Open thread – for comments of general Biased BBC interest:


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

  1. TPO says:

    Here is an article written in the Guardian by a man who was exposed as a cold war KGB spy. His name is Richard Gott. He is a traitor and he is paid by The Guardian.

    ‘This eruption is irreversible
    Ecuador has joined the red tide now sweeping Latin America in a second struggle for independence’

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1958653,00.html

    I tried to leave a comment but the gruniard wants to see your party membership card along with your fingerprints and a retinal scan (or should that be rectal scan) before you can post.
    Typical pollyanna world. Sorry totally O/T. Just had to get that off my chest.

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  2. archduke says:

    Michael Grade package – 10 million over 5 years

    http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2475302,00.html

    “will be paid a base salary of £825,000 – nearly six times his pay at the BBC, where he worked a four-day week.”

    cant blame him – nice way to feather his nest before retirement.

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  3. archduke says:

    there’s even a HYS on Michael Grade leaving

    http://newsforums.bbc.co.uk/nol/thread.jspa?threadID=4834&start=0&&&edition=1&ttl=20061128100432

    they really are a bunch of navel gazers arent they?

    top recommended so far:

    “Who cares? This is an internal issue to the BBC, and I am astonished that they have had self-importance to make it the top headline, sending News Alerts to people’s personal PCs.

    Yawn.

    Stephen Daniels, Edinburgh “

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  4. TPO says:

    ‘even better one would be the look at kids TV.
    Rod Liddle wrote a piece in the sunday times last weekend about how his niece is utterly annoyed like hell about Balamory.’
    archduke | Homepage | 28.11.06 – 1:02 am

    Have a look at this:

    What’s the story now?
    The makers of Balamory want to explain the world to children, so they’ve moved to the city for its follow-up show, Me Too!

    http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2090-2402247.html

    Anyone who has had to sit through Balamory will understand how grotesquely unreal their world is.
    Explaining the world to children means, amongst other things, portraying white people in menial jobs whilst black people are shown in professional careers.
    It’s so cringingly bad that even my daughter refuses to watch it and she hasn’t reached two yet.

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  5. TPO says:

    bbc hys

    What will Grade’s move mean for BBC?

    http://newsforums.bbc.co.uk/nol/thread.jspa?threadID=4834&start=0&&&edition=1&ttl=20061128101854

    I’ve left my comment but I’m not holding my breath.

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  6. Oscar says:

    While the BBC are busy navel gazing and licking thier wounds here’s some real news they won’t cover – Hezbollah training Shiites in Iraq:

    http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/28/world/middleeast/28military.html?hp&ex=1164776400&en=62594e5a560b87cf&ei=5094&partner=homepage

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  7. Allan@Aberdeen says:

    Yesterday morning, on Radio 4, did anyone else hear Trevor Phillips use the words “race business”? He pointed out that banks and finance houses were ‘invited’ to attend a race conference at £700 a head. I use alarms around the word invited because, if any of these banks declined to attend Mr Phillips’s kind invitation, what would happen?

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  8. archduke says:

    Mini archduke gets along fine with her Indian, Russian and French classmates without attending a 700 quid a head conference.

    its a bit of a racket isnt it?

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  9. archduke says:

    http://www.raceconvention2006.com/

    sponsored by barclays.

    funny how 30 years of this stuff has resulted in places like Bradford turning in a new version of apartheid south africa.

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  10. FTP says:

    I live near the town that Balamory is set. The show is probably pretty close to reality, except that there are lots of Englishmen and Americans there and that the town is 100% white.

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  11. TPO says:

    ‘The show is probably pretty close to reality’
    Are you telling me that the local shop is run by a rapping wheelchair bound Geordie assisted by a no-neck reject from the Krankies?

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  12. will says:

    The BNP may be socialist but to me they still seem an awful lot less socialist than the rest!
    view_from_england | 27.11.06 – 9:44 pm

    Extracts from the BNP manifesto for the 2005 General Election

    once we have re-established the once takenfor-
    granted fact of significant government direction (albeit through a non-party political
    Ministry of Finance) of the commanding heights and overall direction of the economy.

