for questioning overseas.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4974386.stm
This article from The Scotsman does not fail to mention it:
“Bellinger was responding to a European Parliament probe which, while producing no firm evidence, concluded last month that more than 1,000 CIA flights had transited the EU and that the CIA had been responsible on several occasions for kidnapping and illegally detaining alleged terrorists on EU soil.”
http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=667822006
It seems inexcusable for the BBC to leave a fact that important out their report.
inexcuseable but not unusual….
Just watched Question Time. How much crisper and more enjoyable it is with just 4 on the panel (irrespective of bias etc.)
Even phoned the beeb to tell them in the hope that the change will be permanent.
Watching the election night coverage on the BBC. MP for Barking is being interviewed regarding the BNP gains in the area.
BBC Interviewer “It’s grim, isn’t it”
I’m in no way a BNP supporter, but it’s clearly not the place of a BBC interviewer to take sides in an election.
Grimer – the BBC’s Emily Maitlis has just said the prospect of BNP gains is “alarming”. The BBC then cut to coverage of Respect – a party that supports terrorist attacks on British troops – and yet no BBC reporter appears to be alarmed by the possibilty of that party winning seats.
Biased BBC reports from Afghanistan.
Well actually they report from London on a video aired by their Islamic brothers in arms Al J.
Anyway the report is about how local thug pledges allegiance to a terrorist organisation.(Just kidding Al Beeb left out the terrorist part)
“Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar says that he is ready to fight under the banner of al-Qaeda, according to a video broadcast by al-Jazeera TV.”
Anyway they go on to report that thug features has this to say in his BBC promoted spiel:
“He berates Western governments for not taking seriously a truce offer made by Osama Bin Laden in January to the American people and another to European countries in April 2004.”
Just a little info for you Al Beeb. If you are going to promote the Islamic agenda then it helps if you understand how they work.
Muslims refer to a truce as ‘Hudna’ to a Muslim a Hudna is only a temporary affair to be used in which to build up the Muslims strength in which to continue the battle.
Here is the google on Hudna
http://www.google.com/search?client=opera&rls=en&q=Hudna&sourceid=opera&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8
Trying to equate Hudna from OBL as a sensible peace offering is the silliest thing since Neville got off the plane and proclaimed “peace in our time”
P.S
The peace offering (hudna) that Hamas is offering Israel if it returns to its pre 1967 borders is for 50 years only.
Silly me the BBC link;
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/4973454.stm
to be fair to the chap, i thought Nick Brown , the ex-Labour minister, came across very well tonight and said it very well. they (as in the political elite) need to sort themselves out.
whether its Respect on one side, and BNP on the other side – both are worrying for our democracy.
so in that regards, maybe the “protest vote” has worked?
BNP – 8 elected in Dagenham so far.
shocking.
thats the Margaret Hodge patch.
election coverage has broken down on BBC1.
amazing. its 2006 and they cant even get that right.
bbc computers have broken down.
no jeremy vine graphics right now.
11 – yes ELEVEN – bnp have been elected in Dagenham.
there’s a serious disconnect with the political elite going on here.
and yet no BNP rep has been interviewed on Al Beeb.
Happy times, Tone… How much did that hair-do cost???
http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/41637000/jpg/_41637638_blairs203.jpg
As a German I am waiting for you, the Brits, to take the first stance (as usual)… dismantle the EU, focus on our allegiances towards the US. Who’s going to do that? If you can’t do it the rest of Europe is lost.
I have just seen perhaps the most tasteless and insulting graphic in the history of bbc election coverage. The increase in Conservative share of vote in the last ten years was shown as the last five tory leaders as apes and neanderthal men gradually ascending from walking on all fours to standing almost upright. Vine referred to John Major as “there’s Major, dragging his knuckles on the ground…”.
If possible, a new low.
UnLicensed | 05.05.06 – 4:29 am
I agree. I was so angry I phoned the bastards up about it.
Vine referred to John Major as “there’s Major, dragging his knuckles on the ground…”.
yes and evolving into “Tory Man” David Cameron as the apotheosis of evolution………….it was so politically biased and distasteful as to reflect the notion that Cameron is the BBC’s “chosen one” for adopting their agenda. Funnily enough he is also the first public school leader since the last Old Etonian in 1965
So far, this issue has only received a few seconds on the Today programme, and it is not prominent on the BBC news site:-
“Lib Dem MEP Chris Davies has resigned as the party’s leader in Europe over comments to a Jewish constituent.
