It’s good to know that old communists don’t fade away, they just join the National Union of Teachers! Did you read the BBC’s report on the annual NUT conference in Manchester and the onslaught that the comrades have launched on the Armed Forced “preying” on schoolchildren? The BBC provides plenty of space for such illuminating comments as..”Join the Army and we will send you to bomb, shoot and possibly torture fellow human beings in other countries. Join the Army and we will send you probably poorly equipped into situations where people will try to shoot or kill you because you are occupying other people’s countries.
Join the Army, and if you survive and come home, possibly injured or mentally damaged, you and your family will be shabbily treated.”
It’s full on Dave Spartism – sixth form student grant political analysis from the National Union of Whingers yet the BBC gives the Ministry of Defence a mere two sentences to rebuff this hysteria. That’s not balanced! The NUT is of course entitled to its vicious anti-British Armed Forces rhetoric – what else would we expect from them?- but surely the MOD should have been given rather more space to take apart the ranting from the comrades?
You are desperate to defend the BBC no matter how ridiculous it makes you appear, and daft with it.
By the way, what does “R.E.S.P.E.C.T.” stand for?
I.R.A. = Irish Republican Army
B.B.C. = British Broadcasting Corporation
R.E.S.P.E.C.T. = ?
Alex wrote;
“Typical B-BBC straw man. “I bet if he was a Tory” or “I bet if he was a Palestinian”. Have you got any examples of the BBC gratuitously mentioning Tory or BNP membership to discredit the subject of its stories?”
Bovver boots and ballerinas
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/6255195.stm
Oh Galil, I can’t believe you didn’t know R.E.S.P.E.C.T. was an acronym! It’s brilliant! You’ve been missing out on so much! You poor thing!
R.E.S.P.E.C.T. = Respect, Equality, Socialism, Peace, Environmentalism, Community, and Trade Unionism.
But try to ignore the ‘Unionism’ part. Not just because it wrecks the acronym but because it sounds funny with the full name: R.E.S.P.E.C.T.: the Unity Coalition.
“Respect, Equality, Socialism, Peace, Environmentalism, Community, and Trade Unionism the Unity Coalition” would be tautological.
On a less hilarious note, what part of that story is actually related to party politics?
Pounce: the BBC is reporting a controversy over a ballerina’s party membership. Party politics are sort of central to the story.
Stop the War Coalition:
President, Tony Benn;
Convenor, Lindsey German (Central Committee of the Socialist Workers’ Party, and former Respect candidate for Mayor of London).
Party political affiliation is clearly relevant here.
Surely it makes more sense to just say the journalist didn’t know.
Don’t see your point. I don’t see where the STWC fits in and I don’t see where the party affiliations would fit in if the STWC was mentioned in the story.
Yes, sorry – relates to this: “Or that party politics are not relevant to a story about somebody advocating using material from the Stop the War Coalition and the Palestine Solidarity Campaign in schools?”
Neither of those are political parties like R.E.S.P.E.C.T.
The main point though is if you’ve got someone challenging the established policy of a government department – or two government departments in this case – and they’re a member of a party or group that has strong views on the position they’re taking, it would not be unusual to mention it.
What you’ve shown is that the President and Convenor of the STWC are both from different parties, and that one is a member of the current ruling party.
Now you might consider it unusual not to mention party or campaign group affiliation, but neither the Daily Mail nor the Telegraph nor MSN nor the Times did either.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=533428&in_page_id=1770
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/03/25/nrecruit125.xml
http://news.uk.msn.com/Article.aspx?cp-documentid=7881266
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/education/article3618018.ece
The Mail mentions that they’re left-wing, but that’s it as far as I can see.
Is the NUT which wishes to ban service personnel from visiting schools the same NUT which wants Imams to visit schools? Apparently it is wrong to suggest that young people join the armed forces in case they kill someone. But it is acceptable to allow in some one who will presumably to tell the children to go out and kill Jews, homosexuals and anyone who has left the Mahometan faith.
On a less hilarious note, what part of that story is actually related to party politics?
Alex | Homepage | 26.03.08 – 10:38 pm
I never said party politics. I talked about political affiliations.
Read my post again and please desist from splitting hairs, it’s a waste of everybody’s time.
http://www.haloscan.com/comments/patrickcrozier/6021889877941975674/#391418
You turned that into party politics and without paying it too much attention I followed suit:
http://www.haloscan.com/comments/patrickcrozier/6021889877941975674/#391475
http://www.haloscan.com/comments/patrickcrozier/6021889877941975674/#391481
The politics of the proposer of these measures to the NUT are important, fuck the party, and especially fuck R.E.S.P.E.C.T., which as you see is actually spelt without the dots!
Yes. This is political, but it is not party political.
Alex | Homepage | 26.03.08 – 9:27 pm
See my post above. It was you who turned my political affiliations into party political.
You really are a devious little shit.
Alex: “…neither the Daily Mail nor the Telegraph nor MSN nor the Times”, which was why I suggested they simply didn’t check. Incidentally, by the evening the Standard had this:
“Paul McGarr, a maths teacher from east London and a member of the Socialist Workers Party…”
Galil:
“It was you who turned my political affiliations into party political.”
‘Party’ is a key distinction when mentioning parties is involved, which is why I made it.
Hugh:
Surely then the Standard is the exception rather than the rule. You can’t argue the Times, Telegraph, Mail and MSN all have a left-wing bias along with the Beeb, surely?
Which was why I suggested they simply didn’t check.
Might well be possible. It might also be that five different sources didn’t think it was relevant background.
I notice the original headline has been
changed from: “soldier” to “navyman”.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7312827.stm