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just watched a puff-piece on News 24 about the Jews in Iran.
if ever there was a “throw someting at the telly moment” it was that.
it was honestly like watching something from Soviet TV…
I submitted this comment belatedly (after finding out about it here)
to the Telegraph Speakers’ Corner.
Probably a bit late, so I’ll kick off this thread with it.
“How could the BBC cut costs?”
The idea of a federally or government funded media outlet isn’t unusual or necessarily bad. Even the US has a couple of cents put aside out of tax dollars for PBS, so why should the BBCs’ remit to be able to use this relatively huge freely provided fund be questioned?
The BBC is in the position that has to be independent of influence of government, and yet I know it has Foreign Office funding for the world service broadcasts.
In the 21st Century where we have such obvious huge media organisations like Murdoch’s and Google (and lately YouTube), we find ourselves more attentive to their output.
When a source of news like the BBC has the imprimatur of government funding (and the largest government media funding in the democratic world) I think it has to be matched by that same attention.
At the end of the day there is some confusion as to what the BBC actually represents nowadays, let alone what the value is we want from it.
My personal (controversial) opinion is, is that the BBC is now a organisation that is able to use its buying power to do what the hell it likes.
Testing out future entertainment on its new experimental digital channels, whilst it can go ahead projecting a demeanour of weakness, and an apologetic conciliatory stance for Western culture, which, again in my opinion, is typical of a wealthy comfortable urban elite of the London UK.
No matter how many bones can be thrown to regional programmers allowing them to make their harmless contributions, (and I remember when a recent threat to move a large proportion of the staff to Manchester never amounted to more than successfully pulling the London workers in line) there will never be a detachment from this big unspoken assumption I think.
The funding of the BBC is attached to government policy, so therefore by definition, even if we all stated to watch our entertainment on broadband tomorrow, it would still be funded for a decade or two, but it will eventually die out and to all you Archers fans I’m sorry, that’s the truth.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/10/15/nbeeb15.xml
Ach! My ego I should be John Simpson! I didn’t kick off the thread, and I was trying to sneak through in a Burka too!
Ach! My ego I should be John Simpson! I didn’t kick off the thread, and I was trying to sneak through in a Burka too!
Anonymous | 15.10.06 – 1:21 am | #
Was me.
Dangerous Badger, re Archer fans – I recall, about 24 hours after they brought in Napoleonic measurements, on the programme, some old Somerset (or whatever) twit farmer explained to a policeman that what had happened was “a hundred me’res orrr so, up the road.”
And the Beeb’s “independent”.
The Brits are paying for two Fifth Columns: the BBC and tony blair and his slithy toves.
Verity
I know loads of people who like the Archers too, and I don’t understand what they’re on about.
Lets hope in 2026 -ish when the last Beeb licences are being sold off, (maybe earlier – lets hope) the Program gets bought up by an interested buyer who has the best iterest of the show at heart. Who could that be, Verity? Not Richard Branson, Speilberg?
Anonymous | 15.10.06 – 3:28 am | #
Don’t know why it came up anon, but was me.
Dangerous Badger- How you extrapolated from my post that I am a fan of The Archers a mystery currently concealed from the upper reaches of mankind. I loathe it. My post was written from the pov of spite and malice. I don’t give a monkey crap who buys it. Just keep it off airwaves “funded” by the public on pain of imprisonment.
Interesting snippet from ‘the Mail on Line’ today (www.dailymail.co.uk) Darren Jordon’s marriage is in crisis because she wont go to live in a Muslim country.
by she I meam his wife of course!!
A bit of a rant about News 24:
Not long ago, the weather muppets had a couple of minutes, just before the top of the hour, to spout their fantasy ‘Forecasts’. Any time left before the o’clock was filled with shots of assorted punters: fishermen, farmers, teachers. All sorts of you and me.
Now, the weather muppets seem rushed to get through so we can watch 30-45 seconds of Beeboid reporters at work. ‘Look at us. we’re very important.’
