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
General BBC-related comment thread!
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Nearly Oxfordian,
Could you enlarge on your last post, I do not understand your point about traders being allowed to decide who the wish to serve and who not?.
That sounds like you condone discrimination in certain areas?, I know I have misunderstood your point so could you enlarge on your view to assist the dim like me?.
nice blog…. can we exchange links??? pls reply to my blog.. tnx
The BBC has stiff competition from US media for the lefty bias prize . This blog has a fine take on the US media’s grotesque “reporting” on President Bush’s speech to the Israeli Knesset on Thursday:
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2008/05/16/media-disgrace-america-israel-themselves
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/brent-baker/2008/05/15/nets-show-scorn-two-pronged-republican-attack-obama
It’s in three parts on You Tube. It was actually quite an extraordinary speech – courageous, from the heart and throwing down a gauntlet to terror:
Tried to see how the BBC were handling the story, if at all, but there was no link to Bush’s speech on the Middle East page, just one to the older story of ths arrival in Israel. Trying to check that one out I got Page cannot be displayed and since then (about twenty minutes ago) I haven’t been able to get into the BBC news site at all.
Afternoon Patrick (Bonn)
I would have thought that everyone on the planet condones discrimination in certain areas (the areas varying according to the views of the person in question.) Your relationship with your wife would suffer, I suspect, if you were legally required to treat all women equally in all respects. The freedom to discriminate according to whatver criteria take your fancy is simply part of the generality of liberty. Laws requiring you to desist from discriminating are restrictions on liberty. And are therefore a bad thing. As far as condoning is concerned, different people would condone different discriminations. I would condone shopkeepers declining to serve rowdy youths. Others would condone shopkeepers declining to serve BNP members. I have a long list of discriminations which I would condone, and another long list of discriminations which I would not condone. But I wouldn’t dream of imposing either of my lists on you, by law.
It’s how they tell them – BBC
Saudis ‘resist Bush oil pressure’
Saudi Arabia has rejected an appeal by US President George W Bush to raise oil production, a US official has said.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7404040.stm
BBC’s US MSM partners, ABC, said on their news bulletins, broadcast here on 5Lite, that Bush had again been rebuffed by the Saudis.
Others –
Saudi raises oil output to highest in two years after pleas from George Bush
Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi said: “On May 10, we raised supplies to customers by increasing 300,000 barrels per day of oil (output) … In the future if the need appears, Saudi Arabia has no objection to producing more.”
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/natural_resources/article3950658.ece
Archduke: ‘I just find it odd – the complete blackout about who Rangers supporters are..’
I noticed that too: complete silence on what Rangers FC stands for (apart from thuggery and shit football).
The other night Manchester got a taste of what northern Irish Catholics have faced for generations.
will, I’m not sure how you managed that link. I can’t get onto the BBC news website at all, using a couple of browsers.
Greencoat: Puts an end to the continual spouting by the BBC about how well behaved Scottish football fans are.
Patrick,
It is illegal for shops and restaurants in the UK to discriminate on the basis of race, gender or religion, and of course I don’t condone such discrimination. It is, however, legal to say: I won’t serve person X. I fully support that, since I don’t believe a trader should be coerced by the state to sell goods or services to any particular person, otherwise it ceases to be free trade.
Anonymous | 17.05.08 – 6:29 am |
It’s the line here that gets me.
The BBC claimed the programme was a “light-hearted and imaginative film which delves under the skin of the Iron Lady for the first time”.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/conservative/1970986/Baroness-Thatcher-tried-to-seduce-Sir-Edward-Heath-for-Conservative-seat%2C-new-BBC-drama-claims.html
BBC: We’re just trash. It’s what we’re best at.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7404714.stm
“They might have been even more frustrated on arrival had they seen the beaming face of David Cameron at a photo-op in the cab of a train at Crewe’s rail freight yard.
Asked how it felt to be at the controls, and whether as a boy he wanted to be an engine driver, he replied: “Actually I wanted to be a lorry driver.” Do they do HGV courses at Eton then?”
FFS!
David Vance
I note that you have written a book on the problems of Northern Ireland.
IMO, and that of several members of the provisional IRA and Unionist organizations I have communicated with over the last decade the BBC is and has long since been working ENTIRELY for the British Establishment. The BBCs propaganda is directly under the almost entire control of MI6 and MI5 from the TOP. Who are influenced by big banking corporations and various world elites, who also control The CIA Mossad along with all other western secrete services. Who largely created, sponsor and promote the interests of the UN and the EU above the interests of all ordinary British, European or otherwise people. Among a whole list of horrendously infamous historical and otherwise situations and world events.