North West England MEP Mr Davies told an e-mail correspondent he hoped she enjoyed “wallowing in her own filth”.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4974808.stm
You can read the spoutings of this poisonous little twerp here:-
http://www.chrisdaviesmep.org.uk/news/2006/Apr/stop_israeli_apartheid_policies_says_lib_dem_euro_mp.htm
Good riddance. But why is the BBC so quiet about it? And why was Sir Ming Ding not asked about it when interviewed about the elections this morning? Also why did the Today programme give Sir Ming Ding a very easy ride this morning over the fairly poor LibDem election showing.
Even David Cameron noticed this, and when interviewed on Today later, noted that if the Conservatives had performed as the LibDems, they would have had a much harder time from the BBC.
This nasty little man (Davies, not Cameron) has, rightly resigned. But why is the story being played down? And would it have been played down if Davies had been a member of another party i.e. one not viewed with such favour by the BBC?
I should have made clear that sadly, Davies has only resigned as leader of LibDem MPs in the European Parliament, not as an MP. More’s the pity.
Compare the lack of coverage of the Davies affair, with the extensive and prolonged BBC coverage of this issue:-
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3383589.stm
Striking isn’t it?
I wondered what all the fuss was about regarding Davies as I listened to the Today programme driving into work this morning. Now I see the full quote I understand – The Beeb protecting its Lib Dem allies as per usual. Did I detect conservative successes being reported through gritted teeth? I note Jim Naughtie not on duty today – Presumably at home suffering an attack of the vapours.
Unbelievable nonsense on Today just now. It’s “Bobby Sands was a regular guy, perhaps misunderstood whilst Margaret Thatcher was a torturing right wing brute” time. Twenty five years ago IRA terrorist Sands killed himself by not eating. Today Today remembers him fondly, with interviews with Sinn Fein and a former Govt Minister (Lord Gowrie?) whose memory of history seems distinctly rose-tinted with regard to Republican terrorism. I imagine that outside the Today programme and other BBC thought control departments, the ordinary British citizen regards Sands as a nasty piece of work for whom we should shed no tears, as he seh none for his victims.
Eamonn,
Yes, I remember the Kilroy-Silk affair. All those snotty little people with their noses in the air flinging around comments like ignorant, bigot and racist.
But of course, the man was only telling the truth. Trust the BBC to make an issue out of that.
eamon – i heard that myself. and i was utterly shocked at the tone of that segment. yet another Lord Haw Haw moment from Al Beeb.
it was also remarkable that no Unionist was interviewed.
Objectivity has gone down at the Beeb all right:
The increase in Conservative share of vote in the last ten years was shown as the last five tory leaders as apes and neanderthal men gradually ascending from walking on all fours to standing almost upright. Vine referred to John Major as “there’s Major, dragging his knuckles on the ground…”.
Would they have reversed the ‘evolution’ graphic to highlight the fall in the Labour vote ? Not very likely.
Also, living in the NW as I do, I was also fed up of the fulsome trumpeting from the rooftops of Manchester town Hall on the Labour victory there.
On a more strategic point, Manchester is one of those cities in England most affected by ‘Tory flight’ in the 1980s and 1990s where Conservative voters, fed up of hard-left socialism, upped sticks and moved out of the city to places like Cheshire.
Oddly enough, councils like Salford and Wigan, with a similar socioeconomic mix of population, have managed to keep a small Conservative presence.
The main problem is for the Tories, compared to the 1970s when Labour was last in power, is that disgruntled voters tend to punish Labour in many metropolitan areas by voting LibDem.
This puts a third-party tactical squeeze on the Tories, as subsequent contests end up turning into Lab v Lib campaigns – look at Oldham, Rochdale and Stockport.
University cities and regional administrative centres (Cambridge, Oxford, Norwich) are another area where Conservatives seem to be banging against a brick wall. Many natural Tory voters seem to have switched allegiance to the Lib Dems there, never to revert to their old loyalties.
At football matches in Scotland some sections of some crowds can be heard singing;
“Could you go a chicken supper, Bobby Sands?” to the tune of “She’ll be coming round the mountain when she comes”.
Heard Nick Griffin on BBC 5 in the car this morning. He was with Nicky Campbell.
Main theme from Griffin was ‘special place for aboriginals’, as he described the British indigenous population. Saying that the indigenous population deserve special privileges.