    Sounds like the 1983 longest suicide note.

    Wherever new industries are created, therefore, worker-ownership schemes will be
    implemented as far as is practical. In smaller concerns the presumption will be in
    favour of workers’ co-operatives; in larger ones for share-ownership, profit-sharing
    and management board places.

    More soviet than socialist?

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  13. TPO says:

    Has a behind-the-scenes internecine spat broken out in the bbc.

    Trevor Phillips is speaking at a conference in London to mark the 30th anniversary of the Race Relations Act, which set up the CRE.

    It seems that the bbc are trying to marginalize this event. I cannot find any reporting on it on today’s web page.

    It is however here. With a possible clue.

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/11/28/nrace28.xml

    ‘His warnings about deepening divisions have landed him in hot water with some race lobbyists and led Ken Livingstone, the London mayor, to boycott the conference.’

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  14. archduke says:

    The Green Gauleiter David Miliband will be on Jeremy Vine on beeb 2.

    ho ho ho…

    ( to be fair , Mr Vine did mention that if UK plc vanished overnight, the Chinese would make up the difference in about 13 months)

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  15. TPO says:

    Polly’s pals in the bbc spinning like mad to row the party of vermin (which includes Tessa Jowell) out whilst trying to stick some of the mud on Cameron’s useless party.

    The headline reads:

    ‘Labour and Tory loans total £62m’

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6190510.stm

    Coming on top of the labour party’s cash for peerage scandal this is the real headline:
    ‘Labour’s failure branded unacceptable’
    The commission also described as “unacceptable” Labour’s failure to report a “significant amount of donations… on time”.

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  16. TPO says:

    Women talk three times as much as men, says study

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/femail/article.html?in_article_id=419040&in_page_id=1879

    Apart from stating the obvious, is this why the bbc (and for that matter the spooks) employs more women than men

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  17. archduke says:

    city lawyer murder

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/6190374.stm

    funny how our gun control laws are never mentioned in cases like this.

    is it not conceivable that Mr Rhys Price would still be alive if we had concealed gun laws (as in several U.S. states) – for the attackers would then have no way of knowing if a victim had a gun or not?

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  18. FTP says:

    Are you telling me that the local shop is run by a rapping wheelchair bound Geordie assisted by a no-neck reject from the Krankies?

    Well, no. But a lot of people can be irritatingly happy all the time. Plus even if you barely know somebody it’s still required that you stop and ask how they’re doing. It can take 10 minutes to get into the supermarket because everyone coming in and out wants to say “hi” to you.

    The whole diversity crap in Balamory always pissed me off because quite frankly there’s only 4 types of people here:
    Natives
    Americans who married a Scot
    Middle class Englishmen trying to get away
    Retired upper class ex-RAF “chalks away!” type Englishmen

    Of course a tv show isn’t required to reflect where it’s set, but the massive difference between Balamory and reality just makes the whole thing seem more ridiculous. I bet nobody from the BBC even visited Tobermory (the real town) while thinking up the show. They probably just saw the coloured houses on a post card.

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  19. TPO says:

    FTP …just one more and then I promise I will desist.
    Do the dolphins jump across the bow of the ferry?

    I suspect some of the ‘cast’ are frigged off with it with lines like:

    Archie as he’s putting on the rear end of a pantomime cow, “I like being in the rear”
    And Josie Jump, whilst looking though a pair of binoculars when the homosexual policeman walks in.
    Plum, “Can you see anything?”. Josie, “Only a blackbird and a blue tit”.
    bbc at its finest.

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  20. FTP says:

    I have only ever seen 1 porpoise and it was way off in the distance.