Which if true, begs many questions as to what exactly the British Establishment have been trying to achieve in NI, for a very long time indeed?
How much innocent British Blood does the BBC have directly on its hands?
Why would The BBC be on the side of terrorists who kill and murder anyone, never mind British troops or innocent British citizens?
Surely it is simple common sense, that it is not because the BBC along with its £3.5 billion plus plus budget is ‘out of control’, or is inhabited or somehow run by stupid leftist six formers.
IMO
“The biggest danger to the establishment of ANY country is, and has ALWAYS been, the middle and lower middle classes of that respective country. Which is why it is they, not just the poor or unskilled working classes that MUST be made to be kept poor, dependent, and as ignorant as possible. While above all, being kept murderously racially and religiously divided in order that the masses can continue to be effectively ruled/farmed by their very own ruling class elites.”
Quote myself June 13th 1984.
Do you, David Vance, AGREE or NOT with the above statement?
“Do they do HGV courses at Eton then?”
No, but neither do they at George Watson’s College (fees £8,481), where Martha went to school.
Hmm. I doubt if many Beeboids wanted to be a trucker either.
In fact look at a Question Time audience and I’m betting most of them are politics students, Guardian readers, Local Authority nobodys or Social Workers.
You don’t get many truckers, cabbies or brickies on QT. I wonder why?
Just to complete my 3:13 pm comment, now that the BBC website is again accessible, I see that they have totally ignored George W. Bush’s speech to the Israeli Parliament. He challenged us all not to be blind to the threat of terror and not to repeat the mistake of the appeasement of Hitler before World War 2 by appeasing Ahmedinejad.
This part of the speech caused quite a stir back in America with Obama deciding that Bush had singled him out personally for criticism because of his intention to talk to Ahmedinejad, and much of the lefty US media mounting a feverish and unwarranted attack on the president over the issue.
So we wonder why the BBC is snubbing the US president. Or let’s rephrase that: we know why it is snubbing the US president: we just wonder how the hell it thinks it can get away with it.
The same US President who used taxpayers money to provide welfare to the Banks?
“The same US President who used taxpayers money to provide welfare to the Banks?”
And this has the slightest relevance to this site because … ?
Atlas Shrugged,
Thanks for the question. My view is that the BBC has conducted itself as little more than an echo chamber for Government policy, and the Northern Ireland Office in particular. In that regard alone, the State broadcaster is a menace. If you read my book, you will get more details on how this has worked.
Gordon Brown has given a dangerous sermon-on-the- mount about his ‘moral global vision’ which gives priority to a ‘multiculturalist’ myth, with the BBC, in its report here, throwing in its support:
Brown’s propaganda claims:
1.)there is ‘a consistent ethical core’ in all the world’s religions; NO THERE ISN’T: the ethics of Islam on the one hand, and Judeo-Christianity on the other are very different;
2.)there are global ‘shared values’; NO, there are global CONFLICTS OF VALUES between Islam and Judeo-Christianity.
Brown OMITS, in his ‘vision’, the national interests of the British people in the control of MASS IMMIGRATION, which Labour and the EU have engineered, and continue to engineer; but given his vision about the shared commonality of people globally, and the moral imperative of liberal ‘do-goodery’, why shouldn’t mass immigration into the UK continue? Brown showed more interest in global climate change in his speech, just when more and more people are seeing through the ‘green’ mantras:-
“The sunset of environmentalism?”
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2008/05/sunset-of-environmentalism.html
And then there’s the BBC waving on Brown’s ‘multiculturalism’, with these gratuitous anti-Thatcher comments put in at the end of the ‘impartial’ BBC account:
“Mrs Thatcher won few converts in Scotland when, at a time when industry was being hard hit, she quoted St Paul saying: ‘If a man will not work he shall not eat.’
“When she had finished, the then moderator presented her with Kirk reports on housing and poverty, interpreted by many as a polite rebuke.
“Mr Brown’s spokesman said that nothing should be read into the fact that the prime minister’s speech came 20 years after Lady Thatcher’s famous address.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/7405547.stm
Turkish membership of EU is coming soon. I think it could be the breaking point. Much like the gypsies in Italy attempt to snatch a six year old girl has been the breaking point for the Italians.
How does the BBC get away with it?
