Open thread – for comments of general Biased BBC interest:


Please use this thread for off-topic, but preferably BBC related, comments. Please keep comments on other threads to the topic at hand. N.B. this is not an invitation for general off-topic comments – our aim is to maintain order and clarity on the topic-specific threads. This post will remain at or near the top of the blog. Please scroll down to find new topic-specific posts.

Bookmark the permalink.

303 Responses to Open thread – for comments of general Biased BBC interest:

  1. Pete_London says:

    Siteowner – the is playing up again. I think I’ll just stick to the italics in future!

    [Remember, an “open bold” tag best completed by a “close bold” tag, not a “close italics” tag!

    Edited By Siteowner

    Edited By Siteowner]

       0 likes

  2. TPO says:

    Hot foot on the heels of the party of vermin’s criminal behaviour in the cash for peerages scandal which the bbc (because of their mate Tessa) still refuse to cover in an adequate manner, we have:

    Labour could face legal action over cash from councillors scandal

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=418486&in_page_id=1770

    Find anything about it on the bbc website? No, unless you look at their press review.

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/radio_newsroom/2627535.stm

    What do we get instead?

    A weary rehash about the activities of one of Dave’s new Tories, who, I hope, go to oblivion at the next polls (And I was one of their activists ……. Once)

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/southern_counties/6182416.stm

    Democracy in action in the UK today, courtesy of incisive bbc investigative journalism.
    If I relied on the bbc I wouldn’t be aware of the half of it.

       0 likes

  3. Nikola says:

    Who do you support now tpo?

       0 likes

  4. Ralph says:

    ‘But if not Syria, who? In the last few days in Beirut I have had heard theories linking Israel, the United States and other Lebanese Christian leaders with Mr Gemayel’s assassination, for a variety of reasons – to remove a rival in the case of the Christians, to spread confusion and dismay for the others.’

    So now the BBC is reporting any claim someone makes to them however silly.

    ‘No-one has produced any evidence for any of the theories that are flying around.’

    Then why the frell report them.

       0 likes

  5. paulc says:

    Reading Bowen’s report
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/6181984.stm

    It’s plain that he’s been in the ME too long.
    The report is speculative crap. Some of it is little more than the conspiracy theories that occupy the waking hours of most of the denizens of that particular part of the world.
    On the Simon Mayo programme a week ago, while plugging his book, Bowen stated that he had suffered from PTSD.

    It shows.

       0 likes

  6. Charles Martel says:

    BANGKOK, Thailand – More than 300 schools in Thailand’s restive south will close indefinitely Monday after attacks by suspected Muslim insurgents left two teachers dead, a regional representative for teachers said.

    http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061125/ap_on_re_as/thailand_southern_violenceI

    The BBC website has not seen fit to publish news of the school closings, the arson, the latest killings in Thailand. Like other professional terror enablers, the Beeb is engaged in a systematic campaign of disinformation and self-censorship so as to hide from the public the full extent of the global threat from Islam.

    Or perhaps the BBCs taxpayer-funded resources are simply overstretched at the moment, focused as they are on the launch of its new Arabic news channel.

       0 likes

  7. werter says:

    another story the bbc refused to publish.

