Please use this thread for comments about the BBC’s current programming and activities. This post will remain at or near the top of the blog – scroll down for new topic-specific posts. N.B. this is not an invitation for general off-topic comments, rants or chit-chat. Thoughtful comments are encouraged. Comments may be moderated.
MattLondon | 12.12.07 – 4:42 pm
Could I suggest you actually read the Mark Easton article I linked before?
Here it is again.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6128466.stm
Prior to the BCS referred to in the piece no-one (not even the Police) did stats on race crimes against whites. Certainly no-one was on notice that they were the majority.
But the links to BBC stories in 2001 etc show that the BBC were reporting them.
No point in using the BBC search engine for this kind of thing. It’s got techie stuff running that thinks it’s helping you get what you want faster (based on previous users, I think) but which, like predictive text on your mobile, is often working against you.
I don’t really understand this stuff, but know someone who does:
http://www.currybet.net/
“No point in using the BBC search engine for this kind of thing. It’s got techie stuff running that thinks it’s helping you get what you want faster (based on previous users, I think) but which, like predictive text on your mobile, is often working against you.”
Oh brilliant, he gets better by the minute.
Reith, who slavishly uses the BBC search engine to routinely prove his ‘points’ is now suggesting that the BBC search engine can’t be relied upon.
Rightio Reith, just drop us the “Rules of BBC Engagement” when you’ve finished writing it up.
Reith, who slavishly uses the BBC search engine to routinely prove his ‘points’
I never use the BBC search engine.
On a broader point about the general treatment of ‘racism’ in MSM:
“Caucasophobia- the Accepted Racism”
http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/2006/10/caucasophobia-accepted-racism.html
David Gregory: “Watcher: Do you want me to go through all the global warming stuff again? I should just get an FAQ done every time it comes up.”
No, I don’t want you to go through it all again. After all, rebutting anything that anti-MMGW people say clearly didn’t work last time. But… The FAQ sounds interesting, but would it reflect a balanced view, or would it be more of the “Oh help we’re all doomed, unless we have more taxes!” approach?
“Global Warming is real.”
Worth a debate, but we aren’t having the debate on the Beeb. Minds closed.
“It’s probably our fault.”
Probably? Weasel word, sorry. Evidence of polar bears dying by the iceberg load (er, didn’t they die out in the last spell of global warming?) is a possible, which I think is well removed from a probable. (As in, I will probably go to jail if I don’t pay my TV licence, as opposed to I possibly would enjoy Spooks if it wasn’t so poor)
“This is what science tells us.”
No, this is what scientists with an agenda to get funding for their jobs will tell us. I think David, real science is about investigation and being objective, even sceptical, and certainly not about having sociology students jetting to faraway places and telling us we are all about to die (see above), though it does make damn fine headlines.
“Without science we’re just a bunch of monkeys praying to the big ball of fire in the sky. IMHO.”
I respect your IMHO. Not sure about when monkeys worshipped a ball in the sky, and I think human beings might just have a little bit more about them than aping (no pun intended) scientists. On the other hand, is it better we are praying to the Great God Gore, who likes us to worship at the altar of “let’s try to fool the monkeys while me and the other guzzlers fly around the planet.”
“Please. Global warming on Mars. Reordering of hottest years. Thickening ice. These and others are not the pieces of evidence you seek *does Jedi hand wave* Google them first before throwing them around.”
Hmmm, but at least there might be a debate from this googling around of alternate views. Can you recommend a TV station or news service where I might find such a debate? And the Jedi hand wave… perfect for fooling viewers who have no choice but to pay for non-debate.
Watcher: “Debate” about science is a funny thing. Recent topics for “debate”; Mobile phones give you cancer (no), MMR causes autism (no), Global Warming doesn’t exist and is nothing to do with us (no)
This is why an FAQ might be useful. As Science Correspondent. I report the science. What we do (if anything) about all this is politics. I can’t recall ever calling for higher taxes.