————————————-
Last week, the BBC paid, Stephen Fry, of the liberal/Left, who’s perenially on the BBC, to give a lecture about: the BBC; which he did, predictably praising it.
And again, on 15 May, the BBC pay some of the licence-fee over to another BBC performer, Will Hutton, journalist, of the liberal/Left, of course, who trotted out the usual grovelling phrases, and ended, sounding as though he might be married to the BBC: “You’ve got your faults BBC, but you are loved”. Without analysis, Hutton singled out for praise the BBC’s ‘truthful’ coverage of Israel, and of the EU!
I wouldn’t be surprised if Hutton didn’t keep a sleeping bag in the BBC canteen. He’s hardly off the airwaves, usually billed as the spokesman of some candyfloss outfit called ‘The Work Foundation’ which, presumably, exists to endow him with spurious credibility.
He’s a particular hate object of mine.
Gordon Brown did not point out that the countries from which most immigration comes are not becoming multicultural.That many former multicultural countries such as Zimbabwe are reverting to mono-cultures.
The other point is we are not paying the man to be “global” we a paying him to mind the store.
Can I just say as someone who spent 12 years looking underneath his car every day for bombs planted by IRA scum funded by fat thick Irish Americans I really hope Ted Kenndey dies a painful death. This piece if human excrement has been responsible for keeping terrorism in the UK going for years.
It was always ironic that 9/11 happened in a US city wher Gerry Adams and his boyfriend used to walk at the head of the St Patricks day parade. I always wondered if after 9/11 all those Americans who used to listen to Ted Kennedy and drop a Dollar in the box for the good old boys in Ireland ever felt guilty about it. They say what goes around comes around. Perhaps that piece of human excrement Kennedy is getting his. And no, I don’t appologise for my language.
May you burn in hell Kennedy you fat cnut!!!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7406527.stm
Trust Stephen Nolan to big up Kennedy on 5 lite
Martin – “Greencoat: Puts an end to the continual spouting by the BBC about how well behaved Scottish football fans are.”
No, its OK because they are Rangers fans. They fly the British flag, are associated with Loyalism in NI, show enthusiasm for joining the army etc Therefore they are wrong sort of Scottish, so its fine to portray them in a bad light.
Ryan – Ive seen a little bit of ‘Child’, its main cop out is on race, always careful to avoid any recognition of group differences.
“May you burn in hell Kennedy you fat cnut!!”
Amen. And remember Chapaquidick.
“May you burn in hell Kennedy you fat cnut!!”
Wouldn’t “drown” in hell be a more apt eternal punishment?
Apologies if this has appeared before or elsewhere, but I must say that, for a mere of review a light entertainment show, it rather caused my eyebrow to crank at all it inferred: Diane Abbott on Desert Island Discs
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/tv_and_radio/article3933504.ece
Just a sample:
Should the BBC have surrendered editorial control in this way? It is paid for by us, not the castaways. If the whole programme is at stake, perhaps so, but should not listeners be told about it?
I am beginning to seriously wonder what exactly is going on with what we do or do not get told about, with what we most certainly do still have to pay for.
I guess it could have been worse. Imagine if money, AND Robbie Williams was involved. Of course, had I phrased that ‘money OR Robbie Williams’, no imagination would be required.
Did she choose any records from the Black and White Minstrels?
George R | 16.05.08 – 10:16 pm
Why all these attempts to smear the Emir of Qatar?
Isn’t he one of the West’s few real friends in the region?
President Bush May 8 thanked the leader of the tiny Gulf country of Qatar for his nation’s steadfast support.
In brief remarks at the White House after the two leaders met, Bush said Hamad bin Khalifa al Thani “showed great leadership” in leading his country to join the coalition that took on Saddam Hussein’s regime.
U.S. Central Command located its forward headquarters in Qatar before the conflict began.
Bush called the amir a “reformer” and “a strong example of what is possible in his part of the world.” Al Thani has promoted a new constitution for Qatar that allows women to vote and has appointed women to his cabinet.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_prfr/is_200305/ai_1043407543
In May 2006, Qatar pledged more than $100 million to Hurricane Katrina relief to colleges and universities in Louisiana affected by the hurricane.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_Qatar
Amir of Qatar: I would like to thank the President very much for his gracious invitation for me to come and meet with him here at the White House. We in Qatar are very keen to have a very unique and strong and distinct relationship with the United States, a relationship that it is transparent.
Our military relationship is very good. We are very committed with the United States regarding every agreement that we have signed to fullfil our part.