    Hundreds of schools in Thailand’s restive south will shut their doors in response to increasingly vicious attacks by suspected Muslim insurgents against teachers and schools, an official said Saturday.
    The closure, which begins Monday, affects all 336 primary and secondary schools in the province of Pattani, where two teachers were fatally shot by suspected insurgents in the past two days.
    In one of the killings, attackers shot a school principal Friday, and then set his body on fire. The principal became the 59th teacher or school official killed in three years of violence, said Bunsom Thongsriprai, president of the Teachers’ Association in Pattani.
    “Teachers can’t bear what has happened,” Bunsom said. “They are paranoid, worried and afraid.” He said the province’s schools, which teach about 100,000 students, will reopen when teachers feel safe.
    More than 1,800 people have died from violence in Thailand’s three southernmost, Muslim-majority provinces — Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat — since an Islamic insurgency flared in January 2004.
    Teachers have always been occasional targets, seen by insurgents as representatives of the government and easy targets. But recently, teachers and schools have been attacked on an almost daily basis.
    On Thursday, 96 schools across Yala were ordered closed as a safety precaution after a school was burned down the day before. It was one of several schools in the province recently targeted by arsonists.
    The Yala schools were initially scheduled to reopen Monday but school authorities have decided to keep them closed until further notice, said Sanya Suwannapho, head of the Association of Teachers in Yala province.
    Thailand’s new military-installed government has pledged to make peace in the south a priority, and reverse the hardline policies of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was ousted in a Sept. 19 coup.
    Defense Minister Boonrawd Somtat said Friday that insurgents had stepped up violence to keep residents from accepting new peace overtures from the authorities.
    “They have intensified violent attacks to intimidate and terrify people,” Boonrawd said, adding that the shadowy groups behind the violence have not accepted government offers to hold talks.
    http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061125/ap_on_re_as/thailand_southern_violence

       0 likes

  8. TPO says:

    ‘Who do you support now tpo?’
    Nikola | Homepage | 25.11.06 – 3:17 pm | #

    UKIP. I can’t see anywhere else to go, short of marking my ballot paper ‘None of the above’

    Of course, as a general election draws near the bbc will go into overdrive to paint UKIP as ‘far right’. They tried it recently using Billy Bragg as their vehicle and, when I complained, they stated that they were not responsible for what interviewees said. Even though I pointed out that not once were Bragg’s ridiculous assertions challenged by the interviewer. On the contrary they were encouraged.

    How about you Nikola?

       0 likes

  9. GCooper says:

    TPO writes:

    “They tried it recently using Billy Bragg as their vehicle and, when I complained, they stated that they were not responsible for what interviewees said.”

    A typically disingenuous response from the professional liars at the BBC. Bragg is specifically chosen because of the juvenile Marxist nonsense he spouts. That’s why he is such a regular fixture.

    It’s certainly not a result of his popularity as a performer!

       0 likes

  10. TPO says:

    Kulibar Tree
    I’ve responded to your last fingerprint post on the 20th November thread, please feel free to come back at me.
    regards

       0 likes

  11. Jonathan Boyd Hunt says:

    Umbongo:
    Max:
    Dumbjohn:

    Re: Scott Burgess and Dilpazier Aslam.

    You might be interested in this:

    http://img134.imageshack.us/slideshow/player.php?id=img134/9946/116402817701i.smil

    I wonder what John Reith thinks of it?

       0 likes

  12. TPO says:

    JBH
    I promise I will get back to you. I’ve been printerless for ages.

       0 likes

  13. TPO says:

    It’s certainly not a result of his popularity as a performer!
    GCooper | 25.11.06 – 5:22 pm |

    The wife had one of his CDs. When she wasn’t looking it went into the non-recycling bin.

       0 likes

  14. Jonathan Boyd Hunt says:

    TPO:
    Thanks for that, I appreciate it.

    When you’ve digested TWTW, compare what you’ve just learned with what’s currently written elsewhere about the Profumo affair – including Wikipedia.

    If, after reading it, you’d like to review the evidence that supports it I can send you a CD containing several JPEG scans. (That would necessitate Natalie being a go-between of contact details but I’d wager she’d be inclined to help.)

       0 likes

  15. Nikola says:

    Well the bnp dont stand in my area so i spoiled my ballot paper, the big 3 are just clones. And before i get lambasted by people screaming ‘racism’, ‘far right’ etc remember im not even a native Brit. Fact is I can agree with most of their manifesto, and I truly think Britain and Europe as a whole is sleep walking into disaster. The powers that be can keep on denying reality, but their social experiment gone wrong is failing everyone.

       0 likes

  16. GCooper says:

    On and on the relentless juggernaut of BBC Leftism rolls. Let tonight’s Radio Four ‘Saturday Review’ stand as just one example of what people mean when they say the BBC is institutionally Leftist.