Will the BBC cover this ‘racism’ story nationally?:
‘Racist, Islamophobe, Fascist, Spy’
“Innocent readers will wonder why Livingstone had to bring racism into it.” (Nick Cohen.)
http://www.nickcohen.net/
But the BBC science output is abysmal David, in fact it’s so bad the government’s chief scientific advisor said that it is actually going to costs children’s lives, yes, BBC science coverage is killing children:
“The government’s chief scientific adviser criticised the BBC’s Today programme and the Daily Mail yesterday over what he called their “campaigns” against GM food and the MMR vaccine. Sir David King said Britain’s failure to adopt GM crops had cost the economy between £2bn and £4bn and that falling measles vaccination rates as a result of negative publicity about MMR would lead to between 50 and 100 child deaths.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2007/dec/06/sciencenews.gmcrops
And when even school children throw out BBC Panorama anti-wifi propagandists, it’s hard to see how much lower your science coverage can get.
http://www.badscience.net/?p=418
I would like to ask the BBC people on here: Are you proud that you have contributed to the fact that less than 1/3 of the people of the UK trust the output of the BBC?
David Gregory
get real mate. You may not personally be calling for higher taxes but anyone can see that these are inevitable as well as personal carbon credits that will only be fully enforced in the UK, and as yet the science is nowhere near as indisputable and those with financial interests and a first class holiday in Bali would lead us to believe.
Still chop down a few rain forests (generating huge CO2 output D’oh!), kill a few thousand orang utang in the name of bio fuels and the BBC and your mates in the EU are happy “you’re doing your bit”, you can even wheel out the awful carbon saving family from Derbyshire to ram the message home.
If John Reith earns 100,000 pounds a year so what, the BBC is a huge employer which means that some employees are going to be in positions which merit such large salaries.
The fact that 1/3 of the UK feels that the BBC cannot be trusted is the story that this blog should be concentrating on, the BBC has proven by it’s PC agenda that it is not fit for purpose, the continual refusal by the BBC to admit that it is not impartial will eventually lead to it’s demise.
This is a huge pity as the BBC does a lot of things very well, the HYS site is the clearest indicator of how badly the BBC judges the mood of the British public, I have never seen such anger directed towards the BBC as that it is receiving over the last 12 months, again and again the HYS blogs are full of people complaining about the BBC’s left wing reporting and it’s refusal to respond to complaints.
Even the Editors blogs are not immune from the BBC’s left-wing views, a prime example is the BBC’s attempt to justify the dumbing down of it’s news output and specifically it’s new bite size 8pm news, within this blog it uses the phrase ‘blue collar workers’ to explain that viewers from this section of the UK population have asked the BBC to provide them dumbed down news!, what a bloody disgrace, the only thing that be deduced by this usage of such a term is that the BBC thinks that lower payed workers are to stupid to understand the BBC’s main news.
BBC unbiased and impartial?, your having a laugh.
John Reith:
MattLondon | 12.12.07 – 4:42 pm
Could I suggest you actually read the Mark Easton article I linked before?
Patronising again.
Here it is again.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/61…/uk/ 6128466.stm
Been there, read that, irrelevant to the specific issue we are discusing – the BBC nonreporting of a vicious attack on a white man by an asian gang. You are trying to sidestep again.
Prior to the BCS referred to in the piece no-one (not even the Police) did stats on race crimes against whites. Certainly no-one was on notice that they were the majority.
But the links to BBC stories in 2001 etc show that the BBC were reporting them.
again irrelevant to the original question and to the simple,statistics thrown up by my simple search. but says JR:
No point in using the BBC search engine for this kind of thing. It’s got techie stuff running that thinks it’s helping you get what you want faster (based on previous users, I think) but which, like predictive text on your mobile, is often working against you.