We are also so grateful for the United States, because it is helping Qatar in the areas of education and economics and economic development. And in Qatar we welcome all American corporations who are willing to come and invest in Qatar.
While my Qatar Gently Weeps!
David Vance
Thank you for your reply.
I agree that the BBC has been doing very much what you state, which is in itself not democratic and not at all helpful to a true understanding of the NI situation.
However I am claiming the BBC over a longer period has been doing far worse then that, as I am sure you understand.
Government policy may or may not be exactly what The British establishment would want it to be. Democratic governments after all have to win elections. The British establishment represented by its simply massive corporate national and above all international interests never have had to.
It has long been rumored that British secret services in a conspiracy with the BBC did deliberately create more Republican and Unionist terrorism then they have ever attempted to stop. Hear say it may be, but then thats the nature of these types of things. Even if there were direct evidence it would never be allowed to reach the public domain.
Conclusive evidence that would stand up in court however is not required. When for example has any member of the secret services or the British Establishment EVER gone on trial?
Motive, an understanding of former and subsequent events and the known existence of a willing infrastructure with which to influence them, are all the evidence that is needed for a conclusive conspiracy theory.
Northern Irish terrorism I contend was allowed to wane, simply because our establishment was planning to successfully give us Arab fundamentalist terrorism to replace it with. Our current post Cold War situation has also required a new enemy to be ’emerged’.
Paranoid conspiracy nonsense or well thought out conspiracy reality, is the question?
Peace and security for the ordinary people is a threat to the powers that be, along with the armed forces and secret services they control. It also limits their options for making a dishonest murderous fast buck mainly at the tax payers expense.
It was constantly claimed during the N Irish problems that The British security and secret services, along with the CIA always did know exactly who all the terrorists were and where they all lived.
The question was asked. Why the leaders especially where not all rounded up arrested and charged? Thus rendering these terrorist organizations impotent, virtually overnight. The BBC was considered especially by those in the provisional IRA to be their own personal cheerleaders. So much so that many of the Catholic minority became seriously confused as to what the BBC was really up to.
I believe it is now clear what the BBC was up to in our recent past, and still is up to now, when it comes to our current self induced problems with Arab terrorism.
The REAL truth we will never know, that is for absolute sure. However informed logical speculation is I believe still our right. Now we have the use of the internet, it is now our duty to future generations.
Those who forget, or never did really know their true history, are condemned to repeat it. As we are right now.
US sniper shot at Koran in Iraq..
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7407187.stm
A world shattering event…
Thani Tim:
Qatar, Emir Sheikh Hamad, his Hamas and Hezbollah-supporting, Al Jazeera TV are as much use to the West as Saudi Arabia, King Abdullah and Al Qaeda are.
Western policy (and in the case of Qatar, the BBC), should stop playing the dhimmi with these states:
“Stop the Jizyah” (Hugh Fitzgerald)
http://www.newenglishreview.org/blog_direct_link.cfm/blog_id/13750
“Putting Saudi Arabia in its place”
(Hugh Fitzgerald).
http://www.newenglishreview.org/blog_direct_link.cfm/blog_id/14868
The BBC, it’s love affair with climate change and yet another reason for it
Obese blamed for the world’s ills
Obese people are contributing to the world food crisis and climate change, experts say.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7404268.stm
The BBC, it’s love affair with climate change and yet another reason for it
My point about Bush is that he cannot be called a “conservative” as Corporate Welfare has grown under his tenure, and he spent taxpayers money on things which should be handled by the commercial sector.
One question about America the BBC should be asking is why the Federal Reserve calls itself the Federal Reserve when it is no more Federal than Federal Express?
I think the BBC would achieve something worthwhile if it put aside its kneejerk Anti-Americanism and went after anti-American organizations like the Federal Reserve.
Saudi Arabia is no friend of the West. None of these Arab nations should be trusted.
But, it seems all our “leaders” are slaves to their vast wealth.
Why are we dependent on them?
The BBC’s Gavin Esler shows his true ‘multiculturalist’ colours, and his anti-white definition of ‘racism’, in ‘Daily Mail’ article today:
“How the battle for the White House has picked open America’s old wound -race”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=567198&in_page_id=1770
Esler uses the word ‘race’ in a discussion on Obama, as applying only to attitudes of some whites towards blacks. He does NOT discuss ‘race’ attitudes of some blacks towards whites in the USA. He mentions Rev. Wright, but not explicitly Wright’s negative views of white people; nothing like this critique of Rev. Wright by Stanley Kurtz:
“Jeremiah Wright’s ‘Trumpet'”
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Utilities/printer_preview.asp?idArticle=15082&R=13A803152B
on radio 4 now, book of the week, cherie Bliar is reading extracts of her book, so i put talk sport on instead
Peter Horrocks has a strange angle on the cocked-up “Burmese Tsunami” photographs.