I think that’s a shame.
this sceptere’d isle.
comments by the news director of bbc
arabic tv.
http://sceptered-isle.blogspot.com/2006/10/comments-by-news-director-of-bbc.html
Sweden is now faced with the consequences of electing a “centre right” government. They are all crooks
Other government figures have also been under fire, including Culture Minister Cecilia Stego Chilos who admitted failing to pay television licence fees.
It has also emerged that Ms Borelius and another minister did not buy the 1,500 kronor (£109; US$200) a year television licence – along with Ms Chilos who is responsible for administering the fee.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/6051220.stm
You see, not paying for your TV licence can have serious consequences – a government crisis.
hanif dudhwala ‘Muslim Scholar’
“…(Jack Straw) has not just insulted Muslims, but I think he has insulted Islam and all the Muslims throughout the whole world…”
Did you see who’s on “Desert Island Discs” this morning? Only Robert Fisk, who’s billed as a distinguished journalist.
“Are they ‘avin’ a laff?”
According to the MCB site
• ‘Hijab’ actually means barrier – it is meant to be a barrier between the public and the private domains or between good and the unwholesome
http://www.mcb.org.uk/faq/answers.php?id=104
Why do BBC journalists get so much joy at saying “the wearing of the hijab” If hijab means= barrier. Why don’t they tell us in English what it means?
Surely asking somebody “Why do you wear a barrier?”, or asking people “Do you think Muslim women wearing a barrier in front of children is a good thing?” would make things far easier to understand. Can this be a good teacher who chooses to wear/construct a barrier between herself and the children she is teaching? One can’t help thinking that a certain type of BBC journalist/editor more than delight in absorbing as much Islamic culture & language as they possibly can, and, in a fit of diversity, are repeating it(often foaming at the mouth)without really knowing what this word actually means. The recent case of the English schoolgirl up on a charge of racism, illustrates a rather depressing approach to our own language. I think a majority of British people object to this aspect of clothing- by naming the thing in a foreign language, rather than in English, it seems to me already to stink of hypocrisy, and the BBC should not be doing this!
.
Salman Rushdie remains untired critic of fundamentalist Islam:
“He despairs that too many reasonable people decline to see the true nature of Islamic fundamentalists and instead consider terrorism as the just reward for the evils caused by the West.
He fears that the West will, in 25 years, regret its “surrender”, because “in the name of tolerance and acceptance, we tied our own hands and slit our own throats”: referring, for example, to the cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed in a Danish newspaper that ignited the fury in the Muslim world after they were published a year ago.
“When people ask me how the West should adapt to Muslim sensitivities, I always say — the question is the wrong way round,” he said.
“The West should go on being itself. There is nothing wrong with the things that for hundreds of years have been acceptable — satire, irreverence, ridicule, even quite rude commentary — why the hell not?”
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20061015/wl_uk_afp/britainpoliticsislamreligionattacks;_ylt=AhEKVjjC62oSeJXkWkwxYdxvaA8F;_ylu=X3oDMTA0cDJlYmhvBHNlYwM-
.
Mark Steyn identifies Reuters following the same path as the BBC
“WASHINGTON (Reuters) — A California-born convert to Islam, accused of making a series of al-Qaida propaganda videos, became on Wednesday the first American charged with treason since the World War II era, U.S. Justice Department officials said.
“Fugitive Adam Gadahn, 28, who is believed to be in Pakistan, was accused of treason, which carries a maximum punishment of death . . .”
but what Reuters thinks about this serious case is …
Justice Department officials denied the case was timed to deflect attention from the fallout over lewd computer messages sent by a former Republican congressman to young male aides, a scandal that may help Democrats seize control of Congress in the Nov. 7 elections.”
As Steyn points out, the media are keen to suggest that the whole civil service is only working to the narrow daily agenda of Bush/Rove/Blair or whoever.
http://www.suntimes.com/news/steyn/96410,CST-EDT-steyn15.article
Maliks concept of “corrosive impact” gets BBC headlines
“and of course the majority of children in this school are Muslim” Shahid (martyr) Malik, MP for Dewsbury. The majority of children in a Christian, Church of England school, in Dewsbury, England, are Muslim! It really is difficult to fathom this astonishing fact. What a complete and utter catastrophe!
