Natasha Kerplunksky, the BBC’s only newsreader named after a racehorse, came out with another example of BBC Weird Phenomena introducing last night’s Six O’Clock News (256Kbps, WMV):
“WPC Murder: Police say WPC Nisha Patel Nasri may have been killed by her own kitchen knife”
Watch out for those self activating knives. Everyone else who mentioned this tragic incident was savvy enough to say ‘with’ instead of ‘by’.
Later in the bulletin John Sweeney presented a moving report about a couple who’ve had their three children forcibly adopted in circumstances that appear less than clear cut (starting 17’20” on the link above) – an example of good BBC journalism – powerful and original, rather than mediocre diary-based stuff.
Update: For those bemused by the Najinski reference above, it’s a bit of an obscure in-joke, inspired by a very funny comment last year, to wit:
Anyway, the Beeb’s naffed-offness, if any, with the Shuttle mission was that they had especially extended their weak Breakfast show on Monday to cover the Shuttle’s return, only to be left with a bit of a gap to fill – a gap that is even wider than Najinsky’s* inane grin 🙂
* named after the famous race-horse, Natasha Kaplinsky – famous for never winning races because she keeps pulling to the left, but, was, by all accounts, a good ride for her partner in last year’s Strictly Horse Dancing show.
Natasha Kaplinski – half comfy sofa, half Cheshire cat.
I think Dead Ringers came up with that one.
This morning I heard a journo say that WPC Beshinevsky had been killed while investigating “a burglary”…………….funny and I thought it was a Somali gang from London tooled up for “an armed robbery”
Natasha Kaplinski – half comfy sofa, half Cheshire cat.
One of the remnants of the Neil Kinnock era brought to your home from the Sky
uh, what’s the horse painting about…? It’s called ‘Najinski’, not Kaplinsky…
🙁
If all you can do is make a very forced joke about a presenter’s surname I worry about this site.
Whilst not wishing to start an, “I remember when it was all fields around here” argument, I find the tone of this site has fallen from serious criticisms of the US style liberal (i.e. soft left, collectivist, “why isn’t the government doing something?”) bias that afflicts the BBC from a classical liberal viewpoint to a site that makes suburban curtain twitchcing sub-Daily Mail op-ed page snipes at the more obvious targets in the BBC’s output.
There are serious points to be made about the BBC’s bias, and the recruitment, editorial and access policies that give rise to it. If the criticism from this site centres around a defence of the old-right, family values, the argument will be rightly lost.
Seconded.
* Taxi-driver cock-up. Needed a paragraph at best.
* “Lib-dim” slip-of-tongue. Oh ha ha.
* “Killed by her kitchen knife.” Yup, serious bias there.
* Najinsky/Kaplinsky ? WTF?
Editor “andrew” seems to be far from the calibre of ed thomas, laban, solent et al.
Richard: “If all you can do is make a very forced joke about a presenter’s surname I worry about this site.”
Just as well that that’s not all I can do then. I’m a longstanding contributor to this blog, and have contributed many, many good posts since I was first invited to contribute to the blog more than two years ago (see the archives for details). I’m sorry that you don’t like this one.
ali p: “Taxi-driver cock-up. Needed a paragraph at best”.
Sorry. Would you like a refund for the extra bits you didn’t want? Many of our readers appreciate a bit of humour from time to time. More to the point, the story is a great example of a large bloated organisation producing superficial lightweight pap, and not even doing it that well. On a practical matter, over 67,000 people have viewed the clip that I uploaded on YouTube, and the readership of this blog more than doubled from 1,400 per day typically to 3,800 over each of the last two days. Most of that will fall away, some of it will stay, but the message of Biased BBC has spread that bit further. I think that’s worthwhile.
ali p: “‘Lib-dim’ slip-of-tongue. Oh ha ha.
Maybe you didn’t like it. Many people did. Apart from being funny (albeit not for you), it was also a useful try-out of getting BBC clips from the TV onto the web via YouTube – which, I hope you will agree, is going to be a useful facility for this blog. It was also picked up by Iain Dale on his blog, thus helping to spread knowledge of Biased BBC among his readership – an influential readership that we’d do well to share our message with.
ali p: “‘Killed by her kitchen knife.’ Yup, serious bias there. Najinsky/Kaplinsky ? WTF?”
No, not particularly. Just another example of lazy, inaccurate, BBC journalism, promulgated by a prime example of what’s wrong with BBC News – a lightweight, no substance, all style, ignorant liberal leftie, namely Natasha Kaplinsky, formerly employed by Neil Kinnock and John Smith. The reference to Najinski is a contraction of her first and last names, a bit of a Biased BBC in-joke, picked up from a cracking comment last August – see here, though somehow I expect you won’t find that funny either.
ali p: “Editor “andrew” seems to be far from the calibre of ed thomas, laban, solent et al.