    The ferry company, which is publicly owned and renowned for being shit, have spent what looks like a million quid on a huge waiting room that is 10 times bigger than it needs to be (it probably only serves a couple hundred people a day). To make things worse, they repeatedly replay videos on big expensive LCDs telling everyone how great “their” ferry service is. It’s almost Big Brother-like. In the mean time they seem to have downgraded all the interiors of the actual ferries and removed the safety lights that would help you get around if there’s ever a power cut on board.

    Also they never run smaller ferries in the winter, so ferries that are 3-4 times bigger than needed are wasting public money and polluting.

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  21. archduke says:

    Miliband is on Vine now.

    i wonder if they’ll mention that Greenland was green when the Vikings were there…

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  22. archduke says:

    “Do the dolphins jump across the bow of the ferry?”

    yes – but in Dingle, county Kerry
    http://www.dodingle.com/pages/fungi_dingle_dolphin.html

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  23. will says:

    BBC DG Mark Thompson “interviewed” by our Sophie on BBC1 Lunchtime News.

    Thompson says he wants a vibrant ITV. He wants “a plurality of news”.

    So can there be any news, or position, other than that shown on the BBC?

    Or does the “plurality” make him feel better about the statist line that is peddled by the BBC?

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  24. archduke says:

    ha ha – Vine show , bbc2 – the Green Gauleiter is getting a bit of a going over by callers.

    wonderful.

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  25. Socialism is Necrotizing says:

    0810 BBC Chairman Michael Grade has dramatically switched camps to ITV.

    from http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/today/listenagain/

    They just dont get it do they!

    It is not the purpose of the BBC, as a Public Service Broadcaster to compete with the commercial broadcasters. But to provide services uncatered to by the commercial sector.

    Once you are talking about switching camps the inference is that there is competition.

    The correct headline would be “Head of State Broadcaster hired by Private Sector Broadcaster”

    I am available for hire as a BBC headline writer but I do not come cheap.

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  26. Alan says:

    My nomination,for the post of

    CEO and DG of the BBC, is:

    ROD LIDDLE.

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  27. Charlie says:

    ROD bloody LIDDLE?

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  28. Edna says:

    Again with the ‘crudely made missiles’

    BBC website today’s report from Alan Johnson in Gaza.

    Gaza takes a breather from Israeli bombardment.

    No comments, of course, about the fairly well publicised reports that Hamas are using the ‘ceasefire’ to rearm.

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  29. Edna says:

    On another part of the BBC website—dated Monday 27 November

    Israeli police are looking for a serial rapist.

    Headline news??? Does anyone really care?? Why is this important news??

    Or does it prove that Jews can be rapists too??

    I just don’t get it.

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  30. Nikola says:

    ‘find a party that values freedom, liberty and has a strong Atlanticist and anti-EU policy, cos in the long run, none of us will benefit from the BNP. Heck, even if the BNP won a majority in parliament, you can bet your life that the powers that be would declare martial law to prevent them getting into power.
    we dont want to go down that route do we?’
    @archduke: From where have you drawn the conclusion that the bnp dont value freedom or liberty? Im not really bothered about Atlanticist policy, im more worried about Britains sovereignity and it not being a poodle. As for anti-EU policy, can you get any more anti-EU than withdrawal from it? Lastly I think its quite defeatist to claim dont vote for so and so, even if they win a democratic mandate, the powers that be would declare martial law and we dont want that. Firstly we dont know that the powers that be would declare martial law. Secondly id argue that even if we knew they would it would be even more incentive to vote in someone to replace the powers that be and resist them rather than just accepting subservience to their dictatorial intentions.
    Regards,
    Nikola

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  31. Jonathan Boyd Hunt says:

    TPO:

    Re: Richard Gott. Check out this slide show:

    http://img295.imageshack.us/slideshow/player.php?id=img295/4774/116410162988y.smil

    (It might take a few seconds to start but I recon you’ll think it was worth the wait)

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  32. AntiCitizenOne says:

    My nomination,for the post of CEO and DG of the BBC, is:

    Scipio Aemilianus for his experience with the Carthage “project”.