Doesn’t Denmark legally close a school if the percentage of minority ethnic children reach a certain limit? Why wasn’t this European approach adopted in England? All this talk about preventing Ghettos what are these people doing, have they gone quite mad?
Just listening to Malik being interviewed by Brian O Hanrahan on the Sunday BBC Radio 4 prog. “The World at One”.(1 -1.30pm) According to Malik the BBC news reporting (amongst other media) of the veil issue is really having “a corrosive impact on community relations” & repeating himself “a corrosive impact in the main”. He told the BBC that “there are far too many stories” about Muslims and that we all need “a reality check”. He didn’t clarify if he was talking about his “community” or for that matter his “constituency”, you get the impression that he only speaks for his majority. But you have to ask yourself, doesn’t Malik need a reality check when he says “because Muslims feel very sensitive” right now.
Hello! Sensitive?
It is Muslims who are strapping bombs to themselves and blowing up tube trains and buses filled with English people, does Malik ever contemplate the “sensitivity” of wider societal relations, or does he have his head firmly stuck up his own community? And wasn’t it in his community, Dewsbury, that produced one of the home grown July 7 suicide bombers?
Of course, to imagine a BBC interview and the formulation of the following question, itself needs a reality check:
Mr Malik it was one of your Muslim constituents who became a suicide bomber last July, and now we see another one of your Muslim constuitents exhibiting a form of behaviouur that is very far from “moderate”, indeed, is being seen as extreme and confrontational, and this behaviour, in a Christian , Church of England school. What is happening in Dewsbury to the Muslim community?
Still, it was fascinating to hear him attacking the Muslim peer, Lord Ahmed, live on radio. Things must be bad when the knives are out and even Muslim politicians are attacking one another on the BBC.
I feel sure that the majority of people listening to this BBC interview know very well where the “reality check” needs to be undertaken(isn’t this one of the Great Satan’s expressions?) and it is not by the media, but Malik’s very own constituents in Dewsbury.
It wasn’t so long ago that we had a big discussion on the importance of “phonics” in teaching English! How on earth can a teacher explain vowels, etc., or how to pronouce “th” properly without showing children her mouth and tongue movements? Simple aspects of teaching English, that even BBC journalists cannot grasp or put into words!
Rueful Red:
Did you see who’s on “Desert Island Discs” this morning? Only Robert Fisk, who’s billed as a distinguished journalist.
“Are they ‘avin’ a laff?”
Rueful Red | 15.10.06 – 12:20 pm | #
Nah mate. This is a larff.
http://timblair.net/ee/index.php/weblog/fisk_karshed/
paulc:
Rueful Red:
Did you see who’s on “Desert Island Discs” this morning? Only Robert Fisk, who’s billed as a distinguished journalist.
The BBC works in mysterious ways. The choice of Robert Fisk doesn’t surprise me. What’s the betting he chooses something from New Oriental? It wasn’t so long ago that they had on Desert Island Discs that well-known human rights lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith. Stupidly I listened to it, and can only say that his taste in music is really bad, bordering on the moronic. In fact, the BBC2 Newsnight piece the other night which raised the allegation that Stafford Smith actually encouraged some Guantanamo inmates to commit suicide, makes perfect sense to me. Perhaps he smuggled in some music tapes? I think I would commit suicide rather than listen to some of the music he loves.
I am not a NON MUSLIM
I am a Christian
And I object to being referred to as a non-muslim.
We are not an Islamic state, we should not be differentiated in this way. It should be Christian and non-christian not Muslim and non-muslim, that’s what they are trying to imply.
If you’re not a muslim then you are not a person in your own right with your own beliefs, views and values, you are just a non-muslim.
I notice the BBC now have a “HYS” on the veil. Clearly, Shahid Malik, MP for Dewsbury, was being disingenuious on BBC radio at lunchtime in his comments, in the same way as the BBC interviewer was pathetically ignorant & fawning towards him! According to one poster:
“A Madressah, now operates near Dewsbury, the teenage girls there, ALL wear the veil.”