    With the presenter, Tom Sutcliffe, were three talking heads, discussing the week’s chosen topics from the arts. They were Gillian Slovo (Leftist polemicist, daughter of South African communist and anti-apartheid campaigner, Joe Slovo. Guardian regular), Kevin Toolis (apologist for the IRA and, later, suicide bombers. Guardian regular) and Kwame Kwei-Armah (black activist. Guardian regular). All three are darlings of the arty Left, all three so far in that direction that they would probably be regarded by the average Labour voter as worrying extremists.

    To pick apart their conversation would be pointless. What else could they do than discuss every topic from a far-Left perspective, their conversation dripping with unchallenged assumptions, assumed moral rectitude and shining simplicity? Predictable enough not to warrant examples, but it is probably worth pausing to have a quick chuckle over Kwame Kwei-Armah’s self-conscious ‘…as we read in our Guardians and Independents..’ while discussing the banal Caryl Churchill’s even more banal Drunk Enough To Say I Love You . That’s it bro’ – nobody reads anything else. Right on!

    It is no surprise that the arts are dominated by the Left, nor that Leftists are almost exclusively selected by the BBC to broadcast about them (thus ensuring the cycle). But why go to the trouble of lying about it? This was just one drearily predictable example of the BBC’s drearily predictable arts output.

    If Radio 3 is ‘dons talking to dons’, Radio 4 is ‘Guardian reader talking to Guardian reader’. So why not give the rest of us a break and make the Guardian readers pay for it?

       0 likes

  17. Anonymous says:

    Andrew Marr’s assertion (“What makes her stand out as a journalist is not only her strong views,” he says, “but also her ferocious appetite for research. In a media world in which too many media columnists simply voice their top-of-the-head opinions, Polly always arrives heavily armed with hard facts.”) shows that he is detached from reality…

    http://dailyablution.blogs.com/the_daily_ablution/2004/05/polly_toynbees_.html

    http://dailyablution.blogs.com/the_daily_ablution/2004/01/polly_toynbee_a.html

    http://dailyablution.blogs.com/the_daily_ablution/2006/05/wettest_drought.html

    http://dailyablution.blogs.com/the_daily_ablution/2004/07/polly_toynbee_c.html

    Then again, compared to some other fact checkers and researchers in al-Beeb, she probably does stand out…

    http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_1340529.html

       0 likes

  18. archonix says:

    Unless you’re left-leaning (and therefore probably interested in such things as nationalisation of “strategic” industry) I’d be careful voting for the BNP, as they are, at heart, a socialist party.

       0 likes

  19. archduke says:

    i would concur with archonix.

    no point in voting for a national socialist party that is the BNP.

    it’d be just an amphetamine Gordon Brown on steroids.

       0 likes

  20. Nikola says:

    Well I wouldnt really regard myself as left-leaning, though I do agree with some interventionism.
    I am for exiting the EU, halting immigration, cracking down on crime, all on the bnps manifesto. Overall though I appreciate the fact that the bnp stand for the culture and values of the indiginous people. Most people these days bend over backwards to pander to foreign religions, cultures and people. Like I say im Serbian, but im sick and tired of it. Im hoping Britain can shake this pc madness off, as the whole of Europe is affected by it.

       0 likes

  21. Jon says:

    I heard an interview with Lord Pearson of Rannoch on 18 Doughty Street and he had a few things to say about the BBC. One interesting thing though – he believes that the “institutional leftism” at the BBC will begin to change after the BBC has secured the next charter. He mentions in that interview that he knows some people in the BBC who do not subscribe to this leftist agenda and he thinks they are getting more powerful within the organisation.

    I am not so sure though. How many people would have to be replaced in the BBC before there “agenda” can be changed? Is it not so deeply entrenched with the left that only the privatisation of the BBC could cure the problem?

    I had heard of Lord Pearson of Rannoch before but I don’t believe that I have ever seen him interviewed by any of the MSM. Why can’t we have more people like this – a man of great principle and one who sticks to his principles even to the point of losing the Conservative whip? The interview was a breath of fresh air. Britain may not be doomed just yet but we need more people like him.

