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 also be moderated. Any suggestions for stories that you might like covered would be appreciated! It’s your space, use it wisely.
Week-day BBC-related comment thread!
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Christian Aid once a charity, now a pressure group, is one of the bodies whose every word is gospel to the BBC (as long as they keep Christian out of it). The Times today has articles about junk science – plasric bags killing sea life, end of the atlantic conveyor & this
, “by the end of this century, climate change will have killed around 182 million people in sub-Saharan Africa” (Christian Aid, May 2006). This number • 180 million African dead • has become one of the most widely cited numbers in the litany of doom that accompanies talk of climate change. In this case, however, the number 180 million was sexed-up science. Christian Aid took the worst-case climate scenario, the highest population scenario and the scenario with the least public health intervention and conjured the number into being. And here it has stayed, a number detached from its receding scientific origins in which assumptions were overlain on scenarios that captured uncertainties.
‘Sexed-up’ numbers should not always be accepted as science
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article3508277.ece
Will,
Christian Aid, rather like Amnesty, Oxfam and others, have become rotten from the inside. They are now beacons of anti-US, anti-Christian anti-Israel hatred. Sad, really, but the BBC laps them up and uses their bias as if it were objectivity. Lucky we have them sussed, eh?
Less rugby please….Not another match today!!!!!
How about some nice films on sat afternoons instead of all this sport.
Times and Telegraph…. “Baroness Thatcher”
Guardian and BBC….”Thatcher”
Typhoo,
You jest, surely!
Consider the rest of the year’s ‘sport’ output from the BBC. Darts, snooker, cross-country running….’Grandstand’ should really be renamed ‘Shed’.
At last, come the Six nations, we get some quality ‘big’ sport involving national teams.
I do NOT jest! This match is being geared up for here big time, same with the last one a few weeks ago! For gawd sake……how about Gone with the wind? Geez I love that flick!
Looks as though the BBC is running true to form with its reportage on the Jersey children’s care home allegations. From today’s BBC New website:
‘Last month, former health and social security minister Stuart Syvret attacked Jersey’s “conservative, closed society”.
“Local oligarchs are the business elite. They work together, play golf together and go to the same parties,” he said.
“What that means, is that when a scandal happens their first reaction is stamp on controversy.”
Oh, those evil businessmen, those deadful ‘elites’, those devilish golfers with their conservative society…
Will Polly Toynbee rescue us in time?
Chuffer: “At last, come the Six nations, we get some quality ‘big’ sport involving national teams.”
Did you watch the Scotland v England match? Quality, I think not…
By the way does anyone know why blogspot.com is down?
“This week, the issue of immigration again came up in the news, largely due to the BBC’s new season on the plight of the white working class. Newsnight held a discussion on it, in which Hodge took part.” (-from New Culture Forum article below):-
“Margaret(Hodge) and her kind”
http://www.newcultureforum.org.uk/home/?q=node/244
The BBC is itself a “dreadful elite.”
What happened in Jersey has the stink of a cover-up, I don’t see anything political about that.
What happened there required collusion.
Abandon Ship!:
Times and Telegraph…. “Baroness Thatcher”
Guardian and BBC….”Thatcher”
—————————————
Yeah. Rather like the way BBBC refers to “Blair”, isn’t it?
Same level of respect, different persons.
The BBC, its News coverage from Iraq and half the story.
Iraq cleric Sadr explains absence
The Iraqi Shia cleric Moqtada Sadr has explained why he has not been seen in public for more than nine months – and acknowledged splits in his movement. He said he missed his followers “too much” but that every “commander needed to be away for a while to worship”. He has reportedly resumed his religious studies to gain the title of ayatollah.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7284211.stm
The BBC reports on a press statement issued by Moqtada Sadr and its major theme is the bloke has become a student.
Err really here is what the Arab news has to say about his press release;
Sadr admits splits in Mahdi Movement
NAJAF, Iraq, March 7, (Agencies): Iraq’s firebrand Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr has acknowledged splits within his movement as he explained the reasons for his long absence from the public eye, in a statement released on Friday. Sadr, who last month extended the ceasefire of his Mahdi Army militia, said in the statement bearing his personal seal and released in the holy city of Najaf that his movement was witnessing splits as some leaders had broken away. “Many of my close companions have departed for worldly reasons, some of them want to be independent,” Sadr said. “The fact that a number of people did not return to their houza (religious school) and the fact that many are meddling in political lives while we thought they were loyal has made me isolate myself” from them. In the past year a number of senior leaders from the Mahdi militia have allegedly broken away from the main group.
http://www.arabtimesonline.com/client/pagesdetails.asp?nid=13382&ccid=11
Now here is the CNN report on the same story;
Iraqi militia leader: My influence is waning
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) — The grass-roots cleric whose Mehdi Army militia has gained notoriety among coalition troops admitted many followers have split from his movement or do not heed his leadership.Muqtada al-Sadr made the admission during Friday noon prayers and it was posted on his Web site. The Mehdi Army has been an active player in violence across Iraq.