Why didn’t the BBC interviewer remark that she would be better off teaching in a Madressah in Dewsbury , rather than a Christian, Church of England school? Simple question to a Muslim MP who represents “his” community?
BBC sacred of the truth!
BBC anxious to smooth over multicultural fissures!
BBC lame reporting
BBC dumb & dumber!
I’m not sure if a link to this article has already been posted, I’m sure it will be loved by many here.
“Evening, infidels! Here is the news from the BBC…”
08:26am 13th October 2006
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/columnists/columnists.html?in_article_id=410171&in_page_id=1772&in_author_id=322
I read this site regularly. It is just so refreshing to know that so many people have the same view of the BBC as I have. I post comments to the BBC Have Your Say on a regular basis. My comments are nearly always critical of the BBC and its anti-UK, anti-US, anti-Israel, anti-Western stance and it’s unsatiable desire to be pro-Iranian, pro-Islamic, pro-Muslim and I’m afraid to say pro-terrorist. I neverbreak their house rules yet I never get any comments published. This site and those like it are excellent for highlighting this corporations gross bias in the areas I mention but what do we do about it? It is time now to take action. How can we actually start making them accountable? Should we be forming protest groups or something like that? Are there any out there already? Should we be bombarding them with complaints via e-mails, letters, telephone calls? Any suggestions I’m up for it.
Mick,
Starve them. Treat them like any other business whose product you dislike, i.e. don’t buy it.
Don’t fund your enemy, don’t pay the TV-tax.
Yesterday the BBC’s soul mate, & companion at the taxpayer’s teat, Channel4 News, thru its e-mail, asked whether news coverage should be provided on cross’n’veil matters. (Like their attitude to the BNP, starve them of oxygen & perhaps they will go away)
the inescapable fact is, if you are currently involved in military action in Muslim countries around the world (as we are) then issues which touch upon religion, Islam and Christianity are going to be inflamed by all the anger and emotion that that background creates.
That, in a nutshell, is why we are where we are – stories from a school
or British Airways which in normal times would barely make it beyond
the pages of the local newspaper are instantly front-page,
top-of-the-bulletin national stories.
So nobody would be bothered about a pair of disembodied eyes teaching our children if it not for the Iraq war. And killing 3000 in Manhatten is nothing to get excited about.
Today the excreable Alex Thomson provides an update
First off, many thanks to all who responded to yesterday’s musings on the veil and the cross. Plenty of you think we should basically kick it all the way down the running order or even ignore it altogether – others though, insist we must give these issues prominence.
The wearing of the veil is an act of aggression and anger. Not modesty. They are saying, “I do not have to reveal myself to you because I belong to the chosen religion. You cannot see me, but I can see you. That puts me in a position of strength.”
Covering one’s face in public should be illegal for everyone. Shops, banks and other places of business should have a picture of a burka-clad woman with an oblique line drawn through it.
The women wearing these shrouds are very aggressive, by the way. They push and shove other women in the security of not being identifiable.
To allow them in schools is lunacy.
Six hurt in Beirut grenade attack
Six people were injured in the Lebanese capital, Beirut, when three grenades were fired at a building in the city centre, a government minister said.
The incident took place at a block housing nightclubs and offices not far from the United Nations headquarters in Lebanon, police said.
Windows and cars were damaged in the attack, which happened at about 0230 on Sunday (2330 GMT on Saturday).
It is the third incident in the Lebanese capital in 10 days.
Why haven’t we heard about the other two incidents before now?
Acting Interior Minister Ahmed Fatfat linked the attack to two other grenade assaults on police stations earlier this month.
“It is clear that there is an attempt to ignite security strife in the country,” he said.
I wonder who’s to blame… could it be an organization that begins with “H” and also ends in “h”?
He said people could try to cause trouble with the army deployed in the south of the country.
“People”?
Don’t worry Bio, you’ll hear about these attacks just as soon as the BBC can blame a ‘people’ beginning with ‘J’.
Verity –
To allow them in schools is lunacy.