I don’t really understand this stuff
I don’t doubt the final statement, JR, but I’m amazed at your claim and as for:
. . but know someone who does:
http://www.currybet.net/
I can only ask your friend to explain (’cause it isn’t obvious from what I can find on his site – perhaps he needs a better search engine) how the BBC search engine, when asked to search its Website for “racial” and “assault” manages to produce a long list of BBC News reports of racially motivated, assaults, roughly in inverse date order – exactly what you would expect from such a search on such a site – but inexplicably for every 5 reports of such assaults BY white people produces only one case of assault AGAINST white people – OK, only the first 24 cases I checked but we’re not talking random sampling here.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7141031.stm
If ever there was a proselytiser of the contraceptive/abortive culture, it is the BBC.
Why do the BBC give the FPA and the government a say and not the groups opposed to this ? After all, each of the forty years since the pill was introduced, and with every liberalisation if it, has seen an escalation in abortion/STIs/teenage pregnancy. It’s a failed policy by any measure.
If it was more troops to solve Iraq, the BBC would critically report it. But if it’s more contraception so solve our social crises, it’s just the moronic lefty government line regurgitated.
David Gregory: Oh really, my friend – the way you diss debate in science suggests even more that the “facts” are cast in stone and all our minds made up. Strange, but “Debate” as you call it did help us sort out something to do with mobile phones and MMR allegations, so you’re saying such discussion works (Yay!)
Then the rather poor add on: “Global Warming doesn’t exist and is nothing to do with us (no)”
Er, remember we were talking about debate? You make it sound as if the Beeb had led the debate and found the anti-MMGW wanting. Odd that, as every time I see the MMGW “evidence” I see desperate people puffing up their money-grubbing agenda, ably backed by an uninquisitive and compliant Beeb.
“I can’t recall ever calling for higher taxes.” I am sure you didn’t, David, but guess what governments do when they have a problem? Yep, they tax us ‘cos money solves everything.
I should resist saying it’s a bit like the Beeb wanting more money, but hey I can’t resist this. The government can always add to our taxes to help pay for it all, providing the Beeb stays its simpering friend through rain or shine… oh darn, that’s right, we mustn’t debate whether we have more rain or shine, must we?
DAVID GREGORY: Your lack of a science background is the real problem with the likes of you and other lefties at the BBC.
Take a look at the graph of CO2 levels that Al Bore quotes from.
The graph clearly starts to rise from around 1800 onwards and at about 1850 it starts to rise quite steeply.
Just what emissions were humans emitting in 1850 to cause such a massive rise?
Do you know what the population of the planet was in 1800-1850? About 500 million people. There were NO cars, NO aeroplanes and the vast majority of ships were still powered by sail.
Most of the planet was argicultural, the USA was in large parts unpopulated and agricultural. Even most of europe lacked the high levels of industrialisation to pump out the levels of CO2 needed. No rain forests were being chopped down and there were no billions of Cows farting around the world.
So YOU explain to me WHY CO2 levels started to rise from 1800 onwards?
http://www.geos.ed.ac.uk/ccs/images/UKco2_2.gif
Whilst humans MAY have contributed towards the current global warming trend, much of it is clearly natural.
if you really want to reduce CO2 levels then you lefties need to agree that continual high levels of population growth and immigration are bad for the planet. Yet you soft liberals love people breeding (more young people to vote Socialist and pay the tele tax)
Anyone interested in evidence of the BBC’s biased approach to racial crime can have a look at Peter Horrocks and Fran Unsworth trying to defend the BBC’s appalling lack of interest in the shocking Kriss Donald murder:
http://biased-bbc.blogspot.com/2006/11/racist-murder-bbc-responses-via-dfh-in.html
Peter Horrocks at least acknowledges that the BBC could have done better, without actually conceding that the BBC is biased in its reporting on these crimes.
But the Newswatch interview with Unsworth is a classic, especially the bit about the murder not attracting much BBC interest because it happened “over a weekend.”