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/03/07/iraq.main/index.html
Reauters
Iraqi cleric Sadr explains long absence to followers
NAJAF, Iraq (Reuters) – Powerful Iraqi Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who has not been seen in public for months, issued an unusual statement on Friday explaining his absence to his followers and admitting splits in his movement. “I swear that I live with you and among you. I am a part of you. I will not change this unless death separates us,” he said in a two-page statement bearing his personal stamp. Sadr, who rarely issues statements, acknowledged that his followers were wondering where he was and that his absence “could be a reason for depressing them.” He did not say though when he might return to public view.His absence comes at a time when his movement is locked in a battle with rival Shi’ite factions for political control of oil -producing provinces in southern Iraq. Scores of his followers have also been arrested by U.S. and Iraqi forces.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080307/ts_nm/iraq_sadr_dc
So while the rest of the world hears about how this religious thug who takes his orders from Iran is having problems with the rank and file and seeing his powerbase whittle away.The BBC paints the impression that he is on route to become more powerful by doing a masters in Jihad.
The BBC, its News coverage from Iraq and half the story.
I don’t care whether they call her “Baroness Thatcher” or “Thatcher”.
It’s when they miss out the “(whom God preserve)” that I get really angry.
The British people will have had confirmed more about the attitudes of the British WHITE working class by observing the people at Barnsley Football Club tonight, than they will from the rather ignorant, demeaning, multiculturalist propaganda of the BBC’s ‘White’ season.
I would love to see more commentary on BBC drama programming. I believe that ‘drama’ & ‘soap’ etc etc is the frontline in BBC bias. The ‘drama’ output from the BBC is nothing more than propaganda. It is so blatant I have been unable to watch and enjoy a BBC offering for years. For the best of the worst see dramas such as ‘Doctors’, ‘Casualty’, ‘Holby City’, ‘Waterloo Road’… and the list goes on… Its awful beyond belief, and, I really do wonder how anyone of sound mind can sit though it and not see it for what it is….
It looked for a moment tonight towards the end of the “Rivers Of Blood” programme (about Powell’s notorious 1968 speech warning of the dangers of mass immigration) as if the BBC were going to come to a refreshingly unpredictable conclusion – until, after showing scenes of riots in Bradfors & Oldham and the aftermath of the 7/7 bombings, they said…that his speech had been counter-productive, had single-handedly created the disastrous multiculturalist policies of the last 40 years, and it would have been better if he’d kept his mouth shut.
Pathetic.
It looked for a moment tonight towards the end of the “Rivers Of Blood” programme (about Powell’s notorious 1968 speech warning of the dangers of mass immigration) as if the BBC were going to come to a refreshingly unpredictable conclusion – until, after showing scenes of riots in Bradfors & Oldham and the aftermath of the 7/7 bombings, they said…that his speech had been counter-productive, had single-handedly created the disastrous multiculturalist policies of the last 40 years, and it would have been better if he’d kept his mouth shut.
Pathetic.
Titus | 08.03.08 – 10:31 pm
I agree, the “Rivers of Blood” programme reminded me of the tactic of telling you 99 truths in order to squeeze 1 lie in at the end, in the hope that the 99 truths would make you turn your bias radar down and not see the 1 lie sneaked in.
I’ve got a feeling that the whole of this White season is based on such devious tactics.
But of course this is the BBC we are talking about, they are world experts in propaganda. It’s what they do.
“that his speech had been counter-productive, had single-handedly created the disastrous multiculturalist policies of the last 40 years,”
WOW. Now that is a big lie.
The problem the BBC has with Enoch Powell is simple.Vast numbers of ordinary folk,who keep their heads down and say little,believe increasingly that he was right.I was in a pub in the Cotswolds as the news of 7/7 came on the TV.People watched in disbelief.A young man said ‘We should have listened to Powell”There was total nodding agreement.It is the very silence of the English unless they are among friends that so worries the BBC and the liberal elite.Hence this series to try and draw out a reaction the better to identify and counter it.It won’t succeed but I am sure the series is not to “”give a voice to the WWC” but rather to discredit and marginalise them.