I beg to differ, on several counts:
1) ‘Editor’ is overstating the case. Contributor is more like it – there are currently sixteen people on the Biased BBC team list – any of whom are welcome to join in posting at any time – so if you don’t like my posts you can either wait for another member of the team to be inspired enough to contribute or you can go elsewhere – it’s not as if you’re being charged for my contributions or anyone elses, nor as if we’re the only web site devoted to standing up to the BBC.
2) I know that Ed and Natalie generally appreciate my posts. I can’t speak for Laban, inscrutable as he is (although he did link to the cab driver post from his own excellent blog), nor most of the others, with whom I’ve had little contact.
3) If you care to look back through the Biased BBC archives you’ll see that my posts are many and varied, some good, some not so good (usually when there are a dearth of other posts, e.g. like now), some funny, some serious. Just for you, here are a few of my favourites (from a short list compiled for a correspondent at the BBC):
– BBC, how EUseless are you?
– The one that got the most hits (and was the front page story of the Daily Express two days later)
– Clear cut evidence of BBC spin in action
– Hard-hitting, heart-felt commentary (and one for which the Beeb’s knuckles were rapped)
– A good Fisking
– A classic post for old time’s sake
– And the one that got me started
Finally, a spot of righteous outrage at News Online’s nasty, nasty stealth editing habit.
I’m sure that others will have their own favourites – it’s not often that I get complaints about my posts, except from the occasional disgruntled commenter (some people don’t like being kept in order), and, of course, my targets at the BBC, some of whom don’t, as the saying goes, like it up ’em!
I hope this is sufficient justification of my raison d’etre for the timebeing. Do feel free to make your own contributions to Biased BBC here in the comments (I don’t recognise either of your names as being regulars). Who knows, if you’re any good you might be invited to join the team, and then you can show us all how it should be done. TTFN.
I appreciate your reply.
Our differences stem around what the BBBC site is for. The taxi-driver thing was funny, sure; and I have laughed out loud if I’d have heard “lib-dim” live. But that’s not the point.
It’s your site – you can, obviously, put up anything you want. But I reckon you undermine BBBC’s exposure of lazy leftist journalism by filling the site with Dennis Norden-style bleepers and boo-boos; and when you extrapolate a deeper malaise I just think ‘noooo’.
There’s a serious point to be made about the BBC, and BBBC is good at making it. But “You’re from the organisition that found Dr Who too left wing to stomach?” is not the first question you want to be asked when it comes round to putting your pov to a wider audience.
Ali
Personally, I’m happy to both attack the BBC where appropriate and also to ridicule them when the opportunity presents itself.
I wouldn’t have posted the Radio Leicestershire link in its own right, but coming on the back of the ‘cabbie’ incident it seemed rather appropriate – as an example of just how dim the BBC’s people can be, as well as hugely funny.
I think that a few light-hearted posts from time to time are not going to do B-BBC any harm – quite the contrary in fact – but we’ll leave that to Sitemonitor to judge.
ali p: “There’s a serious point to be made about the BBC, and BBBC is good at making it. But “You’re from the organisition that found Dr Who too left wing to stomach?” is not the first question you want to be asked when it comes round to putting your pov to a wider audience”
The above, in the context of your earlier comment, namely:
ali p: “Editor “andrew” seems to be far from the calibre of ed thomas, laban, solent et al”
made me laugh, because I’ve never written about Dr. Who, whilst a couple of my co-conspirators, including Natalie, certainly have, and were duly criticised in the way you suggest.
I hope, taking into consideration my Biased BBC writings as a whole, rather than a couple of posts that you don’t like, that you will reflect upon whether your criticisms are a question of calibre, or perhaps just a matter of taste and style.
Again, if you can do better, please do so – as I’ve said before, if you or anyone else can knock up decent Biased BBC style posts (a different art from most stuff in the comments) please do send them to me – I’ll be only too pleased to post decent stuff in your name.
All debate regarding the Middle East is ridiculous as long as some totally false concepts propagated by the Arab side are believed:
Palestine was the name given by Romans to Judea in order to spite the Jews. The Arabs did not exist then.
Jerusalem was the relgious and civil capital of the Jews and it was never Arab.
Jerusalem is mentioned 500 plus times in the Jewish bible. Jerusalem is never mentioned in the Koran.
Even in Jerusalem Muslims face Mecca not jerusalem.
The Arabs rejeted the new Arab Palestine in 1947 and ever since.
Jordan is 75% of Palestine.