, might as well have been a Labour Party Press Release – a jolly retelling of Ed Balls’ words, unencumbered by any opposition response (not even from the BBC’s favoured ‘opposition’, the LibDems), with, for good measure, a free kick at David Cameron at the end.
Biased BBC reader Pete points out another BBC Views Online story, NHS staff protest against reforms, apparently so universally uncontroversial that it too requires no balancing comment.
No ‘being’ about it Dr R, the regular beeboids have all been infesting the place for a while. And ‘spies’ makes it sound all rather more exciting than it is. We are merely interested in the pov(s) expressed here. Some of them even have merit 😛
I won’t point the obvious flaw in your post that if you want to change it, you aren’t going to do it unless beeboids are engaged in the conversation. It must be said that most of the more serious commentors here realise that and welcome the contribution, whatever form it takes.
Anyway, today I am on my own time.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7081038.stm
UK chooses ‘most ludicrous laws’
A little-known law which prohibits people dying while in the Houses of Parliament has been voted the UK’s most ludicrous piece of legislation.
This article is full of false-facts (age of consent is in fact 13 in Japan). I realise this was carried out by UKTV, not strictly BBC, but checking facts is an important part of journalism, and presenting falsehoods as facts is dangerous for a news-source which is supposed to be trusted.
“It must be said that most of the more serious commentors here realise that and welcome the contribution, whatever form it takes.
”
True. I more than welcome reasoned contributions from the Beeb no matter how one dimensional they appear to be. Where’s David Gregory by the way. I miss his gentlemanly conduct on these forums.
Reith’s obnoxious, dismissive and condescending posts I could do without. He personifies the BBCs toffee nosed attitude to it’s public and I wonder how many others at Broadcasting House he is representative of.
http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday…bc-the- lic.html
support for the BBC from a perhaps surprising source
Nick Reynolds (BBC) | Homepage | 06.11.07 – 2:16 pm |
Let’s be clear. Hitchens’ position is that public funding seems to be the only hope of getting the BBC to frankly acknowledge its biases, air rival views, and generally acknowledge some accountability.
What Hitchens is NOT saying is that charges of pervasive liberal bias by the BBC are unfounded. On the contrary, as he notes on his blog, he has been making the case that the Corporation has a strong cultural bias to the left for more than 10 years now.
I couldn’t find an article about York but I did find this one about Slough
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/berkshire/7053609.stm
Notice how this one gives a prominence of order to the council’s critics even though the council deny those reasons for the criticism.
That and the headline ‘Council blasted…’ seem quite in line with how I would expect that joe public thinks about this kind of thing.
Lurker in a Burqua:
Newsnight’s Kirsty Wark and her husband investigated by police for data theft
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/ pages…in_page_id=1770
Lurker in a Burqua | 06.11.07 – 12:10 pm | #
Hopefully this will shed some much needed light on the activities of Wark and her hubby and their links with Labour in Scotland.
This has been pretty well covered previously in the Scottish media, but not much in England:-
http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=17412005
How about the BBC giving note to this sort of view on global warming for a bit of balance?
http://sayanythingblog.com/entry/another_inconvenient_truth_about_the_global_warming_fraud/
More BBC double speak on the 6PM news.
The BBC highlight that streamlining the planning system will make it easier to build more airports (bad as the BBC see it) but more houses as the BBC see it (good as these will be for immigrants)
But of course 3 million more homes means at least 3 million more people, so we will need more power staions, more roads, more airports the very thing the BBC claim is bad for the environment!!!!!!!!
I can’t be the only one who finds this double speak confusing?
Do BBC staff count as ‘key workers’? Most other publically paid staff do. Why does the BBC use the ‘key worker’ tag anyway? Private sector workers are the key to wealth and employment. No private employment, no money, no jobs for public employees.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/sussex/7080902.stm
A nice little article detailing how evil Jehovah’s Witnesses are, and how they tried to force this lady to die rather than to get blood. When will we seen an article about a Muslim speaking out about the crazy extremist Mosque he has just escaped from I wonder?
Balen Report-
John Reith (BBC): “no smoking gun”
Sarah-Jane (BBC): “no smokin gun”
Any chance of either of you sending me a copy? The moderators will put you in touch with me. I’d just like to see it for myself, thanks.
AD, SJ, TFC, I have some sympathy with the points you’ve raised, and have forwarded your feedback to Mr. Moderator.