The Powell docu sought to portray EP’s remarkable prescience as being unhinged in its being so intense, clear and unapologetic. Well folks, the effective articulation of existential issues SHOULD IMO sound as if it originates in the gut (a point of criticism by the Race hustlers interviewed). It struck me that the real point this piece sought to make was to show how effectively dissidents can be made an example of. In the process it (inadvertently?) held up the disingenuousness or staggering bien-pensant naivety of the Heath-Jenkins axis in thinking that their profoundly-debilitating experiment with a people could proceed without hiccup, retching & seizure, even as that people were imbibing the story of other such expts in other parts of the world.
PS WoAD – No, I wasn’t familiar with the UR blog but have been having a good look since.
R
Yup, Scotland vs. England was pretty dour – but it’s still better than All Women Bog Snorkelling from Harlepool.
O/T: A journalist mate of mine was doing a piece on Strange British Sports. he did Extreme Ironing and Bog Snorkelling, and thought that the World Lieing Championships would be worth investigating, too. Trouble was, everytime he turned up at what the organisers had told his was the venue, there was no-one there……
I thought it was hilarious when the pompous politicians started going on about how “their” vision of multi culturalism had gone down the pan when those “Moozlum” types decided they didn’t like the idea of rights for women or gays, but wanted a good old bit of Sharia law instead ( a good old stoning if you like).
Where do these arseholes come from? They still exist today.
Moozlums cannot live in a western democracy and practice THEIR way of life as the Koran tells them.
They either have to conform to western values or leave. There is no compromise. The politicians on that show were cowards to say it. The BBC are cowards to not say it as well.
There is not such thing as a liberal Islamic Country, nor will there ever be one. Islam is a backwards religion and the politicians need to wise up.
“There is not such thing as a liberal Islamic Country”
Turkey remains secular to the extent the Army remains loyal to the secular state and fanatically racist. Racism is after all a secular idea.
I’m not much of a sports fan, but what would the Beeb have been showing if it wasn’t inflicting several hours of overpaid, underworked morons scuttling around after a ball on us ? ( my dog can do that for nothing, and it’s brain is about the size of a pea )
” Celebrity On Ice, Cash in the Attic, is it Red Peppers or Green Tomatoes Challenge ” ?
Wimbledon is even worse. Hours and hours and hours of effeminate looking men and butch looking women bashing balls at each other with tennis bats.
All with the promise that if you didn’t see the ten hours of coverage previously then we’ll helpfully bugger up the rest of the schedule with even more tennis highlights. I used to complain, but the answer was always along the lines of ” We are sorry that you don’t like tennis, but we have had your money, so fuck off “
I should point out that I have never paid the TV license fee, and as long as God spares me,I never will.
The only good thing about the BBC was Horizon, and that is now dumbed down to the point where I can’t be arsed to download it from a Torrent site.
Out of the 50 minutes available to them we get 40 minutes of special effects, silly camera angles and about 5 seconds of real science.
From Pat Condell:
So I pop along to the BBC News England page and in the right hand side bar there’s a feature called “England’s Big Picture”. It shows a small thumbnail of a larger photo and encourages you to click the image to see the “big picture”.
The thumbnail image at present shows what appears to be the St George’s Cross flag in some form or another. I of course click on it to see the “bigger picture”.
The full sized image is of boxer David Haye and the St George’s Cross is a part of the decoration on his shorts.
I’d like to applaud David Haye for his choice of shorts but the question needs asking, if David Haye had been a white English boxer wearing these shorts, rather than a boxer who is clearly of African descent, would the BBC have used this photo as part of its “England’s Big Picture” feature?
The answer is clearly no.
This isn’t bias – its just crapness from their “science correspondent” – Jonathan Amos
Huge space truck races into orbit
All kinds of rubbish – a mixture of tabloid treatment of the subject, and sentences that are just plain wrong.
Like this:
… the second [rocket burn] to take itself out of the sky and into the Pacific Ocean.
Then on the official ESA website we read the truth:
sending the craft on a steep flight path to perform a controlled destructive re-entry high above the Pacific Ocean.
And this Jonathan Amos dude is paid to write this garbage.
This is bias this time:
Cohabitation law delay ‘shoddy’
By Paul Lewis
BBC Radio 4’s Money Box
Start with some crapness: we have “govenment” and “Cohabitatoin” on the page.
But the main charge is bias. The proposal is controversial. The Law Commission has proposed a new marital status of “half married”. Anyone cohabiting for any time will automatically drift into this new status – even if neither wants it.
There are many shades of opinion on this subject – some dissent is allowed on the linked “have your say” page.
Some are concerned about the details – defining what exactly cohabitation is and when it starts.
Others see any new law as unnecessary – people worried about property rights etc can easily, err, get married.
