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gordon-bennett:
I was just thinking the same myself.
Heron:
I hope to receive a missive from Nat soon!
John Reith, you really do seem to have major psychological problems. And let me once again point out, this site is about the BBC not the BNP. Why do you feel you have to keep mentioning them?
The thing you keep missing is that the “scruffy Herbert from the council estate” probably votes Labour. They vote Labour because Labour give them nice big fat disability/invalidity cheques. And the fact they are then paid to breed is making this part of YOUR culture that YOU should feel affinity with.
Your bigotted comments about “in-bred people on council estates” really do show you to be the despicable, narrow-minded person you are. The only words you’re missing are “poor” and “working class”. I’ve lived on a council estate, as have most of my acquaintances who are all currently tax paying, hard working, fine parents. Where does this fit in with your culture?
You make me sick. And it sickens me that most of the BBC employees probably have similar insular views as yourself.
Just watched the latest NewsWatch
(December 22nd) with Mark Byford, BBC’s Deputy Director-General and head of its journalism and who apparently also chairs the BBC’s complaints board.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/newswatch/ukfs/hi/default.stm
Then I read this:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/10/29/ncannon129.xml
And I realised that with people like him in charge, there just ain’t no hope of improvement at the BBC.
jr
Just seen your link ref BNP hitmen.
http://www.vanguardnewsnetwork.c…work.com/? p=504
Won’t be able to look at it fully until tomorrow, however after a speed read it looks to me that you are on very thin ice here.
With regard to the ballerina ‘who did herself no credit’ I see you’ve chosen to duck that one…. care to do the honerable and gentlemanly thing and retract your aspersion on Ms. Clark.
Bryan
Byford is living proof why there needs to be a completely independent complaints body to investigate journalistic bias at the bbc who, I have to say, have been the most shrill (and rightly so) about independent complaints procedures in professional bodies and the police.
Bryan
Wonder how Mark Byford would feel about a man reading the news wearing a yarmulke? No wonder complaints never get listened to with this level of dishonesty going on.
I also had a quick look at JR’s link – he really does plumb some depths to try to save himself. I mean, just who visits sites like that?
If there was any truth in JR’s link to his hitman theory, there would be a link available on the BBC, surely!
Or are the BBC inept?
Maybe we don’t pay them enough.
TPO and Oscar,
Yes, isn’t it amazing how much damage one misguided person in authority can do.
“But if some scruffy Herbert from the council estate were to join the BNP • I’d take one look at his in-bred father, take brief note of his harridan of a mother screeching expletives at her youngest at the supermarket checkout and conclude it was par for the course.”
Is JR sure that “most people at the BBC’ aren’t “contemptuously dismissive” of him? I’d wager he’s been foisted on us because he’s been at the beeb forever and is regarded as an old fart too expensive to get rid of. And yes of course I’m sure JR is right about the groupthink rubbishing of this website by beeboids – it proves our point – they are prejudiced.
John Reith | 05.01.07 – 3:18 pm | #
that’s all very nice, john, but:
we are not just talking about family -we are talking about countries with execution rates that differ by a factor of over TWENTY to ONE, and how this is reported by a so-called IMPARTIAL newsgathering WORLD-IMPACTING three billion pound entity
of course when a loved one of mine dies i don’t expect you to react as i would, nor the converse. if the mayor of Mytown dies, of course MYtown will deal with it in a far more personal way than you in Yourtown. but i certainly might ask questions if the “impartial” world-straggling bbc virtually ignored the one and milked the other beyond reason. similarly, if i ‘executed’ 10 londoners and you murdered 10 londoners, i rather think that even you at your most murderous would find it curious if the bbc subtly vilified me but gave you no exposure at all. and in any event, in the real world, rightly or wrongly, we tend to be MORE tolerant of those with whom we share cultural affinity, not less tolerant.
no, john, i don’t think you can airily dismiss the bbc’s ignoring of china’s plethora of executions for all sorts of reasons not even the capital-punishment endorsing parts of the usa consider as capital crimes, by brandishing some concept of ‘cultural affinity’.
indeed, the only cultural affinity i see between the bbc and the usa is of a decidedly negative correlation!
you really think so many beeboids take every chance to denigrate the usa because of their cultural affinity with it? what other demonstrations of this cultural affinity can you point me to, please?
by the way, you have virtually said you expect the chinese to be murderers. i’ll leave the chinese to deal with you on that nice bit of bigotry.
had you tried to give me some reasons (positive, of course!) you personally think the usa should be held to a higher standard, i might have been sympathetic. but that’s certainly not the bbc’s job. and in any event, holding someone to higher standards is a far cry from holding other GREATER OFFENDERS to next to NO standard at all! surely this is in its very essence an example of bias.
cultural affinity, indeed.