There is no hope of change at the BBC with people like this in top positions.
Just seen Ola Guerin in a piece about the ANC succession in South Africa she is a bit lame since leaving Israel she no longer has a subject to emote about no mention of the murder rate in SA which is currently running at twice the rate in Iraq does not fit the BBC narative
To the eminent Dr. David Gregory: I don’t have the link right now, but recent Israeli research indicated that people are 36% more likely to develop a tumour on that side of the brain near which they place their mobile phones.
Worth investigating?
i hope you have been busy watching the first item on Newsnight tonight.
The Policy Exchange: How Extremist Literature is Subverting British Mosques
But what do Newsight do, yes as you would expect from the BBC they attack the messenger.
But their representative on the show refused to get bullied by Paxman and gave as good he got..
Just caught the last ten minutes of Newsnights exposé on that radical literature on sale at British mosques. Apparently the BBC (Well Paxman) says the report is flawed as receipts for those so called books are faked. Well what do you know the BBC actually does investigative journalism. Am I the only one to notice that those books in the report where still on sale in that BBC report. Ok lets for a moment say that the BBC has a scoop. Does this mean that radical Islam isn’t that bad at all, that Islamic bookstores don’t promote hate as part of the long journey to becoming pious.
Well glad the BBC went to all that trouble in which to tell me radical Muslims in the Uk are really fluffy bunnies. I suppose those idiots who blew up the Tube in 2005 were really misguided criminals. All I see is that Radical Islamic groups will use this as an example in which to polarise the situation even more.
But at the end of the day, Those books where still on sale at those mosques
Bryan:
Frans Unsworth is quite simply a liar. Using typical BBC newspeak obfuscation to cover her lies.
She also went on to suggest that those who complained to the BBC about them ignoring the Kriss Donald story, were in some way colluding with each other because they had a hidden agenda.
In other words, if you complain to the likes of Fran Unsworth about not reporting black on white crime then you are a probable member of the BNP and a racist.
The reason the BBC don’t report such items is because they are busy reporting much more important news stories such as “pig finds biggest truffle” and “Guiness search for missing beer.” Or because it’s the weekend where the whole news desk knocks off and skips the news, as you would expect from a multi billion pound news team.
Or if John Reith is to be heard – it’s that they DO report these crimes, it’s just that the search engine on the BBC news site is accidentally hiding them all for us in a non-intentional un-biased “God you lot are all paranoid” manner.
And yet they continue to cite “Non-bias” at the public like some mad hatters at a bloody tea party.
As with most lefties, Unsworth and her band of hacks at BBC news have proved themselves to be the true racists in all of this.
Here endeth the rant.
but the receipts they were forged, we examined them forensically!! How? You didn’t? “Authenticity is all as you very well know”
ha ha…
Mr Paxman looked like he ran out of arguments half way through, while the policy Exchange head saved the trumpcard until the last minute: one of the extremist books was written by the founder of the mosque and the adjacent bookshop was selling it.
I was watching it in disbelief. Let’s refute Policy Exchange by asking the leaders of the 5 mosques in question. Wow, they say they don’t sell this stuff. Silly Policy Exchange, they used such an inefficient method…
Interesting show wasnt it?
I think the policy exchange guy made some really good points right at the end of his exchange with Paxman about why the BBC refused to run the report.
Social cohesion was all paxman could come back with (you believe this report helps with social cohesion?). Just a pity the chap didnt hit back with “where was your social cohesion concerns when you ran the false stories about US soldiers pissing on the koran in Gitmo?”.
As with all things related to al beeb, they will run they stories they feel fits in with their agenda.
Mailman
Martin:
“DAVID GREGORY: Your lack of a science background is the real problem with the likes of you and other lefties at the BBC.”