Just the nuns in my school were enough to put wind up me! Now given where I’m from (and well out of) I’m familiar with burkas and all the rest of it, but I’ll never, ever get rid of that creepy feeling I have whenever I see one. As far as I can tell there are three possible reasons for a woman to wear one:
1. Seperation. In GB it conveys the message that there is no possible connection, no commonality between us. I don’t just mean culturally or even spiritually. Whenever I see a woman in a burka in London the message I get is that there’s almost a species seperation going on.
2. Arrogance. “This is my islamic uniform and it’s in your face you infidel swine. Get used to it because I will have your daughters clad like me.”
3. Submission. Where islamic women are viewed as the property of men, have no choice and are forced to shroud not only their sexuality but even their individual identities and are forced to become a black, formless shadow.
Now I have my libertarian side, but not one of these reasons is acceptable in a liberal society. Shame on the Head who allowed this woman to veil herself in a school.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/uk_politics/2006/party_conferences_06/default.stm
The BBC’s 2006 party conference page is well up to the usual standard. The first thing I noticed was that the zone at the bottom has specially titled sections leading you to more stories about Labour, the Conservatives, the Lib Dems, the SNP, Plaid Cymru, the Greens, and Respect.
Curiously, there are no slots for more stories about UKIP or the BNP. At the last general election UKIP got more than twice as many votes as the Greens. The BNP got nearly three times as many votes as Respect. And as far as regional parties go, the DUP got about 40% more votes than Plaid Cymru, and as many seats as the SNP and Plaid Cymru put together.
The second thing I noticed was that while the stories on Labour and the Conservatives had a mix of positive and negative headlines, all the headlines about the Lib Dems were positive.
And last but not least, the links to Have Your Says are to Labour, Conservatives, Lib Dems and Greens. No link to the UKIP Have Your Say.
I suspect that this isn’t somebody deliberately saying to themselves, let’s not link to stuff about the right wing fringe and regional parties (well maybe as far as the BNP is concerned.) It’s more likely that the Beeboid who is in charge of the page just naturally thinks “UKIP, BNP = fringe”; “Greens, Respect = small, but serious, parties”.
This story has been the banner headline story on the BBC site’s front page all afternoon and evening.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6053298.stm
Minister ‘reckless’ over veil row
The complaints of a small Muslim pressure group about what a Minister said is the banner front page news story, while the actual story about what the Minister said :
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/bradford/6050392.stm
Veil teacher ‘should be sacked’
doesn’t quite make it to the lead position on the education page.
Meanwhile the views of the Shadow Home Secretary
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6052232.stm
Davis in ‘UK apartheid’ warning
on the subject just sneaks in as an also ran story on the politics page.
Apparently the views of the spokesman for the Muslim Council of Great Britain are more newsworthy by far, than the views of a government minister or a senior shadow cabinet member.
It’s not just the BBC who snub the BNP (no, I am not a supporter), but my own local councillors refused to talk to democraticaly elected BNP members in council meetings, whilst giving the views and demands of un-elected Muslim ‘community leaders’ great precedence.
Much like the BBC.
I guess this news from Tunisia, included in Radio 4s 12 broadcast too, will be very uncomfortable for Muslim MPs like S. Malik, and Lord Ahmed, and provides irrefutable evidence for the anti-veil campaign. How can the Tunisians be Islamophobic? Lol. Ahmed has been everywhere today. Isn’t this the same Lord Ahmed who once condemned Lee Bowyer & Jon. Woodgate as “The Bin Ladens of British football”? What a pompous prig of a man, who can take him seriously.
Last Updated: Sunday, 15 October 2006, 19:38 GMT 20:38 UK
Tunisia moves against headscarves
By Heba Saleh
BBC News, Cairo
Islamic headscarves are banned in schools and government offices
The Tunisian authorities have launched a campaign against the Islamic veil worn by some women to cover their hair.
Police are applying with renewed vigour a decree dating back to 1981 which prohibits women from wearing Islamic headscarves in public places.
Not the irony that the critique stems from Londonistan, how convenient for the BBC Arab affairs analyst to be so in the loop. This is vintage BBC, and this same “attack” will be instantaneously relayed to all and sundry in Tunisia itself. The BBC acted so with the Mohammed Cartoon crisis. Why do they do it? Is this person an FO placeperson in the BBC?