Please understand though that moderation is a near thankless, though necessary, task on a blog with as many readers as Biased BBC. Our comments would quickly descend into chaos if it weren’t for the efforts of Mr. Moderator to keep things brisk and on-topic, and we should be thankful for that, even if we don’t agree with every decision.
If you want to discuss moderation policy further please do so by email to my address.
Thank you,
Andrew.
Nick Reynolds
“support for the BBC from a perhaps surprising source”
Not really. Hitchens has always been a statist. He’s never been a fan of the Thatcher reforms.
The only difference is that his brand of statism is different to that of many at the BBC.
Andrew | Homepage | 06.11.07 – 7:38 pm |
If you want to discuss moderation policy further please do so by email to my address.
For the same reason as I don’t give email addresses to the BBC, sorry, no can’t do that. But thanks for the response. I don’t mind being moderated (much) but I’d like confirmation that my own personal madness is not getting worse!
TFC, why not use some flavour of free email address if you’re that worried about it? We’re not the BBC, and I’m not going to share your email address with anyone else – you don’t have to put it on your comments.
The BBC website has a video of the full turgid response by Gordon Brown to David Cameron’s speech. But – surprise surprise – has not actually posted a video of Cameron’s speech. So you’re allowed to be bored to death by Brown, but not allowed to witness at first hand the points (and jokes) that Cameron made. Really – this bias is quite ridiculous. There seems to be a well honed BBC policy – when you can’t actively undermine the opposition, just pretend it doesn’t exist.
After some searching I have actually located the video of Cameron’s speech on the BBC website. It is hard to find and not signposted – you have to click on the report of Cameron’s response to find it. Notably it isn’t on the front news page, unlike Brown’s response, nor on the Politics front page, unlike Brown’s speech. Nor is it on the video and audio page – unlike Brown’s speech. But at least it is there.
Allen@Oslo, if you had bothered to read either mine or His Lordship’s posts properly you would have noted that neither of us have been privy to the enigma that is the Balen report*.
Draw your own conclusions, but we can hardly email you something we haven’t seen.
*As I ‘bumped into’ one of the Governors henchmen in a dark basement one night and was left in no doubt about the seriousness of my team failing to deliver a project, based on its content, which they weren’t allowed to see, I am particularly curious about it. It is my personal view that they should just let it out, but they have dug a nice little hole now and I wonder if it will ever see the light of day.
Andrew – not particularly upset, appreciate the difficulties involved but don’t let the place get too sanitised, it would lose something, I fear.
You are all invited to a Public Debate on BBC, Impartiality and the future of Public Service at the New Theatre, London School of Economics, 6.30pm on Thursday November 8th: Richard D North, Elinor Goodman, Evan Davies, Emily Bell in discussion. Entrance is free – no ticket required. Details at:
http://www.lse.ac.uk/polis
Feel free to circulate these details via your email networks
Reg Hammer: “Where’s David Gregory by the way. I miss his gentlemanly conduct on these forums.”
Hello, Reg. I’m just a bit wrapped up with Autumnwatch and it’s been a busy few days in our newsroom with one thing and another. Hopefully will be able to rejoin the debate in a week or so.
I noticed in David Cameron’s response in the video that he accuses GB of stealing certain phrases from the National Front and the BNP but in the headline report on their web page the BBC seemed to have missed out three letters B,N and P.
I ask, is it the case that the Beeboids have a soft spot for the NF?
There may be all manner of software glitches throwing up bizarre effects such as strangely disappearing comments – but there’s no agenda-driven beeboid ghost messing with your posts. Get real: accept it.
John Reith | 06.11.07 – 10:32 am
I have been contributing, or it might be more accurate to say “trying to contribute” to Have Your Say on and off for quite some time. Reith can airily claim that there is no bias but though HYS has improved markedly, bias is still very much in evidence. Ironically, one of the improvements, namely giving a breakdown of the comments in the Debate Status, sometimes provides an interesting piece of evidence in the bias jigsaw puzzle.
When one sees these stats
Total comments:3105
Published comments:1883
Rejected comments:1111
on the recent Iran topic
http://newsforums.bbc.co.uk/nol/thread.jspa?forumID=3735&edition=2&ttl=20071106215153
one starts to scratch one’s head.