Definately time for the FAQ. Martin I have a PhD in physics. As science backgrounds go that’s pretty solid. IMHO. So for future reference, that’s DOCTOR DAVID GREGORY 😉
What an interesting graph. I can’t really see your problem with it. Moving into industrial society, clearing forests (here where I live in Birmingham I’m close to Cherry Lane, they were long gone by 1800), burning wood and more. Could there be a natural effect in their too? Sure! But it’s clear once the industrial revolution kicks in.
Watcher: No I think you’ve missed the point. I get rather passionate about MMR and Mobile Phones. And I apply the same standards of science and evidence to covering global warming. So, to break my non critisism of other bits of the Beeb rule, I did lay into the Panorama on Wifi in no uncertain terms, you can find me quoted in the Sunday Times and the Guardian and indeed on Bad Science.
I do know something about the BBC’s coverage of MMR and overall it was pretty solid. I’ve had some full on discussions about that story. Compared to GMTV, Melanie Phillips, Peter Hitchins and the Mail the Beeb emerges smelling of roses frankly.
If you want to argue about MMR being symptomatic of the way science is now treated in the media as a whole I’d agree with you. And I’d lump your stance on climate change in with about 90% of the MMR stories that appear in the media and pretty much all of the wifi and mobile phone coverage.
Like I say, I bring you the science. I know what science looks like and how to do it. Just because you don’t like it politically isn’t my problem.
The “debate” over MMR didn’t help anyone. I’d say the same about the “debate” over climate change. But that doesn’t mean the science won’t move on and change and it doesn’t mean I won’t report that.
DR DAVID GREGORY: Oh come on!!!!! Wood burning? What they would have to have burnt down half of the forests on the Earth to generate such an upwards trend in CO2 emissions.
If you really have a science background, you know that the level of industrialisation in 1800-1850 was minimal.
We were probably one of the mosat industrialised nations at that time, yet even today we only account for a tiny % of overall CO2, so our CO2 levels back around 1800-1900 would have been minimal in global terms. Not to mention there was more greenery on the planet to absorb that CO2 and of course the oceans would have also been able to take up more CO2.
The internal combustion engine didn’t really get going until 1900 and the slope of the graph doesn’t really change even through the first part of the 20th century.
I’m not denying that human activity has had an effect, but the liberal media like the BBC tries to blame humans for ALL climate change.
The reality is that even if we restricted our CO2 emissions the planet will still continue to warm, so in effect it would be like trying to stop a lorry speeding up down a hill by taking it out of gear.
What’s interesting is that fat boy Al Bore IGNORES the first part of that graph and like you lot at the BBC concentrates on the period after WW2. Why? Climate change was already well underway before WW2, so what caused that?
The real issue is over population, inefficient use of limited resources and the lack of vision by politicians to look for genuine cleaner sources of energy. Instead we get fat corrupt politicians (and their lacky mates at the BBC, The Guardian etc) using climate change as an excuse to put up taxes.
Taxes won’t stop climate change.
Nice to see you didn’t deny being a leftie though!!!!
I bring you the science. I know what science looks like and how to do it
Ok, what about the BBCs views on the Wegman report. An independent expert evaluation of the statistics used to derive the ‘Hockey Stick’ curve used in the IPCC TAR, reused by Mr Gore in his Nobel Prize winning video and subsequently still used endlessly by a variety of proponents of AGW.
Newsnight, Paxman, and Brian Barron disgraced themselves tonight. Community cohesion and the BBC? I feel no cohesion with muslims peddling hate literature nor with the BBC’s lame PC-leftyism.
If you really have a science background, you know that the level of industrialisation in 1800-1850 was minimal.
I’m really amazed at how logic goes out of the window when people presume they are right. Now I’m not from the Black country. But I do know that Industrialisation of the area was well underway by 1800. I mean where and why did those canals come from?
http://www.birmingham.gov.uk/GenerateContent?CONTENT_ITEM_ID=632&CONTENT_ITEM_TYPE=0&MENU_ID=12879
Why is the Black country called the Black country?