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  33. Steve E. says:

    To be broadcast as a prel-Christmas treat on Woman’s Hour…

    Baghdad Burning

    A searing account of life in Iraq drawn from a real life weblog of a young Iraqi woman known only as Riverbend. Dramatised by John Fletcher and starring Jasmine Callan, the stories reveal an intelligent, resilient but vulnerable young woman in an impossible situation.

    Can anybody else confirm the rumours that Miss Riverbend is in fact a daughter of an ex-Baathist official?

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  34. Umbongo says:

    will quotes Mark Thompson who “wants a vibrant ITV”. Any statement which includes the words “vibrant” or “celebrate” (as in “celebrate diversity”) automatically means that the person speaking has engaged his mouth before (or, more likely, instead of) his brain. As with all such statements, this statement of Thompson’s is literally devoid of meaning.

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  35. gordon-bennett says:

    My nomination,for the post of CEO and DG of the BBC, is:

    Anyone who posts frequently on this blog.

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  36. Umbongo says:

    AntiCitizenOne

    “Scipio Aemilianus for his experience with the Carthage “project”.”

    Unfortunately Scipio is otherwise engaged at present on this project although he will be free to accept new assignments after 2012

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  37. TPO says:

    JBH
    I’m keeping that one.

    Since April of this year the Guardian has paid the KGB spy Gott eight times

    http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/richard_gott/index.html

    Still a Stalinist
    Gerard Baker makes a small error in describing the London Guardian’s Richard Gott as an “ex-Stalinist” (“Despised and Successful,” May 9). As far as I am aware, there is nothing “ex” about his Stalinism.
    Gott was caught accepting pocket-money from the KGB only a few years ago, and his subsequent transfer of allegiance to the Iraqi Baath party has not required him to surrender any of his previous loyalties or affiliations.
    Christopher Hitchens
    Washington, DC

    It is believed in certain quarters that Oleg Penkovsky was not executed by firing squad but thrown, alive and conscious, into a furnace. What a pity we cannot oblige Gott with a similar fate.

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  38. Socialism is Necrotizing says:

    The perfect Chairman for a State Funded Broadcaster that is anti-American, anti-Capitalist etc etc etc has got to be Fidel Castro.

    Perhaps the BBC could get a two-for-one deal and employ his brother Raoul as DG.

    Others on the board

    -Yassir Arafat (at least his ashes in a bowl on the boardroom table)

    -George Galloway (BBC Scotland)

    -Martin McGuiness (in charge of discipline)

    -Ken livingstone (in charge of BBC parking lot)

    -Yousef Islam (aka Cat Stevens), in charge of feeding BBC fat Cats. “Stevens- Where the hell is my Whiskas!….”

    -Polly Toynbee (in charge of entertainment and pole dancing)

    -Kirsty Wark (in charge of Vacation arrangements for staff with a special portfolio managing Capital Expenditure Building Projects)

    -Mark Oaten (Sanitation)

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  39. Jonathan Boyd Hunt says:

    TPO:
    The thing is, should we really tolerate the publicly-funded BBC placing something like 95% of its job advertising in a newspaper that takes copy from an admitted former KGB agent who shows no signs of having changed his ways?

    P.S did the slideshow work okay?

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  40. Jonathan Boyd Hunt says:

    Socialism is Necrotizing | 28.11.06 – 3:50 pm

    That had me laughing out loud.

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  41. Diana says:

    Jonathan that was a very good presentation, the quotes ran a little fast though, but it was very interesting.
    It’s amazing that Richard Gott, an admitted ex KGB agent who willingly worked for the KGB at the same time that he was working for the Guardian, is still allowed to comment on a tax-funded media such as the BBC.
    I guess it goes to show where the BBC stands. Ethics ha ha ha, why don’t they just hire Castro and Hugo Chavez to WRITE the news as well, Castro has great experience in that, he’s been doing it to Cubans for 47 years. He could probably indoctrinate Britain in a couple of years with the help of the “peaceful” muslims, a bunch of bombings and firing squads, and military parades. That is Lenin’s recipe for taking power by creating a “revolutionary situation.”