Nobody will convince me that the generally level-headed contributors to HYS suddenly went crazy and more than a thousand comments were found to be so objectionable that they were rejected – a totally different category from simply being unpublished. The comments that did make it onto the forum were mostly in favour of Iran. I have no doubt that if someone could resurrect the rejected comments they would be found to be mostly against Iran. There was a deliberate skewing of this topic.
I had two comments rejected that simply pointed out Iran’s support for terror. There’s nothing objectionable about telling the truth. And I broke no HYS rules.
John Reith can skoff as much as he likes but I have come to know how HYS operates quite well over the years. While it’s capable of allowing free and fair debate on occasion, there are certain topics that are like holy ground for the BBC. One is Iran. Another is Pakistan. You can’t tell the truth about these countries on the BBC. It ain’t allowed.
So is Gordon Brown a secret BNP suppoter? Well of course the BBC ignore Camerons comment.
Read this from the Daily Mail
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=491989&in_page_id=1770
Then see if you can find the BNP reference in the BBC story.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7081360.stm
And, though I have not read the Balen report, someone I know and trust, who has read it, says it contains ‘no smoking gun’ on the bias issue.
John Reith | 05.11.07 – 12:20 pm |
which is rather like leaving it to the bbc alone to judge whether or not it has acted with bias
while i do think that bbc may be biased (dont what enough to be sure) i find the quote on the left of your page funny
“The BBC is not impartial or neutral… the Daily Mail, Oct 21st, 2006.”
1) how can the daily mail even talk about biased
2) it implies that all people in ethnic minorities/gay people/young people are liberal
3) it reminds me of the stephen colberts saying “reality has a liberal bias”
4) if you look at a website like political compase its clear that the bbc would be closer to the middle than keft/right its just that we currently life in a state that has more of a conservative view (after 10 years with blair youd be kidding yourselves to say were still central)
5) given that its publicly funded its going to want to exist, so ofc its going to have a bias towards socialist parties and the party in power when opposition said they’d cut funding. to pretend it didn’t would be like pretending people like being unemployed(refer back to 1)
id like to add that i think channel4 is less biased, but like the bbc because channel4 could turn completely biased with nothing to stop it but bbc has trusts and stuff to try and prevent this!
juan:
the bbc is REQUIRED to be impartial
british residents with capability to receive tv signals are REQUIRED to pay the bbc ~135 pnds per year
if such residents violate this requirement, they are subject to fine and imprisonment
if the bbc violates this requirement, it is subject to…(juan, could you complete this sentence, please?)
here’s my completion: if the bbc violates this equirement, to acquit itself it has only to say: what, do you want us to be another mail? another sun? another fox news?
(funny how i never hear bbc apologists say, what, do you want us to be another guardian? another independent? – what is one to infer from this?)
juan : if you look at a website like political compase its clear that the bbc would be closer to the middle than keft/right its just that we currently life in a state that has more of a conservative view (after 10 years with blair youd be kidding yourselves to say were still central)
I think that’s delightful, and exactly what the BBC would say. “We’re in the middle, it’s just that everybody else is way to the right.” The political compass, by the way, is a horrible lefty site, designed to support the idea that being authoritarian about commerce isn’t authoritarian – an essential conceit for left wingers who imagine themselves to be “liberal.” Also of the questions they ask to divide authoritarians from libertarians they ask none that would embarrass lefties – nothing about the right to bear arms, fox hunting, smoking in pubs and so on. It’s a con.
Lee Moore | 07.11.07 – 2:41 am
The Political Compass is an honest attempt to avoid the inadequacies of the two axes Left/Right model of politics. It attempts to avoid the type of arguments we’ve had on B-BBC about whether Hitler was really a Socialist.
You don’t like it? There are plenty of competing models. Have some time to spare? Try to rate the BBC on all of them.
Nick Reynolds (BBC):
support for the BBC from a perhaps surprising source
Nick Reynolds (BBC) | Homepage | 06.11.07 – 2:16 pm | #
—————————
“support” Nick? ROFLMAO
Talking of American news outlets, Hitchens had this to say about the BBC.
“…are just as dominated by received liberal opinion as the BBC.”
Speaking of how networks should be compelled to be unbiased and ways to accomplish this, Hitchens says we have:
“…a faint but actual chance of complelling the BBC to behave in this way…”
Read that again Nick. Hitchens says that since the public pay for the BBC, we, the public, have a faint chance of compelling the BBC to be unbiased.