BBC: ‘Cartoons protester found guilty’
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6235279.stm
Scotsman.com: ‘Muslim guilty of soliciting murder by bombs call’
http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=25652007
Unsurprisingly, the BBC story omits the following:
The jury of seven men and five women took seven hours to convict Javed, who shook his head as he learnt his fate.
As the verdicts were handed down there were cries of protest from an unidentified man in the courtroom’s public gallery.
“I curse the judge, I curse the court, I curse the jury, all of you,” the man shouted.
Can someone put me in the direction an exploding muslim emoticon?
Allan@Aberdeen | 05.01.07 – 6:14 pm
http://thumbsnap.com/v/13V5liWd.gif
Near enough?
BioD, nearly there and I’m sure you can picture what the finished article would look like.
Something to look forward to on tonight’s Newsnight:
LIFE UNDER SADDAM
From Baghdad we have Salam Pax’s view of Saddam Hussein’s life and botched execution. It includes revealing insights into what it was like living under a dictatorship. How, for example, many people in Iraq saw Saddam as an uncle.
Allan@Aberdeen | 05.01.07 – 6:32 pm
Religion of Pieces™ ❓
Allan@Aberdeen,
http://www.smiling-faces.com/php/vote.php?lan=en&id=954&smiletype=smile
http://www.gawaher.com/lofiversion/index.php/t2915.html
:sl:
😆
BioD, nice one! There is a serious point behind this in that neither the BBC nor its favourite tyranny like to be mocked, yet they are perfect targets for real satire.
Possibly it’s because neither of them like to be mocked, or even criticized, that neither of them will change.
This evening Radio 5 Live’s Drive headlined the news that Lord Falconer had called the execution of Saddam “deplorable”.
I emailed the following (it wasn’t read out) :
A representative of the majority of ordinary people today called the BBC’s obsession with the manner of Saddam Hussein’s death “deplorable”.
The average man said he was glad Saddam Hussein was dead and couldn’t care less how the monstrous sadistic dictator died. He stated that video and audio recordings made by BBC journalists had helped stir up agitation amongst an easily influenced group of people, namely the so-called “British intelligentsia”.
The man went on to say that he anticipated any attempt by the US to impose order in Iraq with thousands of extra troops would be undermined at every turn by BBC journalists. He said: “Ethiopian forces were able to defeat Islamic extremists in Somalia because they didn’t feel constrained by representatives of the hand-wringing western media. Those trying to establish democracy in Iraq do not have the same luxury.”
.
UK taxi driver caught speeding at 420 mph..
in his 12-year-old Vauxhall Cavalier diesel.?
http://www.thepeninsulaqatar.com/Display_news.asp?section=World_News&month=January2007&file=World_News2007010581044.xml
.
John Reith,
I may not post often, but I read this blog almost daily. I’ve read enough to know that you are employed by the BBC and that you spend all of your time here insisting that the BBC is not biased. That’s all I need to know.
There are many fine examples of BBC bias on this blog, but you are the highest and best evidence of BBC bias.
JimBob | 05.01.07 – 3:47 pm | #
And so it is with elitist liberals everywhere–complete disdain for those they presume to represent.
The BBC and half the story;
Cartoons protester found guilty
A British Muslim has been found guilty of soliciting murder during a London rally against cartoons satirising the Prophet Muhammad.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6235279.stm
So why half a story?
These two snippets from the article caught my eye
“Mr Perry told the Old Bailey that Javed “appeared to be one of the leaders”.”
And
“Anjem Choudary, a former spokesman for the now banned Al-Muhajiroun organisation, said Muslims were treated as “second class citizens” and could not get a “fair trial”.
Both are linked and the BBC remains silent on that link.
Not only was Umran Javed a member of Al-Muhajiroun and was somewhat vocal to the BBC on a number of occasions as a leader of radical muslims in the Uk. But Anjem Choudary who the BBC bring out to profess the “we are all innocent line” for radical Islam (yet again)was fined last year for organising the very protest in which his fellow ‘boys only club’ saw his freedom somewhat curtailed today.