       0 likes

  22. Anonymous says:

    Today’s big anti-Chavez rally in Caracas has not yet turned up on the BBC’s Americas page:

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/default.stm

    But, a wee shindig in New York for 100 muslim wimmin is still highlighted there.

       0 likes

  23. GCooper says:

    Jon writes:

    “Is it not so deeply entrenched with the left that only the privatisation of the BBC could cure the problem?”

    Like you, I have a lot of respect for Lord Pearson and, yes, isn’t it as telling as it is sad that he is more or less unknown, due to his treatment by the MSM?

    That said, I’m afraid I believe he is quite wrong about the potential of the BBC to change. My encounters with Beeboids at all levels suggest statism and Leftism run through them like ‘Blackpool’ in a stick of rock.

    My own view is the same as yours: nothing short of dismemberment will stop this rot.

    There are issues beyond that, too – for example, addressing the question of why Beeboids are Leftists, but that is probably best discussed elsewhere as it’s somewhat off-topic.

       0 likes

  24. Biodegradable says:

    The BBC:

    Ceasefire agreed for Gaza Strip
    Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas has won a commitment from all militant groups to halt rocket attacks on Israel from the Gaza Strip, his office said.

    Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has in return agreed to halt hostilities, his spokeswoman said. The ceasefire will begin at 0600 (0400GMT) on Sunday.

    Not even Hamas calls IDF counter-terrorism operations ‘hostilities’!

    The Jerusalem Post:

    Israel accepts Palestinian groups’ offer of ceasefire
    According to the Prime Minister’s Office, Abbas phoned Olmert and told him he had received an agreement from all the different Palestinian factions to the cease-fire, and in response “requested that Israel would stop all military operations in the Gaza Strip, and withdraw all its forces from there.”

    That’s a direct qute from Abbas. The former is the BBC’s opinion.

       0 likes

  25. Anonymous says:

    In this piece…

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/6184022.stm

    …The Beeb’s scribe chummily refers to “Ken and Seb”. I suppose it makes a change for a Beeb reporter not to refer to a right-wing politician by their surname only – Thatcher, Bush (or Boooosshh in Kirst Wark-speak).

    Of course, not all Chinese support the 2008 Beijing Olympics. The double-barrelled BBC scribe’s hired help has told him so:

    When my children were small we employed a nanny from a poor province on the boarders of Mongolia.

    Surf boarder? Skate boarder? Public schools out on the Mongolian steppe?

    The article is time-stamped 16:38 GMT but the gaffe is still there.

       0 likes

  26. Verity says:

    “Iranian women have been warned to be on the look-out for cameras hidden in places where they undress, such as fitting rooms, gyms and swimming pools.”

    Iranian women have “fitting rooms”? Why?

    Re Nick Clarke – he sounds … very self-involved and not very brave. He noticed a lump and did not go to get it diagnosed until “the excrescence” was so huge he could barely move his leg. Then he went. The doctor was amazed.

    Stiff upper lip, eh? If you think a giant lump may be cancer, hang tough and don’t seek medical attention in case it’s bad news. The photo in, I think, The Times, with his two little children holding his crutches as he smiled pluckily was revolting.

       0 likes

  27. Little Bulldogs says:

    The BBC’s whitewashing of Palestinian terrorism has taken a step into the ludicrous.

    They used to call them “militants” but now they’ve decided that they are in fact “activists”:

    http://littlebulldogs.blogspot.com/2006/11/not-even-militants.html

       0 likes

  28. will says:

    Jon “I am not so sure though. How many people would have to be replaced in the BBC before there “agenda” can be changed? Is it not so deeply entrenched with the left that only the privatisation of the BBC could cure the problem?”

    Would privatisation make any difference? I think not.

    Sky News & ITN are little different from the BBC.