Hitchens goes on to note that the battle against left wing bias at the BBC has gone on for years.
“…Long years of criticism are beginning to have an effect and, redoubled, may actually achieve change…”
Got that Nick? Hitchens is saying that our battle is beginning to have an effect and we should “redouble” our efforts.
He cites one notable example of that change in Andrew Marr for merely admiting the Corporation does have a strong cultural bias to the left.
Admitting you have a problem is, after all, the first step to fixing the problem Nick.
In Hitchens’ opinion the only way to fix the BBC is to keep funding it with public money so, at least in theory, the BBC will be accountable to the public. Hence his headline reads “The BBC, the licence fee and why it should stay”.
Nick obviously stoped reading right there. What this shows me is just how desperate and affraid BBC employees are of losing the gravy train.
The TOADY shows take on yesterdays PMQs tried to portray Gordon Browns terrible performance in the best possible light, a very difficult task for them even with some desperate editing/cutting!
No mention of Camerons accusation of slogan/policy theft from the BNP/NF by Brown? I wonder why? The TOADY presenter chose to air the exchange on IHT(heavily edited in Browns favour of course)but left out the parts where Brown floundered like a drowning man! It was perhaps the worst performance by a serving PM ever? but the question is how long can the BBC cover this up?
At one point I thought Gordon Brown was having a mental breakdown when he started hitting the despatch box like a spoilt and angry child!
>i find the quote on the left of your page funny. “The BBC is not impartial or neutral… the Daily Mail, Oct 21st, 2006.””
Juan, it’s on the right of the page. If you can’t tell left from right then perhaps it’s best not to be talking about politics.
And the person quoted is Andrew Marr, and you obviously aren’t aware that Marr is not some right-wing death beast Mail columnist, but the BBC’s own top political interviewer.
Book me a week’s holiday in Damascus!
That’s how I felt after Jeremy Bowen’s glowing description of Syria at 7.30 on the Today programme.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/today/listenagain/
BTW, how can it be that on “The home of intelligent speech radio” Montaquin can host a discussion (8.20am) of Tolstoy’s War and Peace without ever having read it herself?
Abandon Ship
“Book me a week’s holiday in Damascus!”
Reserve a place for me. It must be lovely there at this time of year. And just to reassure you, our tour leader (a Mr J Bowen) – we are informed by one of the BBC contributors to this blog – was probably appointed as a result of the Balen Report. BBC Tours can, of course, be relied upon to provide impartial descriptions of the various destinations – especially in the Eastern Mediterranean – where they have or had resident representatives (eg Alan Johnston, Barbara Plett, Orla Guerin)
Stephanie clague:
The TOADY shows take on yesterdays PMQs tried to portray Gordon Browns terrible performance in the best possible light, a very difficult task for them even with some desperate editing/cutting!
OTOH BBC TV News last night showed that Brown was so full of rage that his hand was shaking (not good). I can’t see that this significant revelation has been picked up in the press reports.
Lies, damned lies and BBC opinion polls
I have a new post up at The Monkey Tennis Centre on how opinion polls commissioned by the BBC don’t seem to square with polls carried out by independent organisations, but remarkably suggest that the entire world thinks exactly what the BBC’s reporting tells them to think.
http://monkeytenniscentre.blogspot.com/2007/11/opinion-polls-arent-settled-either.html
Better book up quickly – looks like the DrinK Soaked Trot Poppinjays for War are also heading for Damascus based on Jeremy Bowen’s say-so:
http://drinksoakedtrotsforwar.com/2007/11/07/i-dream-on-waking-of-syria/
“And, though I have not read the Balen report, someone I know and trust, who has read it, says it contains ‘no smoking gun’ on the bias issue.
John Reith 05.11.07 – 12:20 pm”
If that is so why isn’t it being published?
I have not read the Balen Report.
I do not know you JR.
You have not read the Balen Report.
You claim to know someone who claims to have read it.
They claim it contains no ‘smoking gun’.
A lot of claims that could be confirmed by publication.
Spencer: yeah sorry i forgot that messing up left/right revokes my right to talk about politics.