But we do not hear both sides of the story. Instead the govt “would love to implement the idea, but is a bit short of the folding stuff right now”. The lawyers are “furious” about this delay.
At no stage do we hear any opposing voices or even the unnamed “critics” that often feature in discussions that offend the BBC received opinion.
“Red Andy”‘s got Kelvin McKenzie on, to review the papers, with Stephanie Flanders.
Like most lefty beeboids, Steph doesn’t quite have the guts to disagree with Kelvin’s blatantly right wing tabloid “all tax is theft” approach.
She just smiles a sickly smile and squirms elegantly – quite amusing telly for once, actually.
I have no problems with sport especially rugby being on the BBC; my only problem is with watching England play. A few more performances like that and I shall treat their matches like those of the England football team…
This is really hilarious:
US drinkers upstage smoking ban
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7285808.stm
It’s also a rare thing – a BBC article on America with no discernible bias.
Good try by the BBC, but couldn’t quite avoid the inevitable ‘he was a nutter and caused the whole thing in the first place’ conclusion.
The Beeb started by claiming that the ROB speech is the most misquoted in British political history – mainly by themselves and alternative comedians of course, so just to prove this point the BBC then went on to extract the two most inflammatory quotes and repeat them three times each. The simplest and least biased approach whould have been to have had an actor read the verbatim typescript and then do the analysis – but of course that would mean quoting things in context!
Two key facts were, however, revealed -that the state has created this social experiment without the consent of the public, and this was done against the huge groundswell of public opinion b=y a complete clamp down on any discussion (EP’s fault of course) – remind anyone of the EU debate (another Heath initiative)and how public opinion needs to be ‘led’ by the BBC.
IMO the single most important part of the programme was the spectacular admission on camera that the whole situation is now, I paraphrase, an utter fu*k up and largely beyond remedy. I was completely astonished, utterly astonished, to see a member of our ruling class (a career politician – did anyone notice how EP was attacked for being a ‘conviction politician’ i.e. someone who actually thought about his position and believed in it. This is a bad thing in BBC land if the position is contrary to their narrative) blythly announce that he was ‘surprised’ that there were elements of our ‘communities’ who just didn’t get the Jenkinsite shared secularist values and who would like to see the odd stoning in a town square for minor sexual dalliances, he was also surprised at the ‘useful idiots’, fellow travelers and appeasers who apparently think complete surrender is ‘inevitable’. The leftist orthodox concern arose from the simplistic position ‘what I believe is so self evidently right why don’t you agree with me? (boo hoo)’ The BBC falls into this category too and I think this is at the root of all its bias, it holds the leftist, statist model to be utterly beyond criticism (I agree with posters above – just watch some of the cr*p statist propaganda that goes under the cover of light soap-u-drama, Holby et al) and is genuinely shocked when people don’t believe it.
ROB was a much better offering than the p*ss-poor “last orders” – this was straight off the shelf sociological hog wash
Interesting speculation today about Boris Johnson’s possible slave roots, to be featured in future BBC programme:
“The riddle of Boris’s slave roots”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/mar/09/boris.localgovernment
Interesting that the BBC have been “bigging up” the ESA Jules Verne thing.
How come no mention of the environmental damage caused by the launch of these things BBC?
Also, the BBC keeps saying that it’s a great thing to be independent of the Americans (OK so we know where the BBC is going here) but the BBC forget to mention one tiny little thing.
The British are not involved in Jules Verne. In fact we pay almost nothing into ESA.
Not that the BBC would ever bother to tell us the truth about that.
Yes, I heard that Money Box report on Cohabitation Rights too. It was breathtaking. They’ve had a little “Have Your Say” on it – not a full blown one but they’ve put up eight comments which are 7-1 against the pro-cohabitation rights propaganda in the programme, presumably reflecting the overwhelmingly hostile balance of opinion they’ve received.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/moneybox/7283977.stm
It will surprise no one, however, to learn which of the eight comments made it onto the actual story :
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/moneybox/7285193.stm
The pro cohabitation rights solicitor, when asked, “if you want the rights, why not get married” responded with :
Jane Craig told the programme that people who suggested couples could avoid this problem by getting married or forming a civil partnership were being “simplisitic”.
“What happens if you fall in love with someone, get pregnant and then he doesn’t want to get married?
The following answers to her question, which I suspect roughly 45 million people in the country could have come up with in a millisecond, did not occur to the BBC interviewer :
1. don’t start from there • wait till you’re married before you get pregnant
2. if you insist on starting from there and you do get pregnant, get an abortion
3. if you don’t want to do that, you’ve got child support, social security, your family, and – God forbid – even getting a job to fall back on
Does this UK media emphasis on the Lib-Dems split, in the reporting of the Lisbon vote, not apply to the BBC too?:-
“Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?”