But hey I’m not here to piss on anybodies bonfire. Read the history of the region.
http://www.birminghamuk.com/historic2.htm
Not bad for CSE History eh?
I don’t think the BBC will ever do a C4 style Undercover Mosque.
They will stick to the BNP even though I’ve yet to see the BNP demanding the beheading of non believers or blowing up Tube Trains.
Martin: No denials… no saying yes. It’s the framework that I post in. (time for that FAQ) My views and personal life would probably both confirm and confound what you expect of a BBC journalist. Judge me by my work, not your ideas of who I am.
After all you were a little bit off beam when it came to my qualifications…
Bryan: Post the link and I’ll look at it. Israeli research is usually top notch so I’d be interested to see what they say.
John Gentle:
Newsnight, Paxman, and Brian Barron disgraced themselves tonight. Community cohesion and the BBC? I feel no cohesion with muslims peddling hate literature nor with the BBC’s lame PC-leftyism.
John Gentle | 13.12.07 – 12:05 am | #
I think Policy Exchange were very naive to get involved with Newsnight in making the original, aborted programme that was mentioned tonight.
The BBC only ever refers to PE as “the right wing think tank….” and the fact that it is largely run by ex Daily Telegraph people must be like a red rag to a bull to the likes of Peter Barron.
I think it was completely predictable that they would be much more interested in digging up dirt on Policy Exchange than exposing the mad mullahs.
PE were also really stupid to supply the receipts – the fact at issue was the existence of the ghastly books which are clearly still there to be seen.
I guess now we can expect a huge backlash from the usual suspects – “death to the forgers of receipts – behead those who stand in the way of community cohesion!”
Doc Gregory, you are Beeboid, but I feel for you sometimes I really do.
Why don’t you just crucify yourself to a burning cross? It might be a lot less painful than doing battle here 🙂
Still I’ll give the Doc something. He doesn’t wave the liberal stick on every subject tackled here – unlike Reith, Ben and the truly cringeable Nick Reynolds – he just likes to poke it in the mud every now and then.
In all the years of reading this blog I have never seen the anger against Beeboids and the Beeboid-enforced PC agenda run this heated. Two or three years ago people would write things like, “The Beeb are disgusting, let’s write them a nasty letter.” Now it’s more like, “The Beeb are disgusting, let’s try them for treason.”
If I were a Beeboid I’d worry about that.
As with most lefties, Unsworth and her band of hacks at BBC news have proved themselves to be the true racists in all of this.
Reg Hammer | 12.12.07 – 11:23 pm
That truly is the case. People like Unsworth carefully pick out the news that suits their agenda: black/Asian good, white bad. They have this obsession to indoctrinate everyone with their own agenda, instead of reporting the news straight.
That’s why the BBC fits so perfectly with Britain’s PC, nanny state of today.
David Gregory: I’ll try to find that report. Might be difficult because it was on Israel radio.
The BBC news tells me that women and girls under 16 are to be given easier access to the pill. Are 16 and 17 year old girls to be excluded from the new arrangements or is this just another example of BBC sloppiness?
Bryan: Post the link and I’ll look at it. Israeli research is usually top notch so I’d be interested to see what they say.
David Gregory (BBC) | 13.12.07 – 12:28 am
Dunno if you’ll have time to plough through all 38900 results, but here you go:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=Israeli+research+cell+phone+tumours&btnG=Search
Great mysteries of BBC journalism:
The lead-in message: “Slow progress on UN climate curbs
The UN climate talks remain deadlocked on emissions cuts, as scientists say 2007 is another unusually warm year. ”
The news article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7141660.stm
NO MENTION OF 2007 BEING WARM AT ALL.
Yet another spin-heavy information-lite piece by Richard Black.