Lee Moore: the seperation of economy and authoritarianism is quite obvious thats why communism isnt the same as fascism atall in terms of economic policy but has been the same in terms of authoritarianism. If you stick to left-right then given how labour want to create a nanny state surely this makes them quite far to the right! At the same time if you look at American politics ron paul is just as, if not more so due to his strong belief in the constitution, conservative (economically) as the other republican candidates, but much more liberal(authority). regarding the left-right balance if you compare us at the moment to pre-thatcher its quite clear!if you compare us to Ireland and were on the right alternatively compared to the US wed be horribly on the left, so it depends on how you average them out, i think the political compass did a fairly good job.
bias is in the eye of the beholder, its quite hard to prove that the bbc is biased and its not just that “reality has a liberal bias” or “people in the entertainment industry have a liberal bias” (the later probably being true). Compared to the alternatives the BBC is probably more biased than Channel4 but not nearly as obvious as FOX, SKY or any newspaper! could they improve? YES! will they ever be perfect? IN WHOS EYES?
Juan,
You miss the most important point which is that of compulsion, your argument makes little sense without considering it.
If sky are bias I can cancel my subscription and pay nothing.
If channel 4 are bias I can turn off and they get no advertising revenue for me.
If the daily mail is biased I need not buy it and pay nothing.
If I want to watch any other channels I must pay for the TV licence and fund the BBC even if I do not want to watch it because I consider it biased.
I cannot cancel the BBC subscription.
If I do not pay my licence I am liable to prosecution under the criminal law, getting a criminal record and a huge fine.
Make the BBC paid for by advertising or subsription and your argument may well become valid.
Join us in opposing the licence fee.
“Spencer: yeah sorry i forgot that messing up left/right revokes my right to talk about politics.”
You can’t tell left from right, and you can’t write a coherent sentence. I wouldn’t go around expecting to be taken seriously.
juan, you still do not get the crux of the argument. I agree Fox and the Daily Mail are biased, they have a political viewpoint that they make no secret of and about which everyone is aware. Daily Mail readers buy the paper because they agree with it’s political view, I buy the Times and not the Guardian for the same reason. It is after all a free country and a free market.
Except when we come to the BBC, I have no choice but to pay a significant amount of money every year directly to the BBC, if I don’t pay I go to jail. I will repeat that so that it might sink in, If I do not pay every year I go to jail.
Because of this the charter under which the BBC operates requires it to be impartial and my complaint is that it does not comply with its charter, because of its inherent, in built, opinions as to what is ‘correct’.
I do not care that Fox News is pro Israel, I do not pay to receive it. I do care that the BBC is anti Isreal, it has no right whatsoever to be anti anything. The BBC should have no opinions of its own, it should follow its charter obligations in an evenhanded way.
More on BBC opinion polls.
All this week the BBC have been running with the results of a survey on people’s attitudes towards family life. Frequent references throughout each article to Tory policy, which this BBC exercise seems to have been designed to rubbish and belittle. Several interviews with single mothers who all insist that they are happy and doing a fantastic job (surprise surprise), and this is presented as “proof” that the Tories are wrong. I see no discussion by the BBC on the vast amounts of research showing the benefits of being brought up in a stable marriage environment — no matter what opinion polls say.
Can anyone remember a time when the BBC devoted a weeklong series of reports to examining and belittling Labour party policy?
The most famous BBC poll was the one where they told us that people were so pleased with the BBC that many of them would gladly pay twice as much for it. Meanwhile, in the real world, the BBC clings like grim death to the licence fee. It knows what would happen if customers could choose to pay them or not. A few thousand redundancies and a couple of thousand more condemned to the banks of the Manchester Ship Canal would be nothing compared to the effects of the freedom to pay the BBC or not.
The BBC, defending the faith and half the story.
Contempt hearing on terror case
A lawyer who represented a man convicted of terror offences is to face a contempt of court hearing after criticising the trial. The move follows a statement read by Aamer Anwar after the trial of Mohammed Atif Siddique in September. Judge Lord Carloway said the matter should now be considered by the High Court in Edinburgh.
In response Mr Anwar said the right to freedom of speech was one of the pillars of liberty and justice.
…………….