Campbell prodded him with the predictable ‘isn’t this racist/Nazi blah blah’.
As an Australian I was just overwhelmed by the irony. If you said ‘aboriginal people deserve special and preferential treatment’ on the ABC in Sydney or Brisbane, you would be at the heart of the lefty right-on crowd. The word ‘racist’ wouldn’t enter the conversation. Say it in Britain, the concept has a different meaning and you become a social pariah.
I personally don’t like the concept of special rights to indigenous people • whether in Britain or Australia. People like me whose ancestors moved over 150 years ago would end up belonging nowhere.
the bbc had a power cut last night
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/nickrobinson/2006/05/lights_out.html
hmmm…
and here’s the “tory man” graphic
http://conservativehome.blogs.com/torydiary/2006/05/live_local_elec.html
When I went to bed last night the BBC’s website was preparing to run coverage of the local elections.
This morning, there is nothing on the front page about the elections at all:
http://news.bbc.co.uk
There isn’t even the word “election”. The headline story is about how the UN is to quiz the US on torture, and the second and third stories are about Darfur and Iran.
So, have the elections taken place? What was the general trend? Who won what?
Oh, hang on. One of the little stories on the right of the screen is “Blair reshuffle after poll setback”, sandwiched between a story about South American energy policy and East Timor. The word “setback” has all kinds of connotations; my immediate mental image is of a Soviet government spokesman explaining why half of the Ukraine has died of famine.
There’s also another one of those “we show you how life is like in Iran / what Iranians ex-pats think” stories which are presumably there in order to counter the Iranian dehumanisation process put out by the US (which is being quizzed by the UN on torture).
If I worked for the UN and I wanted to know about torture – how to do it, how to do it effectively – I wouldn’t quiz the US. I would quiz Zimbabwe or China or one of the other countries.
Eamonn
You’re right about the BBCs coverage of Chris Davies resignation. And actually it was worse than no coverage – it was actively misleading. Instead of revealing that the man emailed a Jewish correspondent “Go and wallow in your own filth” – al beeb’s report made it sound like he’d been sacked for saying Israel was like apartheid South Africa. Giving an underlying suggestion:
a) Maybe Israel IS like apartheid South Africa – shouldn’t he be free to say so.
b) The ‘Jewish lobby’ at work again – attacking politicans for criticising Israel.
It was a disgrace.
The net effect of the BBC going into denial about its massively skewed reporting is that they are increasingly out of touch with the facts on the ground. In this election according to BBC pre election analysis:
Labour should be in melt down (they aren’t)
Tories should be flatlining despite their makeover (they aren’t)
LibDims should have made significant gains (they didn’t).
Instead of adjusting their analysis they plough on covering up for the useless Lib dhimmis; seizing on the ‘no gains in Manchester City’ – giving it a significance way beyond the evidence; and clinging to the belief that the Brownstuff will be taking over any day now. (altho’ Labour didn’t lose enough seats to trigger the much touted ‘Tony must go’ letter).
It all makes their reporting increasingly irrelevant.
Just to let you know, I have also complained to the BBC about the ‘apes and Neanderthals’ image used to illustrate the Conservative gains in the local elections…
Flying Giraffe – If it really came down to that you would still belong here mate.
Ooops hit the wrong button, point is Flying Giraffe you’re Australian, that means you’re family, not a foreigner in Britain. End of.
I hope noone is in doubt of the fact that the BBC is your enemy.
I hope a few more people realise how simple it is to stop funding the organistation most opposed to your way of life, the BBC.
Only Mugs pay TV-tax thugs.
the safety elephant is gone.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4975938.stm
Adloyada has more on LibDem Davies, and more worrying facts about the BBC’s response to it:-
http://adloyada.typepad.com/adloyada/2006/05/bbc_plays_down_.html#more
john reid – home secretary
beckett – foreign secretary ( more airmiles for her so)
I’ve just done the BBC weekly news quiz (generally bias free but you never know)
One question was “There are 6.1 per pupil in primary schools, and 3.7 per pupil in secondary schools. What?”
The answer is computers
I can’t believe there are 188 computers for a class of 30 primary school children.
Now were it to be 6.1 pupils per computer, I might believe it.
Margaret Beckett is the new Foreign Secretary
Whaaa?!!!