Err BBC if you are going to bring out Choudary in which to balance the story (How, I do not know) would it not be in the interests of the reader to be informed that buggerlugs was the reason for the protest in the first place.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/5148364.stm
The BBC and half a story…
‘Iran’s Supreme Mullah Leader Will Be Dead Soon’
http://www.iranian.ws/iran_news/publish/article_19925.shtml
The names of three possible successors to Khamenei are currently on the lips of Iranians: Khamenei’s son, Mojtaba; Iran’s former reformist president, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani; and Gholam Ali Mesbah Yazdi, the ultra-conservative ayatollah who is considered the spiritual father of Iran’s current hardline president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. All mullahs.
Expect a ‘Have Your Say: Your tributes to Comrade Khamenei’ any day now. Also expect the Beeb to support the ‘reformist’ Hashemi “it’ll take one nuclear bomb to wipe out Israel” Rafsanjani in any ensuing power struggle.
This is how the BBC think, it is to be expected that some “in-bred”, “scruffy Herbert from the council estate” will vote BNP, but the ballerina is in the arts, a stereotypical champagne socialist. This is what gets under the skin of the BBC types she is seen as a traitor to their cause.
John Reith’s attitudes probably apply to 90% of the Guardian’s readership. If the classical political parties don’t offer an argument to the problems of society, then its not surprising that a third position opens up.
I’m not in favor of the BNP (Too many skeletons/racism etc), but a UKIP type program would have real traction. Once you sever the EU/UK connection, you help staunch the injection of creeping socialism from the continent.
Honestly, most of britons prefers Thatcherism to any of the alternatives.
A little bit sloppy BBC?
http://newssniffer.newworldodour.co.uk/articles/20181/diff/0/1
The difference is a great as between lightning and a lightning bug.
Guido has got Andrew Marx just about right….
http://5thnovember.blogspot.com/2007/01/marr-interviewing-gordon.html
I don’t know why but this made me think of the BBC:
British Universities have long been centers of radicalism, usually of the brand of amateur socialism espoused by the Socialist Workers Party or its ugly sisters Militant and the Worker’s Revolutionary Party. Pretending to understand Dialectical Marxism and Trotskyite “permanent revolution”, the leftist radicals infested, and still infest, campuses across Britain.
Since the 1970s, these activists have promoted the myth of Palestinian perpetual martyrdom, and portrayed Israel as a bogeyman. During the 1980s, they supported the women who camped rough outside RAF Greenham Common, a US-linked air base in Bedfordshire, Britain. Though ignored by most students, activists promoted an agenda of anti-Americanism and anti-semitism that has infected at least two generations of post-graduates.
Ultimately they contributed to British media’s fawning over the notion of Palestinian, and by extension all Muslims’, victimhood. Now grown up, the former student union activists are the first to hurl the term “Islamophobe” at anyone who questions the spread of radical Islam. In such a climate, it has been easy for Islamic radicalism to flourish, and even to be welcomed on Britain’s campuses.
Market Participant 05.01.07 – 11:17 pm
Have a look at the latest version of that ‘Sudan sex abuse’ story:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/6226829.stm
It seems that another stealth edit has removed the following telling paragraph:
The UN also said it had sent home four Bangladeshi peacekeepers after looking into similar allegations against them.
Can you imagine the BBC removing the nationality of these ‘peacekeepers’ if they were Yank or Israeli? When hell freezes over.
Also they say:
There have been allegations of sexual abuse by UN peacekeepers in places such as DR Congo, Haiti and Liberia.
Here’s one they don’t tell you about:
‘Hushed rape of Timor’
http://www.etan.org/et2005/march/20/26hushed.htm
IT caused outrage among East Timorese and Australian troops sent to protect them, raised tensions among UN peacekeepers to a deadly new level and caused senior UN staff to resign in disgust.
The deployment of Jordanian peacekeepers to East Timor was probably one of the most contentious UN decisions to follow the bloody independence ballot. It was eclipsed only by the cover-up and inaction that followed when the world body learned of their involvement in a series of horrific sex crimes involving children living in the war-battered Oecussi enclave.