Tunisia attacked over headscarves
By Magdi Abdelhadi
Arab affairs analyst, BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/5382946.stm
Islamists say the Tunisian ban is not only against Islam, but that it also violates personal freedom.
Rachid al-Ghanoushi, a leading Tunisian Islamist who lives in exile in London, said the state had no right to interfere with personal choice.
“Does it harm the state when a woman wears a headscarf or not?” he said. “We are not demanding the imposition of any particular dress on women, we are demanding public and personal freedom.”
Religious clash in Ethiopian town
You’ll have to read almost to the end of the report before discovering which religion started these ‘clashes’. And here’s a clue: it’s all the fault of the ‘war in Iraq’.
Al Beeb and personal freedoms:
I want to carry a Browning HiPower the next time I visit the UK. Is that alright with you, Beeboids? I still want to smoke in pubs, by the way. And, yes, I also want to eat pork and have a pint or two (or three). Can I choose not to get on a tube train when there’s a fully veiled person on it? That’s racist. Oh, yeah – I guessed as much. Thanks, Al Beeb. I needed to be taught what my personal freedoms actually are.
Time for a bit of fisk.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6047764.stm
Gaza fishermen risk Israeli fire
Friday, 13 October 2006, 13:41 GMT 14:41 UK
====
“For more than three months the Israelis have ordered all fishing craft to stay in port. They say this is to prevent militants who have captured an Israeli soldier in Gaza, smuggling him out by sea.”
What is this soldier’s name?
Who were the “militants”
When did this happan?
How could a soldier kidnapped outside the Gaza border (as shalit was) be claimed to have been captured in gaza?
“”It happened in front of me,” he said. “I could have been killed. I’ll stay at home until they re-open sea.””
Well don’t violate the israeli curfew then. If the HM’s Police were more like the IDF, Britain would not be having as much of a crime problem.
“There are always Israeli navy restrictions on fishing off Gaza’s coast, but they are likely to remain particularly severe as long as the Israeli soldier, Corp Gilad Shalit remains a captive somewhere in the territory.”
Behold, the soldier at last has a name.
“Hamas, the militant group that runs the Palestinian Authority, says that in return for the freeing of its soldier, Israel must release some of the several thousand Palestinians held in its jails.”
Does Hamas have any connection to the kidnapping?
Sydney police begin beach patrols
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/6053052.stm
More than 1,500 police had to be deployed in Sydney last year to end the fighting. The clashes began when mobs of white youths attacked people of Arabic and Mediterranean appearance on Cronulla Beach, apparently in revenge for an attack on two lifeguards.
Apparently in revenge for an attack on two lifeguards, and let’s not even mention the numerous attacks on Australian women laying out on Sydney’s beaches which led up to the violence. Nothing about root causes here!
http://www.brandrepublic.com/bulletins/br/article/596863/al-jazeera-poaches-bbcs-jordan-international-launch/
OT
Oh dear….
Air America files for bankruptcy
http://media.guardian.co.uk/radio/story/0,,1923595,00.html
Why do left wing liberal broadcasters find it impossible to survive in the free market without guaranteed state funding (BBC) or cross-subsidisation (Guardian)?
Maybe no-one wants to watch/listen to the liberal message?
There’s a brilliant article
by Melanie Phillips in today’s
‘Daily Mail’: “the fight for the west”. Telling extract:
“How can Britain have arrived at a situation where it is seriously argued that a class of children who don’t speak English as their first
language should be taught by a shrouded woman whose expression they can’t see and whose voice they can’t even hear properly -while the BBC thinks that wearing a symbol of Britain’s established religion might be offensive?”
http://www.melaniephillips.com (16/10)
No more Mister Nice Guy
http://media.guardian.co.uk/mediaguardian/story/0,,1923052,00.html
“When the government gave the BBC the digital switchover task, instead of tendering to all corners of the market, then it handed the BBC a fantastic advantage”
“You have to hand it to Mark Thompson – he knows how to deliver a speech. And how to hold a loaded weapon. Last week’s downward revision in the licence fee request was almost Tarantinoesque in its tense ugliness. There’s Thommo, tie ever so slightly awry, revolver at the temple of Gordon Brown, who is sweating profusely, face screwed up, hands tied. It’s a grimy basement – maybe a government repository, or perhaps the janitor’s cupboard at a national broadcasting institution.