Clarke axed in Cabinet reshuffle
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4975938.stm
ITN criticises ‘expansionist’ BBC strategy
http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/article/ds32466.html
“The BBC’s new media strategy is once again too expansionist,” said Wood. “It shows no sign of curbing its tendency to throw public money into developing new media platforms. This risks swamping markets which are well-served by commercial operators. ITN is already providing these services without public funding.”
“Margaret Beckett is the new Foreign Secretary”
a reward from Tony – she does love her airmiles, doesnt she?
“ITN criticises ‘expansionist’ BBC strategy”
On a tangent, and bearing in mind the BBC’s plan to include adverts in the non-UK version of its website, I wonder what it would take for the BBC’s website to be blocked in the United States.
It is after all competing with US websites and media organisations, but it does not operate in the same commercial environment because it is funded by the UK government and by enforced public subscription. It has an unfair competitive edge. I wonder if the BBC could be prosecuted in the same way and for the same reason that Microsoft is often prosecuted. The BBC is planning to launch some kind of media playcentre in the near future. It seems to have a deal with Realplayer, but that might change.
It would not take much for a US media organisation or lobbyist group to argue that the BBC’s website should be inaccessible from outside the UK. I do not know how such a block would operate – it probably isn’t practical. I am not advocating this, I am just twiddling my mind.
Perhaps some people already argue this and have gone into it in great detail, I do not know. I am sure that such a move would be interpreted by certain parties as government censorship on a par with China, although it would be for commercial reasons rather than out of a desire to control people’s minds and stomachs.
ayayay
Check out the grammar in question 6, response 4 of that quiz.
4. You’re country needs roo.
It’s copied from a Daily Star headline. Presumably the fledgeling Beeboid responsible ‘corrected’ it from the original.
“Margaret Beckett is the new Foreign Secretary”
I remember that she was in charge of the Labour party in the period between the death of John Smith and the advent of Tony Blair, back in 1994. She stood for leadership against him and lost. She also lost the deputy leadership to John Prescott, which must have hurt. I had a mental vision of the pair of them fighting, wrestling, tumling into a passionate embrace in a beautiful country field. Because John Prescott is a loverman and rake and I admire him.
There is an article about her on this handy website:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/vote2001/hi/english/key_people/newsid_1179000/1179262.stm
It includes a photo of Tony Blair back when he had luxurious hair and one chin. John Prescott actually seems to have become more attractive with age. Not that I am claiming to be attracted to John Prescott. I am not attracted to John Prescott, the man. Instead, is the idea of John Prescott that I find attractive. He is a like an even more comic version of Mussolini.
I assume that Beckett with two Ts has been chosen to go abroad and play hardball with Robert Mugabe etc because she hasn’t been in the news very much recently. Apart from the thing about farm subsidies, but that’s not an election-losing issue, to put it mildly. In fact she might pick up some tips about dealing with farmers from Robert Mugabe, because he is the sort of person a foreign secretary has to deal with.
A search on Google News for “Margaret Beckett” also returns a lot of stories about the environment, which is something the electorate pretends to care about but actually does not.
Al Beeb bias hides bad news about its masters;
Riot victim was ‘racially abused’
A gang of Asian men hurled racist abuse at a black IT worker moments before stabbing him in the heart during riots in Birmingham, a court has been told.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/west_midlands/4973290.stm
Did anybody else notice this article from yesterday on Al Beebs web site?
Me neither..
Even then they further dilute the story by saying Asian?
Asian Al beeb?
Let see would that be Indian Hindus? Tamils, Chinese, Thai or Pakistani Muslims who rioted in Birmingham. If you can go as far as revealing that the victim was a West Indian then maybe you could go as far as revealing the nationality of the thugs who kill for their moon god.
P.S
I’m not South Asian, I’m British and proud of it even if my parents came from India.
A letter from BBC Watch on the BBC Israel/Palestine coverage.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,174-2165466,00.html
OT:
http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n0605/04jupiter/
Jupiter is growing new red spot. the first one in over 500 years. a very notable occurence dont you think?
is it on the science section of the bbc website… err. no.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/default.stm
Pounce,
I must have missed that one as well. It’s not even on the front page for “England”.
They wouldn’t be trying to hide news would they? Write an article, so that nobody can claim they aren’t covering the story, and then hide it away with no links?
Surely not, this is the ‘world respected BBC’ (I know it’s world respected, because the BBC tell me it is)
pounce -> such is the craziness of political correctness ,that it ends up being racist.
i cant stand the usage of “asian” either – why not tell the truth for once Al Beeb?