Children were not the only victims – in early 2001, two Jordanians were evacuated home with injured penises after attempting sexual intercourse with goats…
Read it all. (What a shame that John Reith’s BBC doesn’t have more ‘cultural affinity’ with our Aussie ‘cousins’!)
So what about the rapes by Jordanian troops in East Timor, BBC? Wouldn’t care to embarass your Arab/Muslim chums by reporting this one?
Good old BBC: “Telling the public to move along because there is nothing to see here – it’s what we do!”
And here’s how Fox News reported the UN sex abuse scandal in Sudan:
‘U.N. Peacekeepers Accused in Sudan Sex-Abuse Case Get Reprimand’
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,241960,00.html
Six Bangladeshi peacekeepers under United Nations command were demoted, dismissed or reprimanded for their roles in a sex-abuse case while on assignment in the Sudan, but U.N. officials are powerless to bring charges or prosecute the soldiers for their alleged crime.
Nonetheless, Jane Holl Lute, assistant secretary-general for peacekeeping operations, thinks the punishment is enough.
So not only is the Beeb reluctant to expose the sexual depravities of the followers of the Religion of Peace, it is also reluctant to expose the sheer ineptitude and corruption of its favoured political body – the United Nations.
Market Participant | Homepage | 05.01.07 – 11:17 pm |
oooh! the UN is “probing” some peace-keepers!
what’s that, rough justice?
Not sure if anyone else has noticed this, but there is currently a BBC Politics poll, which is asking viewers to vote online on their chosen political hero. The lineup is impressive – Alex Salmond (Scottish National Party), Neil Kinnock (old lefty), Tony Benn (Old crusty lefty) Claire Short (anti-war lefty), Norman Tebbit (quoted as saying in 1990 ‘The word ‘conservative’ is used by the BBC as a portmanteau word of abuse for anyone whose views differ from the insufferable, smug, sanctimonious, naive, guilt-ridden, wet, pink orthodoxy of that sunset home of the third-rate minds of that third-rate decade, the nineteen-sixties.’ – classic). Also we have Shirley Williams, ex Lib Dem.
Left 5, Right 2.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/politics_show/6161847.stm
“There is still time to vote… but the vote will be closed at 12:00 on Thursday 11 January 2006 – the results will be announced on the Politics Show of 14 January 2006.”
The current results from that vote are (as of 3am 06/01/07) …
Tony Benn
34.72%
Neil Kinnock
5.68%
Alex Salmond
11.88%
Clare Short
2.30%
Norman Tebbit
2.30%
Margaret Thatcher
35.71%
Shirley Williams
7.42%
so thatcher has it (suprise suprise). I’ve bookmarked this – Wouldn’t put it past some freshfaced nu-media pinko to skew the results at some point before the close of play.
Quoting al-bbc again:
“There is still time to vote… but the vote will be closed at 12:00 on Thursday 11 January 2006 – the results will be announced on the Politics Show of 14 January 2006.”
In the sloppy fashion we have come to expect of our beloved public service broadcaster, this should be 2007 not 2006
Stealth edit, tick tock.
Back to school !
Screenshot to confirm my above 2 posts
http://img523.imageshack.us/img523/1457/jan6th20071wd1.jpg
A typical BBC passionate defence of the Human Rights Act…
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/6234223.stm
Oh dear: BBC’s “Have Your Say: should airlines be more green” doesn’t seem to be going the appropriate direction. I wonder how long it’ll be before it’s dropped?
http://newsforums.bbc.co.uk/nol/thread.jspa?threadID=5181&&&edition=1&ttl=20070106070843
Nom de guerre,
Interesting posts, though an awful, depressing subject.
So the East Timor/Jordanian situation is the old story of Muslims abusing and killing Christians, sanctioned by the UN and covered up by the BBC.
The BBC has a helluvah lot to answer for.
“There is still time to vote… but the vote will be closed at 12:00 on Thursday 11 January 2006 – the results will be announced on the Politics Show of 14 January 2006.”
The forward-looking BBC?
Nom de guerre | 06.01.07 – 12:13 am
This is an interesting development of stealth editing which seems to defeat News Sniffer because it’s basically the same story (using in part the same text) but the heading has changed. I think this means that News Sniffer cannot detect that the “new” story is a development of the old story and so the beeb can quietly drop “inconvenient” information as it pleases.