Even a top, ‘leftist’ UK playwright complains about the BBC:
“Sir David Hare: ‘BBC wanted to pre-record me attacking the Queen for her eventual obituary’.”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=501625&in_page_id=1770
POUNCE: Again you miss the point. Even today with millions of cars on the road the UK contributes only about 2% of the CO2 in the world and human CO2 only represents something like 0.1% of the atmosphere.
Back in the 1800’s WE as a Country might have been industrialised to a degree, but NOT all of the UK was. There were not huge numbers of coal fired power stations for example. Where were the cars or the aeroplanes that we are told by the fat Socialists do so much damage?
The UK on it’s own could NOT have put THAT much CO2 into the atmosphere in such a short time.
The fact is you Climate change Nazi’s can’t give a proper answer to this question, so you ignore it. The fact it climate change was accelerating before the invention of the car and the plane.
Your CSE was obviously not earned.
JOHN A: Spot on and like my post the other week the USA has just come to the end of the Hurricane season, without any signficiant ones. Yet do the BBC mention this? No. Why not? Because it does not fit in with their “climate change” bollocks.
“Two or three years ago people would write things like, “The Beeb are disgusting, let’s write them a nasty letter.” Now it’s more like, “The Beeb are disgusting, let’s try them for treason.””
More a general indictment of the increasingly ridiculous and hysterical nature of popular sentiment, fuelled by an over sensationalist press I’d say…
Somebody mentioned yesterday the idea of starting a campaign to scrap the licence fee through 1000 individuals withholding the fee and popping it into a fighting fund instead. Worthy but just not gonna happen – the balance of public opinion valueing the Beeb is (still) too great for any minority posturing to have much impact.
What MIGHT start an unstoppable momentum is if the other broadcasters Sky, Virgin even ITV made it clear that were the Beeb to be cut down to a sensible size the decrease in publicly funded competition would allow them to drastically lower their subscription rates / reduce the amount of annoying ad breaks.
As a first step how about tightly identifying the areas of broadcasting which (honestly) most people would say benefit from a public ethos – news, educational stuff, big ambitious history/nature programmes, nationally important events, culture and highest level international sport. Everything else gets flogged off to the highest bidder. I reckon that could get it down to one TV channel and maybe 4 radio.
John A:
Great mysteries of BBC journalism:
The lead-in message: “……… as scientists say 2007 is another unusually warm year. ”
Try telling that to the Americans at the moment:
http://www.usatoday.com/weather/temppic/wtempusa.htm
Cockney
All v good points. I’m not sure you’re right about “…the balance of public opinion valueing the Beeb is (still) too great for any minority posturing to have much impact.”
I think the BBC is its own worst enemy, and its failure to recognise the disparity between its own (biased and hypocritical) position and that of the general public, presents a very powerful tool to those who would like to end its intellectual and cultural stranglehold over the country. Yes it may require some hysterical headlines in the Mail and the Sun, burt so what? Every time I read John Reith I want to stick it to them even more.
Also, I think you underestimate the propaganda value of BBC balls-ups – JOnathan Ross, dumbing down, Paintball terror support, Balen Report, attacks on Christianity, islamoarselicking etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc are all very powerful tools for diminishing the “corporation” in the public’s eye.
Personally I think this disgusting arrogant group of pricks are heading for the scaffold anyway – but we shouold do wle)hat we can to accelerate the process (or of course change the organisation, but given its lefty London bias, this seems impossible.
Pounce: I didn’t even do O Level history, so thank god for your education!
There are two schools of thought about the Black Country. It either got its name because of the thick seam of Staffordshire coal that runs underneath it (thousands of freelance miners means the place is like a swiss cheese… and it also means houses still disappear into large holes now and again)
OR because it was literally black. Queen Victoria used to close the curtains of the royal train when she went through it because it was… well people have described it as hell-like. Day like night and giant furnaces lighting up the night sky.
So that graph makes sense to me.
Bryan: Can’t access the original paper unfortunately and going by an “extract seen by a national newspaper” makes me a little uncomfortable. I’ll see if I can turn it up when I get a moment.