       0 likes

  29. archonix says:

    We need FOX in this country, or a network like it. I’ve watched it occasionally on the web, and it’s a damn sight more impartial than the BBC. Obviously it comes at things from the right, but it doesn’t stick there. If there are two sides to an argument, they get aired. If there are several sides to an argument, they all get aired. When was the last time you saw the BBC frame a debate in anything other than the “statist interventionist vs ‘crazy’ isolationist right-winger” or “statist interventionist vs slightly less statist interventionist” format? It’s very rare… The studio debates on FOX were a breath of fresh air.

    Of course, I have grudges against the fox network in general for certain behaviours regarding certain television shows but, again, unlike the BBC, their news output is a completely seperate department from their entertainment output, and there’s very little coordination between them.

       0 likes

  30. FTP says:

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6185176.stm

    Blair ‘sorrow’ over slave trade

    While I don’t like the slave trade, it was going on everywhere and I think we (the west) have had some bad luck in being the last people to really do it and thus get all the blame. So I don’t want Blair to apologise. That’s just my opinion.

    But what is shameful is the BBC’s negligence is mentioning Britain’s role in destroying the slave trade.

       0 likes

  31. FTP says:

    They do link to this however:

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4742049.stm

    Which is rather pro-British. Hopefully they’ll add a bit of it to the current article.

       0 likes

  32. AntiCitizenOne says:

    Will,

    I favour mutualisation. i.e. the BBC is owned by it’s subscribers, and they elect the BBC board directly and approve any change in subscription costs.

    They also get any profits from overseas activities.

       0 likes

  33. pounce says:

    The BBC and Not The Nine O’Clock News

    Four Iraq insurgents killed, one cross-dresser captured

    BAGHDAD (AFP) – US forces have killed four insurgents and detained 11, including one disguised as a woman nursing a baby, in a raid north of Baghdad, said the military. The four insurgents were killed immediately in a gunbattle that erupted when US forces arrived at the house near the restive city of Baquba, a common site for sectarian violence and killings.US forces rounded up 11 other men in the house and confiscated a number of weapons, including a mortar, machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades and assault rifles. “One of the terrorists was hiding in a house dressed as a woman, pretending to nurse a baby,” said the statement.
    http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20061126/wl_mideast_afp/iraqusunrestraid

    Euro MPs warn Indonesia over introduction of Sharia law

    Indonesia’s international relations could be hit if it adopts Islamic Sharia law — which is being introduced in one province — a European Parliament delegation said Friday.
    http://www.eubusiness.com/afp/061124114425.viqzkrkl

    Jail for immigrant who built a mansion from benefit fraud

    Nawaz Sharif: The house is in one of the most select suburbs of the city and is now said to be worth £250,000An immigrant taxi driver built a seven bedroom mansion in Pakistan after making millions of pounds in benefit fraud, credit card scams and fake passports. Nawaz Sharif – unemployed for the past 11 years – amassed a £2 million fortune through property, selling luxury cars and various criminal activities.
    The fraudster, forger and “Mr Fixit” – who helped fellow immigrants evade traffic fines – was jailed after his life of crime was brought to an end.The 37-year-old father of three, who came to Britain in the late eighties, was based in Slough, Berkshire.
    http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23375833-details/Jail+for+immigrant+who+built+a+mansion+from+benefit+fraud/article.do

    School told to shut after breaking planning rules

    THE TOWN’S first independent Islamic school has been told to close because it has broken planning rules.Rochdale Girls’ School showed a ‘flagrant disregard’ for regulations, say councillors, when it turned a training centre into a provision for full- time education without permission.
    http://www.rochdaleobserver.co.uk/news/s/220/220420_school_told_to_shut_after_breaking_planning_rules.html

       0 likes

  34. Fabio P.Barbieri says:

    FTP: actually, Blair’s intervention was so ridiculous that this morning Andrew Marr had a good guffaw at it. As he said, apologizing is nice, especially for something that you never had anything to do with. “As a matter of fact, today I am going to apologize for the sack of Rome in 410 AD.” Believe it or not, he was quite funny. He also had Iain Duncan-Smith aboard – who has matured into one of the best commentators around – and gave him plenty of space. Marr often leaves one with the suspicion that, given a chance, he might prove to be a paid-up member of the human race. And remember that the Independent he comes from was not what it has become in the last few years – the cry of rage of the eternally pre-pubertal arrested development cases of English society.