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2008/03/ever-get-feeling-youve-been-cheated.html
I don’t know whether if the BBC were to report this significant story it would fit with its ‘multicultural’ predilections:-
” MI5 targets 4 Met police officers ‘working as Al Qaeda Spies'”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=528813&in_page_id=1770
There’s an article here about the new Terminal 5 at Heathrow:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7285674.stm
Matthew Shaw of the BBC has been invited to test it out, and it seems like a wonderful thing.
“I stroll around the empty corridors and start the whole journey again. The wait for my transfer flight is a little bit long but thankfully I don’t have to go through the pretence of boarding again.
In fact I’m told to go straight to passport control where UK border staff wave us all through with a smile.
In fact the whole experience is probably a bit like the heyday of glamorous air travel – no queues, no borders and no hassle.”
On the basis of this report, I’d love to go there, even if I didn’t have a ticket. I could just wander around, and experience the glamour of air travel. It seems very fishy that there’s not even a hint of a contrary opinion.
I think it’s only if you have got used to using Heathrow (pre T5) that you automatically assume that airport terminals are supposed to be like something out of Dante’s Inferno. Most modern ones are fine.
I was listening to Any Answers which follows Any Questions on Radio 4 yesterday afternoon. The BBC filters the respondents from the public quite well to such a point that it is almost if some of them are reading directly from a BBC crib sheet. On the matter of the EU, somebody said that the great politicians of the UK were all favourable to the EU and that the UK just had to be part of it in order to have a role post-Empire. This ‘somebody’ added that Chuchill was particularly favourable to Britain being in the EU and David Dimbleby thanked him for adding “correct history”. I am not sure how learned Dimbleby is but Chuchill said something like “should Britain ever have to choose between Europe and the open sea, it will always be the open sea”. And it is fact that Churchill speeches on Europe’s political future always excluded Britain from such a future. For the BBC in the form of David Dimbleby (either a profoundly ignorant man or an absolute liar – it now has to be one) to co-opt Churchill into the surrender of the last remnants of our sovereignty is quite disturbing and sinister.
Have been trying to post on the BBC “Points Of View” website about “White” but they are getting so many comments – many of which do not fit in with the BBC world view – that they are deleting posts and instead directing people to a dedicated “White” website, away from the gaze of casual visitors to points of view, the normal and more widely read forum where views can be expressed about programmes.
Good old Beeb. When Joe Punter doesn’t stay on message…hide his points of view.
In my experience the BBC and charities mainly seem to employ the same kind of person – home counties, white, middle class arts graduates who are convinced that are vibrant, interesting and caring individuals and who aren’t afraid to tell everyone they are. They form a kind of London based self-congratulation society.
“I do a lot better than my friend – he is now called Miss Dianne Frankfurter.”
would he have said this if is friend had been given the name mohammed?
Not too many beeboid fans on Guy Fawkes blog either ! They are getting major bad press for profligacy with tax payers money, as well as general nulab bias.
The significance of that is that his blog generates more hits than any other and is apparently seen as a bell weather of public opinion by Westminster types.
From Guido..
http://www.order-order.com/2008/03/taxi-for-mr-pienaar.html
No wonder Guido is having a bash at the Beeb. Why should just the parliamentary piggy freeloaders take the heat? The Beeb have been sponging off the rest of us for years.
Is the BBC covering this at all?
“Terror moles at the Met”
http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/0903_alqaeda.shtml
They did – in their paper roundup!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7285909.stm
Incidentally, though, I can’t find this on Sky or Reuters and although the Mail had it seven hours ago, others haven’t picked up on it yet or have only just done so. Sunday, I suppose.
Hugh
I speculate there is a very sensible explanation as to why MI5 know there are terrorist spies working in the met and very highly possibly the BBC as well.
They and there mates put them there. Or at least allowed them to get in and carry on operating for some considerable time.
MI5, MI6, CIA, BBC, Mossad, and all the rest bless-um, working for the New World Order, propagated by continual and consistent disinformation. Because thats what they all do. The last thing they work for is ordinary Christian or Muslim people anywhere on the planet, unless by accident.
I repeat that this is only rational speculation. I have no inside knowledge or evidence, on which to base it.
After all does anyone seriously believe that MI5 would allow it to be publicly known that the police has been well and truly compromised by terrorist spies, unless the above had long since been the case. I would wager that the secret services have had these people in there sights for over 10 years at least.
If not, why not?