See the links below.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/6226829.stm
Heading: UN to probe Sudan sex abuse claim
http://newssniffer.newworldodour.co.uk/articles/20181/diff/0/1
Heading: Sudan to probe UN sex abuse claim
‘It’s pervasive’:
The following extract is from an article by Simon Kelner:
” It seems that any group of activists can get their mates to email the BBC, and the corporation will oblige them with terrified
self-censorship. I’m thinking of doing the same next time I hear that Sir Andrew Green, with his repellent views on immigration is slated to appear on ‘Today.'”
http://www.newstatesman.co.uk.(8 Jan)
( I’m sure Sir Andrew can ably defend himself.)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6236053.stm
US ‘heroes’ catch falling toddler
Here we go again. This publication
http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=local&id=4906087
had no problem represnting the two men in a positive light.
(Bronx – WABC, January 4, 2007) – A toddler tumbled out a fourth-story window in an apartment complex in the East Tremont section of the Bronx Thursday, and was miraculously caught by two men below, police said.
Heroes? Of course they are:
….Pedro Julio Nevarez and Julio Gonzalez had positioned themselves on the sidewalk to try and catch Addo.
“I was just hoping and praying that I was going to be able to grab him, because as he was coming down I noticed he was pretty big, a pretty big kid,” Nevarez said. “It’s so fortunate that [Julio Gonzalez] was standing right next to me, because actually [Addo] bounced off of me. I couldn’t get a good grip, and [Gonzalez] grabbed him.”
“As I seen him, just like I said, I just ran across the street,” Gonzalez said. “I said I gotta catch this kid, I gotta catch him.”…
And like true heroes, that’s not how they see themselves:
http://wcbstv.com/topstories/local_story_004170029.html
So here’s a few questions for the BBC sub-editor or whoever wrote the headline:
*How much does a three-year-old weigh?
*How high is four storeys?
*How much force is represented by a three-year-old falling four storeys?
*What’s the definition of a hero?
And here’s a multiple-choice question for the likes of John Reith:
The BBC writer put ‘heroes’ in quotes because:
a)He/she is anti-American
b)He/she doesn’t understand what quotes are and how they should be used
c)He/she doesn’t know what a hero is
d)All of the above
Correction to above (although I am loathed to repeat another source of
‘political correctness’):-
http://www.newstatesman.co.uk
(and go to ‘Columnists’).
How interesting to note that more and more people are becoming skeptical about climate change. I have noticed it myself: 12 months ago my skeptical views on the subject would more often than not be met with hoots of derision; though on occasion I could win people over with argument. Now people sit on the fence a little more. I think there has been a subtle change in the BBC. Earlier in 2006 there would be hand-wringing condemnation of the American oil companies, supported by the BBC’s “independent” climate change expert George Monbiot – who’s about as independent as Margaret Thatcher is communist – but later on the BBC started affording a little airtime to people such as Nigel Lawson. The latest HYS is interesting: there is a slight majority of the most recommended that are skeptical. It will be interesting to see whether the BBC will alter its presentation accordingly.
http://newsforums.bbc.co.uk/nol/thread.jspa?sortBy=2&threadID=4872&edition=1&ttl=20070106132348&#paginator
Of more interest is why the BBC was so disinterested in the science, or lack of it, regarding climate change in the first place, preferring to act as Al Gore’s mouthpiece instead with scant regard to whether he was right, wrong or had an agenda.
The DHYS team has been letting through comments which contain 100% incorrect information here: http://newsforums.bbc.co.uk/nol/thread.jspa?threadID=5117&sortBy=1&edition=1&ttl=20070106134305
It’s about the standard of service accommodation, and the team has been letting through huge numbers of anti-service comments containing such marvellous gems about accommodation being free, with no council tax, etc. and all manner of anti-soldier comments while not allowing terribly many truthful/pro soldier comments through.
For the record, army accommodation is certainly not free, although it is largely below market rates (and often well below market standards — army accommodation handed over to asylum seekers invariably has to be totally renovated and renewed), servicemen pay council tax even when on operations abroad, and they can’t usually take accommodation on the free market outside because junior ranks are not actually paid very well, and they are reposted every two years or so.