       0 likes

  35. will says:

    On CNN Headline News, Glenn Beck has transmitted a notable hour-long show which broadcasts images of violent jihadism which the mainstream media have never revealed to the public.

    All credit therefore to CNN, of all stations, for transmitting this show — can you imagine the BBC doing such a thing?

    http://www.melaniephillips.com/diary/?p=1405

       0 likes

  36. TPO says:

    Apropos Will above and US reporting, the following is one of the most comprehensive reports on the Crawley based Pakistani terror cell (the half ton ammonium nitrate bomb) courtesy of The New York Times.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/26/world/europe/26crevice.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5094&en=e7e6dc6dc5bdf41b&hp&ex=1164603600&partner=homepageYBrowser.HTMLShellOpenCommand

       0 likes

  37. Alan says:

    So, Tony Blair is expressing his
    ‘deep sorrow’ for Britain’s role in the slave trade in history. Whatever will be next in the list of ‘white guilt’apologies: the plague, Henry V?

    Mr. Blair is regretting an institution, which part of a British
    social class profited from (along with African traders), in the 18th and early 19th century; it should be mentioned that a British political pressure group was instrumental in
    abolishing it from any area of British influence nearly 180 years ago.

    Mr. Blair would do better to direct his apparent new-found, anti-slavery campaigning to the PRESENT DAY SLAVERY as practiced in the Sudan. Where are the Islamic apologies for this? See: John Eibner,
    “My Career Redeeming Slaves”, Middle East Quarterly Forum 4,No.4 (Dec.1999)
    http://www.meforum.org/article/449.
    See also: Andrew Bostom (ed.)
    ‘The Legacy of Jihad’ (Prometheus Press 2005), Part 7: ‘Jihad Slavery’.

    Is Mr. Blair ‘regretting’ or even aware of the many European, including
    British, people who were enslaved by
    Muslims who invaded our shores in the
    17th and 18th centuries? Where are the Muslim apologies for this? (The
    BBC could assist the discussion here
    by reviving an old site on this, which can be found at:
    http://www.bbc.co.uk then go to
    ‘History’, then ‘British History’, then ‘Empire and Seapower’ then
    ‘Slavery’, and in this section, there
    is an excellent subsection,’British slaves on the Barbary Coast, their
    untold story by Professor Rees Davies’.) See also: Giles Milton ‘White Gold: the extraordinary
    story of Thomas Pellow and North Africa’s One Million European Slaves’
    Hodder & Stoughton 2004).

       0 likes

  38. Boy Blue says:

    Alan,

    ” See also: Giles Milton ‘White Gold: the extraordinary
    story of Thomas Pellow and North Africa’s One Million European Slaves”

    There was also a sizable slave trade from southern Russia and the Ukraine into the slave markets of Constantinople and elsewhere within the Ottoman empire. For centuries, Tartar raiders from the Crimea would raid far and wide looking for men, women and children to sell to their Turkish overlords.

    All forgotten about now of course. Perhaps some up and coming young BBC producer would make a documentary about it…..or maybe not.

       0 likes

  39. TPO says:

    Totally O/T (and I’m being lazy)

    Off the top of anyone’s head, just how much has ‘Scottish’ North Sea Oil contributed to the UK economy.
    The mother-in-law (who is Scottish) is the most level-headed person I know — She has a chip on both shoulders, and this is a bone of contention between us.

       0 likes

  40. Gordon says:

    I have just finished listening to a French radio program presented by a Muslim, interviewing a Muslim writer about a book that has just been published concerning the contacts between the Muslim world and France since the middle Ages. It was said wrt the crusades that to understand the concerns of eleventh century Europe about the occupation of the holiest place of Christendom by pagans it would be necessary for a Muslim to contemplate the occupation of Mecca by Christians. So to hear that stated in so many words I have to wait not for our courageous Christian leaders but a Pagan.