“…the picture we used yesterday to illustrate that truth was itself inaccurate.”
I think he is talking about “truthiness”, defined by wikipedia as
Truthiness is a word that U.S. television comedian Stephen Colbert popularized in 2005 as a satirical term to describe things that a person claims to know intuitively or “from the gut” without regard to evidence, logic, intellectual examination, or facts.
Jack Hughes | 19.05.08 – 10:01 am | #
New day, new weasels, new words.
LOL. Made my day. Ta.
I wonder if there is a definition of “Emerging Truthiness”, which might be a development from the Abbess/HarraBIN & Chippy lexicon
What’s most worrying is the comment (from waht source, one wonders) that as they got some flak for owning up to the cock-up (which, frankly, is all they could do, and rightly so) they should perhaps keep schtum next time.
Hey, why not? And then the politicians can try it too….
Listening to a programme on Sunday about by-elections. It was patiently explained that the reason Brown is not visiting Crewe/Nantwich is because of the convention that prime minsters do not campaign on by-elections. They failed to mention that Blair ignored the convention saying that “there are no rules in politics”. The real reason Brown is not getting involved is because he is seen as a liablity.
Another Beebland multi-culti paradise lost:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/7407914.stmt:
And get the headline: “S. Africa attacks”. Do you think that if in the UK there was even a HINT of rhetoric, let alone violence (let alone hacking to death, as here) against IMIGRANTS, that the Beeb would call them “UK attacks”, without mentioning the words ‘racism’, ‘xenophobia’ or ‘migrants’ in the headline?
Once again, one law for the (largely white) inhabitants of britian, another for the (largely black) inhabitants of anywhere else
P.S. Even the Guardian tells it like it is in its own treatment of the story
GOOD GORD!!!!!
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article1180746.ece
Bob: maybe it’s been changed, but the report does label them xenophobic attacks, and includes a quote saying the same.
The BBC has been concealing information about the arrest of what it only describe as ‘a man’, eight days ago. The ‘Manchester Evening News’ named him as HASSAN BUTT a week ago. Today the ‘Times’ has this:
“Police face scrutiny over the arrest of radical jihadist who renounced violence”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article3958600.ece
Here is an extract. The BBC is involved:-
“Ten days ago, as he prepared to board a flight to Pakistan, Mr Butt was arrested • and is still detained • under the Terrorism Act.
“If his rejection of violence was not a sham, then Greater Manchester Police • whose investigation is being carried out independently of Counter Terrorism Command at Scotland Yard • may be about to face more than a few tough questions.
“Some may receive an airing at the High Court this week, when the force must defend its attempt to seek evidence against Mr Butt by scouring the notebooks of journalists from leading media organisations.
“Mr Butt’s autobiography, Leaving Al-Qaeda: Inside the Mind of a British Jihadist, had been due for publication this month. The release was put on hold, indefinitely, when one morning in March the acclaimed writer who had helped Mr Butt with his book received a knock on the door of his North London home.
“Outside stood three counter-terrorism detectives who ordered Shiv Malik to hand over the unpublished manuscript and all his notes and source material relating to Mr Butt.
“When he refused, the police went to court and obtained a production order forcing Mr Malik, 27, to comply.
“The force is seeking to obtain similar production orders against the BBC, the American TV network CBS, Prospect magazine and The Sunday Times. Each has interviewed Mr Butt. All four are resisting the demands and will be represented at the High Court on Wednesday for a two-day hearing at which Mr Malik is seeking judicial review of the production order.”
Of course, various liberal/Left journalists want the police ‘scrutinised’, as they lobby in a letter to ‘The Times’:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/letters/article3957424.ece
I would add that I want all Jihadists, ‘ex-Jihadists’ and friends of Jihadists scrutinised by the police.
I wonder if these letter-writers would come to my defence so rapidly if I were ‘under scrutiny’?
A mayor behaving badly…
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/south_west/7408239.stm
Hmm, party affiliation not given – therefore obviously NOT a Conservative.
The PM ‘news’ show on Radio Four has been doing a load on anti-alcohol slots recently. I wondered why and then this pops out of the woodwork.
Anyone smell a new tax?