Newt Gingrich:
” I was once interviewed by a BBC reporter, a nice young lady who was only about as anti-American as she had to be to keep her job. Since it was a live interview, I turned to her halfway through the interview and I said, ‘Do you like your job?’ And it was summertime, and she’s wearing a short-sleeve dress. And she said, ‘Well, yes.’ She was confused because I had just reversed roles. I said, ‘Well, then you should hope we win.’ She said, ‘What do you mean?’ And I said, ‘Well, if the enemy wins, you won’t be allowed to be on television.’
“I don’t know how to explain it any simpler than that.”
See Newt Gingrich’s Speech in Melanie Phillips’ ‘The Heirs to Chamberlain’
http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/401166/the-heirs-to-chamberlain.thtml
Bryan: I think you can carry on using your mobile phone quite happily for now. And I quote “For the entire group, no increased risk of PGTs was observed for ever having been a regular cellular phone user” Good news!
But… “However, analysis restricted to regular users or to conditions that may yield higher levels of exposure (e.g., heavy use in rural areas) showed consistently elevated risks.”
Sadly I can only access the abstract at the moment, but it’s narrowing down the data set like this that makes me a bit uncomfortable. Did they prove people were heavy users, or did they just do a questionaire? If you had a big lump on your face you’d probably want to blame your mobile phone. Are there other factors in “rural areas” that cause these problem too? So that’s the key bit I think and sadly I can’t find out more about their methodology right now.
Top line though… mobile phones are safe!
Still!
David Gregory (BBC) | 13.12.07 – 11:10 am
You didn’t link to it, so I can’t form a judgement on the article.
But I managed to narrow it down to this, as a starting point at least:
Like the Israeli study, the British researchers found a higher risk of tumors on the side of the head where cell phone users most often held their phones.
http://www.newsinferno.com/archives/2163
Now you’ll probably call me a crank, but the very first cell phone I used (in those days of course it was the size and weight of today’s cordless phones) gave me the strangest sensation of pressure as though my head was being enclosed by a giant hand.
I regard my mobile phone as a convenient alternative to my regular phone, but I use it as little as humanly possible, partly because of the cost and partly because I think there is real danger in overusing it.
By the way, how much do the mobile phone manufacturers pay the BBC to keep quiet about the dangers?
(That’s a joke.)
BBC Europe editor, Mark Mardell’s quizzical intelligence seems appropriate for today’s E.U. Lisbon signing/signing away performance:
‘Gordon goes to Lisbon, eventually’
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/markmardell/
Bryan: Sorry, here you are
http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/kwm325v1?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&fulltext=Siegal+Sadetzki&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&resourcetype=HWCIT
My quick summary of the risks from mobile phones; two risks we have studied and quantified. Driving when using a mobile is bad for your health. People living near masts can worry themselves sick about them.
I’d also say just because the science doesn’t support there being any problems caused by mobile phones it doesn’t mean that some people out there don’t have very real symptoms and we shouldn’t dismiss them.
This may be in danger of going off topic but the Black Country got its name because of the appalling pollution there, the mess stained everywhere black.
Take it from me that locals know this to be true, particularly if you talk to the older folks as I do and talked to older people in the past (who are now dead) I did.
The same was actually true of all the industrial metropolitan areas of the UK before action was taken for clean air and anti polluting measures.
In the black country lots of small hevy industry was located next to everyones homes and it was little town after little town so no suburbia, hence it was probably worst than most if not all.
Classic examples of what everywhere was once suffering from is what happens when large building with years of deposits are cleaned up.
When Birmingham Town Hall was cleaned properly a few years ago it revealed the stone work to be a colour not seen since shortly after it was built.
Not for nothing in the past did places have terrible smogs that were fatal.
However whether this was on the same scale as the world today and whether it had an appreciable effect on the world’s climate is highly questionable.