After the verdict, outside the High Court in Glasgow, Mr Anwar said his client did not receive a fair trial and it took place in an “atmosphere of hostility”.The Glasgow lawyer described the trial outcome as a “tragedy for justice”. Siddique’s solicitor also said that the prosecution was “driven by the State”.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/tayside_and_central/7080649.stm
So according to the BBC Mr Anwar is in contempt of court for quoting the above inoffensive statements in bold. Here is how the guardian reports what he is going to get his hands slapped for;
“Speaking outside the court after the trial, with his client’s family standing around him, Mr Anwar described some of the evidence against the student as “farcical” and said the trial had been conducted in an atmosphere of intolerance and repression against Muslims.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/terrorism/story/0,,2206362,00.html
Even the news agency of Iran reports the truth better than the BBC. and it’s a real (not a wannabe) Muslim news outlet.
“A Muslim human rights lawyer is to face unprecedented charges after making an “unwarranted attack” on the judiciary for criticising a Scottish student’s terrorism trial.
High Court judge Lord Carloway accused Aemer Anwar of making unprofessional, defamatory and factually inaccurate attacks on the judiciary, the jury and the wider legal process following the sentencing of his client Mohammed Atif Siddique to eight years in prison. The solicitor was “hiding behind the cloak of his client” to make politically motivated attacks on anti-terrorism legislation, said the judge who presided over Siddique’s trial on terrorism-related charges in Glasgow. After last month’s conviction, Anwar described some of the evidence against the student as “farcical” and said the trial had been conducted in an atmosphere of intolerance and repression against Muslims. The conviction was a “tragedy for justice and for freedom of speech,” he said.
http://www2.irna.ir/en/news/view/menu-234/0711073904141605.htm
The BBC, defending the faith and half the story.
Will: “Quite, you can’t allow voluntary, as Public School right-on combo Radiohead have found”
Well, taking the figures from the article Will, there were 1.2 million downloads, with 62% paying nothing. The remaining 456,000 people paid an average of £2.90 ($6) – a total of £1,322,400 ($2,736,000) – not too bad for a band without a label to support, with marginal distribution costs!
Moreover, many of those who didn’t pay are probably new to Radiohead, and may well pay next time.
I think it’s an interesting experiment, and certainly wouldn’t write it off on the basis of the figures so far. An interesting twist on this would be to have a minimum price, say £1 – I expect that many of the ‘freeloaders’ might well pay that if they had to.
The BBC licence fee though is such an anachronism now that subscription is the only way to go – although as we know, the BBC have deliberately nobbled Freeview to ensure that moving to a subscription model entails the hassle factor of replacing lots of existing equipment lacking in card slots – typical BBC, serving its own interests rather than those of the public who pay for it.
P.S. I see Mr. Moderator has chopped your comment for being off-topic – unlike this one that swerves neatly back on topic!
I don’t know if anyone else has the capacity to see it, but Inside Out currently on BBC1 in the South East, is pretty much a mouthpiece for an ‘NHS expert’ to tell us that the government is right to want to close our local hospitals. I recognise that there is an area of debate over this, but the programme is not having one. The man talks for several minutes, and then they get an old woman to try to put across the alternative points in 30 seconds.
I see the BBC have one of the most misleading graphics I have seen for years on their page devoted to the petrol price reaching £1 – http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7082847.stm – The graphic showing what proportion of the £1 is made up of Retailer, Duty, VAT etc. The arts educated designer has split the drop of petrol into percentages by height which would be fair enough if the drop was straight sided but it isn’t, it is drop shaped. So should the drop not be split by area. As it is VAT looks to make up about 5% by area. Do the BBC know nothing about statistical representations.
I suspect that the BBC new full well what they were doing, after all we pay them large amounts of money to employ experts.
On the Simon Mayo show this afternoon (Wed 7th) on Five Live, a discussion over whether popular music has become apolitical. SM was speaking with clenched-fist-raising agitprop singer Robert Wyatt, a mamber of Mussie HipHop group Fun-Da-Mental, a 6Music lass who used to take Socialist Worker cos her idols sang about it, and a lecturer in Politics. It was clear that ‘Politics’ here meant the kind of overgrown student leftyism that goes on demos and hugs anything from the Third World.
One listener emailed “Why is it only Marxism & Liberalism that are permissible as Politics in music?” This got a very nasty reply about Guantanmo Bay.
R
Yet more propaganda from Newsnight, who are again banging on about the “gap between rich and poor”. Paxman declares that this is a major preoccupation of the people of Britain. But most people don’t care that much about it. It’s the BBC and other leftists who are obsessed with this issue.