    I find it quite offensive that someone like Richard Gott, an admirer of the assasin Che Guevara ( who was in charge of the firing squads in Cuba), is hired by the BBC. It’s just sickening.

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  42. Jonathan Boyd Hunt says:

    Diana:
    Thanks for your comments. It’s not the ideal format but I hope it conveyed with sufficient oomph the BBC’s and Guardian’s symbiosis and corruption.

    That will stay up there for as long as Image Shack is in existence so don’t be shy in putting the word about. As an American (I assume) you might be interested in these two pieces on the BBC too:

    http://www.aim.org/aim_report/A4488_0_4_0_C/

    http://www.aim.org/aim_report/A4723_0_4_0_C/

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  43. Alan says:

    Another nomination I recommend for the short-list of the post of
    CEO and DG of the BBC is: MARK STEYN.

    The BBC might find this part of his philosophy quite challenging:

    ” One of the big lessons of these last 4 years is that many, many
    beneficiaries of Western civilisation
    loathe that civilisation, and the
    media are generally inclined to blur
    the extent of that loathing.”

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  44. TPO says:

    ‘P.S did the slideshow work okay?’
    Perfectly thanks… that’s what I’m keeping.

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  45. will says:

    I guess it goes to show where the BBC stands. Ethics ha ha ha, why don’t they just hire Castro and Hugo Chavez to WRITE the news as well

    The BBC will have to wait in line. On Channel4 tonight we have a programme mocking & scorning the evil CIA for its (claimed) attempts to bump off the indestructable Fidel.

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  46. Allan@Aberdeen says:

    JBH, can you provide links to the reports which you used as background or have them available to download as .pdf format? Very interesting manner in which Gott is engaged by The Guardian. Has Gott done anything for the BBC since his unmasking as a traitor. And why wasn’t he pursued by the authorities? No excuses, not even his age, (Melinda Norwood – unrepentant Stalinist bitch) but then he may have been considered too young.

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  47. Gordon says:

    There is one good point about the guardian’s jobs section archive, that is come the revolution, we will know exactly who to sack.

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  48. Diana says:

    Jonathan thanks for the links :+:

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  49. Jonathan Boyd Hunt says:

    Alan@Aberdeen:

    Yes, I’ve got all the JPEGS sized 26cm x 20cm 200dpi – 260dpi. I’ll get them to you in a day or so.

    I’m not sure I can answer your question: “Why wasn’t Gott pursued by the authorities?” Unlike spies in the usual sense of the word Gott was merely a KGB “agent of influence,” using the columns of The Guardian to promulgate his Commie ideology much the same as the Guardian’s poisonous political staff do these days. I’m not sure whether he actually committed an offence.

    In any event, the Metropolitan Police is in terminal thrall to our media and so wouldn’t do anything anyway. Read Mark Watts’s amazing book on the criminal exploits of the U.K. Press – including The Guardian’s David Leigh especially – in cahoots with Benjamin “Benji the Binman” Pell: The Fleet Street Sewer Rat

    http://www.amazon.co.uk/Fleet-Street-Sewer-Rat/dp/1903906156

    – or, indeed, my own exposé of The Guardian’s perversion of the Downey Inquiry into the Hamilton affair:

    http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0473051230

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  50. Biodegradable says:

    Gaza takes a breather from Israeli bombardment.

    No comments, of course, about the fairly well publicised reports that Hamas are using the ‘ceasefire’ to rearm.
    Edna | 28.11.06 – 2:14 pm

    No comments either about Israelis in Sderot who are still unable to take a breather from “Palestinian” bombardments.

    The BBC needs reminding that it was the Pretendistinians who declared this “ceasefire”, the same people who so far have failed to honour it, and the same ones who will jump at the chance to accuse israel of breaking it once their provocation proves too much.

    via DSTPFW

    I predict the ceasefire will last as long as Israel doesn’t respond to continued rocket attacks from Palestinians.

    John, Ossining, USA

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