“So, do you wanna have digital switchover or dontcha? Cos if you do, you have to pay and if you don’t pay – that’s up to you. But then it’s not me pulling the trigger anymore it’s the whole NATION. No TV, Gordon – dark screens, you’re the man, but there’s no TV … they’ll say Tony had TV, but Gordon, he’s taken the TV … and BOOM! … I’ll be able to hear that ******f**k*r . . . going off as far away as goddam SALFORD. Except I won’t be in goddam Salford, will I Gordon? I’ll be right here with Tinky Winky, La-La and Gary Lineker – cos unless we get 1.8%, NO-ONE’s going to Salford.”
Gordon gibbers, or maybe mutters, it’s hard to tell, then cracks: “Alright, alright – Tessa, give him the 1.8%.” Woman in corner rolls her eyes and gets up to swing open a door. It reveals an empty room lit by a naked bulb that swings over a large Jacuzzi, which is overflowing with £20 notes. Two enormous primary-coloured characters made out of felt are rolling around in the money shouting “Ooooh – tubby cash!”
Well, you get the picture, and if you don’t then you might be surprised about what goes on in media policy circles these days. Last week Mark Thompson gave dire warning that a licence fee settlement of less than 1.8% above inflation for the BBC would mean no relocation of BBC children’s, sport and new media to Salford and, potentially, a drawn-out, incomplete digital switchover. It was a magnificent piece of political blackmail. When the government gave the BBC the digital switchover task, instead of tendering to all corners of the market, then it handed the BBC a fantastic advantage in this monetary negotiation, particularly as the potential cost of switchover was and remains largely unknown.”
……. follow link for more (free registration req’d)
a.lang | Homepage | 16.10.06 – 11:14 am | #
Direct link to Melanie Philips in today’s Daily Mail mentioned by a.lang above:
The veil, the cross and a vital debate over the heart and soul of our nation
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/columnists/columnists.html?in_article_id=410618&in_page_id=1772&in_author_id=256
“Why do left wing liberal broadcasters find it impossible to survive in the free market without guaranteed state funding”
Hold on. Apparently the whole of the US media apart from Fox is “liberal”, according to right wing mythmaking. Are you saying they can’t survive or they aren’t left wing?
from mel philips:
“The Christian values that once defined national identity have simply collapsed, creating a cultural vacuum which Islam – Britain’s fastest-growing and most assertive religion – is busily filling.”
ahem. thats a bit rich – implying that you have to be a Christian in order to fill a “cultural vacuum”.
sorry Mel – cant agree with you there. Jihadism has got bugger all to do with a nations attitude to Christianity. it stands by itself as an ideology – just as Nazism was.
archduke –
Melanie Phillips said:
The Christian values that once defined national identity have simply collapsed …..
On that point she is spot on. The Judeo Christian morals upon which our great civilisation was built have been cast away by 50 years of whatever-you-want-man liberalism. Stupid bloody secularists have aided and abetted this, blind to the likely prospect that far from living in a secular, humanist paradise, some other faith system will inevitably fill the void. The race at the moment is between leftie eco gaia worship on the one habd and islam on the other.
What Melanie Phillips is saying is that in losing our strong moral and cultural Judeo Christian reference points our society is at the mercy of these other silly and dangerous beliefs. She’s bang on.
Rueful Red
Peter Fisk may be disliked by some Israelis and some americans, but received the British Press Awards’ International Journalist of the Year seven times, and twice won its Reporter of the Year award.
More distinguished by any yardstick than the ridculous Melanie “global warming is a fraud” Phillips who is regualry quoted on this site.
pete
The great values of liberty and freedom that make our civilisation what it is are those of the Enlightment, not christianity. We don’t have the church to thank for free speech quite frankly.