Army Rumour Service discussion here: http://www.arrse.co.uk/cpgn2/Forums/viewtopic/t=54836.html
The BBC , two executions and balanced reporting;
Saddam hanging taunts evoke ugly past
A few hours after Saddam Hussein’s execution, the Iraqi government put out a videotape of what had happened. There was no sound on the tape, and it ended at the point where the executioners put the rope around his neck. It all seemed weirdly calm and dignified.
Not so. One of the witnesses managed to get a mobile phone into the execution chamber, and recorded the entire event, from the time when Saddam is brought into the chamber, his hands and feet shackled, to the moment when his body is hanging lifeless at the end of the rope.
It is shocking, of course. But the most shocking thing about it is the sound.
Far from being a quiet and dignified business, the new video shows that several of the witnesses taunted Saddam during the last seconds of his life, chanted the name of one of his many enemies, and told him he was going to hell.
Ugly affair
Altogether, the execution as we now see it is shown to be an ugly, degrading business, which is more reminiscent of a public hanging in the 18th Century than a considered act of 21st Century official justice.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/6221751.stm
Now contrast the above with this dignified report by the BBC;
Somali boy executes dad’s killer
A Somali teenager has stabbed to death his father’s killer in a public execution ordered by an Islamic court. Large crowds gathered at a Koranic school in Somalia’s capital to watch 16-year-old Mohamed Moallim, stab Omar Hussein in the head and throat. Hussein was convicted of killing Mohamed’s father, Sheikh Osman Moallim, after a row about his education.Islamic courts have brought a semblance of order to Mogadishu, imposing Sharia law after years of rule by warlords.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/4967108.stm
The BBC in the first execution is quick like the leftwing reporting medium it is,in which to condemn the execution of Saddam as an “ugly, degrading business” and even quicker to bitch about allowing people to record the event by mobile phone.
With that in mind here is a little snippet found under the picture of that condemned man in Somalia on the BBC article;
”Pictures of the execution were quickly available online”
So how come the BBC is more than happy to promote the savage murder of a tied man who killed 1 man as;
“Under Sharia law those who commit murder are punishable by death.”
Yet a man with the blood of millions on his hands who was treated far better than anybody he treated is deemed as a crime against humanity.
Silly me. I forgot the Americans are in Iraq.
The BBC and balance…
Alan writes{
“The following extract is from an article by Simon Kelner:
” It seems that any group of activists can get their mates to email the BBC, and the corporation will oblige them with terrified
self-censorship. I’m thinking of doing the same next time I hear that Sir Andrew Green, with his repellent views on immigration is slated to appear on ‘Today.'””
Kelner is, of course, a moron, but even he should have had a tremor of realisation as he wrote that. The ability of the Left to flood the BBC with orchestrated comments can be witnessed daily on (D)NHYS or the disgracefully loaded “Any Answers”.
And that, moreover, completely ignores the way in which BBC researchers and other Corporation dogsbodies lean on the scales when it suits them.
A penny to a a pound, Migration Watch more accurately represents the opinion of the British public than Kelner’s liberal dribbling. And he wants that view silenced, does he? For once, the word “fascist” seems wholly apprpriate.
How like him to whine on a rare occasion when the liberal-Left doesn’t get its own way!
Nep
Just to add to your post about the Military paying for food and lodgings.
I have in my time paid tax while on tours out of the country.
That adds up to
2 x Falkland tours
1 x Bosnia tour
1 x Ascension tour
1 x Belize tour
All of the above are 6 month long.
Add a total of 3 years spent on duty in Northern Ireland.
Well over 5 years living in the field so I can say I have spent well over 10 years of my life living out of a rucksack away from my loved ones.. For the privilege of doing so I have paid tax.
In Germany I paid poll tax. Teachers (DaveT take note) and British civvies employed by the MOD didn’t.
I have paid accommodation which until I gained my third stripe (kind of pisses on your bonfire eh Mr Reith about being a gobby JNCO) usually entailed sharing with other people. I was lucky as I got my third after 9 years. I know of many full screws, lance jacks and sappers who shared their pits with their mates most of their time in uniform. That means no privacy. Yes we joined of our own accord but the standing joke while in a hole in the ground while on ex. Was that as second rate citizens we had to protect those who hated us. The one good thing about wearing in green is you get used to sharing and team work. Now if these idiots on the BBC pages had to endure even half the crap I’ve had to and pay for the privilege. I can assure you the BBC would be demanding a human rights enquiry via its HYS spot.