       0 likes

  41. archduke says:

    looks like war between Somalia and Ethiopia is about to break out..

    http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2006/11/26/africa/AF_GEN_Somalia.php

    more headlines here (google news):
    http://www.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&ie=UTF-8&ncl=1111228931

    strange how an imminent regional war, which could, in theory, escalate to wholescale genocide, isnt mentioned here:

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/default.stm

    does anyone really think that Somali Islamists will spare the lives of ANY Christian Ethiopian they get their hands on?

       0 likes

  42. archduke says:

    majority of voters favour breakup of the union.

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/11/26/nunion26.xml

    interesting.

       0 likes

  43. Roxana says:

    TPO writes:

    “Having worked in a number of muslim countries in the 70’s my personal experience was that indecent exposure, groping and voyeurism were the norm.
    My first wife was followed home one day and groped on the stairs leading to our flat. She threw the groper down the stairs. Well, she was six foot one.”

    That must have been some brave groper to take on a woman that big and strong! Or more than usually perverted and desperate 😉

    I can’t say I’m surprised that voyuerism is endemic in the Islamic world, I mean given the exteme segregation of male and female I’d expect it.

       0 likes

  44. Anonymous says:

    http://www.radical-and-right.org/index.html

    The BBC is without doubt the most powerful component of the Media Class in the UK, spanning TV, radio and print and enjoying near monopolistic status and the benefits of being tax-funded. It has international tentacles and still enjoys a reputation for integrity that it owes to its distant past and no longer deserves. It has no interest in reporting honest news, and no interest in reflecting the genuine diversity of views and culture of the native British people. Like the Media Class in general, it is dead set on changing British society in a revolutionary way and like all revolutionary movements it will do so by fair means or foul.

       0 likes

  45. Argus says:

    The reason why the BBC is “institutionally leftist” is because it is part of the soft or unnecessary end of the public sector. Its employees therefore have a vested interest in promoting high-tax, high public-spending policies, because that is how they get their money and their power. All the rest of the package — the multiculturalism, the fawning over Islamic and Irish Republican terrorists, the bogus victimhood — is merely top-dressing, or what Marx would call “superstructure”. Economics is the basis.
    There is no reason why the BBC should continue to be funded by general taxation. Indeed, much of its effluent is damaging to this country, like sewage being pumped into the water-supply.
    The BBC itself should be broken up and privatised. A British World Service, both in radio and television, should be maintained, paid for by an annual grant from Parliament and with proper controls on accuracy and objectivity. Only thus can it regain its previous and well-deserved reputation for integrity.

       0 likes

  46. Anti Aunty says:

    The BBC seems to be obsessed with Muslim women and the veil. After weeks od so called ‘debate’ on the subject~ the same pro/anti arguments were rehashed ad nauseum ` we now find, on the (d)HYS board that they are asking “Have You started wearing the veil?” and asking for comments

    Can’t they let the subject drop.

    What about a piece on (d) HYS asking Christian women if they’ve now taken to wearing the Cross, and jewellers if sales of this particlar item have risen in the light of recent events

       0 likes

  47. archduke says:

    re Blair being all sorry about slavery

    “As many or more African slaves may have crossed the Sahara Desert, the Red Sea, and the Indian Ocean as crossed the Atlantic, perhaps more. Some sources estimate that between 11 and 17 million slaves crossed the Red Sea, Indian Ocean, and Sahara Desert from 650 to 1900, compared to perhaps 11-12 million transported across the Atlantic from 1500 to the late 1860s. The Arab or Middle Eastern slave trade continued in some areas into the early 1900s.”

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery#History_of_slavery

    i dont suppose the House of Saud will be apologising anytime soon, eh?

       0 likes

  48. archduke says:

    more background
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abolitionism#Slavery_in_Britain

    buying and selling of slaves in England was made illegal in 1102.

       0 likes

  49. gordon-bennett says:

    Compare the circumstances of those of african origin in the US or UK with those of africans who weren’t sold into the slave trade by their local chiefs and stayed in africa.

    Instead of us apologising to the descendents of the slaves those descendents should be thanking us.

       0 likes