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!
Bookmark the permalink.
“Does the BBC think the Brotherhood represent UK Muslims?” (Douglas Murray).
[Extract]:-
“A story that is disturbing for a chain of reasons has just come out from our national broadcaster. On the BBC’s website yesterday, headlined ‘Muslim concern at stop and search’ the site leads with the news that:
“‘Muslims in Scotland have expressed unease about the use of “stop and search” procedures at Glasgow Airport.’
“In any season this is a story likely to spread irritation among the British public.”
http://www.socialcohesion.co.uk/blog/2008/07/does_the_bbc_think_the_brother.html
I see that Al Beeb are reporting the comment made by President Bush about Wall Street getting drunk and now suffering a hangover. Has there been any coverage of Obama’s recent gaffe about expecting to have to deal with world leaders for the next 8-10 years. 10 years? Presumably he means when he is president of all 57 states?
MrLouKnee, your comment is absolutely out of place.
No matter how much we despise the obvious bias of Al Beeb, there is no place here for comments like yours.
Now be a good boy and say sorry :()
Mailman
The BBC and liberal left were all over the Saddam Hussein trial, wringing their hands about him not getting a fair trial. I wonder if they will be just as worried about Radovan Karadic getting a fair trial? Somehow I doubt it. As for the capture of of Karadic being a triumph for the UN…yeah, right! Remember all those TV reports of UN convoys being held up by Bosnian checkpoints. The soldiers just stood there, unable to do anything, because of the weak as water resolutions passed by the UN prevented them from using force.
You know who the real victims are of the digger attacks in Israel? The Palestinians. (And what’s a “constriction vehicle”?)
Anyone seen this piece over at EU Referendum?
Priceless
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2008/07/gullible-or-not.html
Pounce 6.32 Thank you for your informative post which I missed previously.
I’m sure some Serbs did some nasty stuff indeed I don’t think anybody could deny that that applies in all wars, including the ones we are in. Perhaps you have first hand stories to the ones you told about our Moslem & Croatian Nazi friends, but I suspect they are less horrible. A popular western excuse is that they were all equally dreadful so by siding with one lot we did little harm but I think, on an objective level, our allies were considerably worse than our enemies. However it was only the Serb command that punished people on their side doing so. That, along with all the examples you gave, will never appear on the BBC. Some time ago Kate Adie’s army handler told, on Iain Dale’s blog, how the BBC had amended actuality to fit the NATO claims. There is no doubt that the Moslem leader Oric did commit genocide in Serb villages around Srebrenica killing 3,800 identified victims. The refusal of the ICTY to prosecute for this is obscene. If the bodies found are from those massacres, as is at least reasonable, there is virtually no evidence for any Serb masacre & many holes in the story which have not been greatly improved by the way the “official” story has been changed over the years.
If there was no widespread Serbian Massacre in Srebrenica there is no real case against Karadzic & we have been lied to quite deliberately for 13 years. (Even if there had been the fact that the media have censored any mention of the prior Moslem massacres, amount to a slightly lesser deliberate lie)
I’d forgotten how terrible the events of Srebrenica were, here is some reading I did yesterday. We have our differences, but I hope there are some things which we can agree upon:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1037403/Europes-worst-genocide-Hitler-How-Dutch-peacekeepers-looked-Karadzics-men-butchered-8-000-Srebrenica.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1037404/General-Sir-Michael-Rose-My-drunken-suppers-paranoid-madman-Radovan-Karadzic.html
It’s nice to have an opportunity to agree with Joel about something, so I’ll take it.
This would, I guess, be the Neil Craig banned from Oliver Kamm’s blog.
http://oliverkamm.typepad.com/blog/
He has a different take on things.
The idea for a protest suggested by Tim Spence and elaborated on by Neil Craig is literally rubbish.
Nothing wrong with the slogan, but fly posting bits of junk on lampposts shows nothing but lack of visual intelligence. There are laws against fly posting and rightly so. Whatever the message, it rubbishes the environment.
This morning I heard on the world service that there has been another Unrwa condemnation of the Israeli blockade.
They said that Gaza was the most ( or one of the most) densely populated areas in the world, and that poverty levels had reached unprecedented levels -( What’s happened to all the $trillions of aid that pours in there?) – with 40% unemployment, the highest rate in the world.
Whether these figures are accurate I don’t know, but I do know that all the blame for this unhappiness was attributed to guess who. They had forgotten Egypt’s border with Gaza altogether. There was an interview about life in Gaza with our good friend Aleem Macbool in Ramallah who was asked “How do they survive?” The usual was reiterated.
But I also heard that there has been another condemnation, this time by our own dear government, or a body within it. I see it’s now on the BBC website
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/7523113.stm
I can’t understand how people can complain so much about what they call ‘collective punishment’ at the same time as pointing out:
“They comprise a majority of elected parliamentarians that the Palestinian people voted for – they have a legitimate standing and should be treated in that way,” she (Ann Clwyd. Great fan of Hamas it seems.) said.
Gazans! You voted. You don’t like it? Vote them out. It’s democracy, stupid.
Sue,
Halleem Macbool the Hamas/Hezbolah sympathiser keeps popping his nasty little head up and I wonder if he is part of the ‘release fee’ for Alan Johnson?
The BBC is grubby enough and dishonest enough to employ an Islamist sympathiser I think. All that is missing from the Macbool reports is the stirring Islamist music and pictures of suicide killers!
This is what some Islamic leaders (e.g. Libyans) do if they don’t like the results of the practice of Western justice in Western countries like Switzerland; they refuse to sell you oil as contracted, and worse. (The BBC is disinclined to editorialise about the Gaddafis in the way it editorialises about e.g. Karadzic.)
“Libya ‘halts Swiss oil shipments'”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7523537.stm
An update from ‘Bloomberg’:
“Libyan tankers stop carrying oil to Switzerland”
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601085&sid=aamzYr2JJkgw&refer=europe
Presumably, the people Switzerland, Italy and Germany where Libya’s Tamoil SA operates, will decide on their own boycott of Libyan oil.
And Switzerland’s largest political party, the Swiss People’s Party will presumably not yield to such Libyan Islamic threats:
http://www.dianawest.net/Home/tabid/36/EntryID/382/Default.aspx
On the Telegraph’s web site is this story by the BBC’s Jeremy McDermott in Bogota.
The headline is: Colombia protests against Farc kidnappings
The French capital’s Place du Trocadero was awash in the red, yellow and blue colours of the Colombian flag.
Miss Betancourt, the 46-year-old French-Colombian politician who was rescued three weeks ago in a daring operation carried out by Colombian agents.
Hours later, in Bogota, the Colombian capital, hundreds of thousands massed on the streets.
“This is an historic moment for us,” said Cristina Jimenez, 37, a university lecturer, as she marched. “We are for the first time building a civil society, crying out with one voice.”
“Libertad, Libertad (Liberty, Liberty)”, was the cry that echoed off the high rises in Bogota as people marched to reject the kidnapping and violence meted out by Colombia’s Marxist rebels.
Farc are blamed for most of the Colombia’s ills. The crush of the crowd snaking down Bogota’s main drag, the Seventh Avenue, was united in its condemnation of the rebel group.
“No more Farc. No more kidnapping, No more terrorism,” screamed protesters
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/southamerica/colombia/2437899/Colombia-protests-against-Farc-kidnappings.html
The BBC web site is also running a story By Jeremy McDermott.
Their headline is: Colombia dares to dream of peace
What is odd is the fact that the BBC have doctored the wording that appears in the Telegraph article.
Gone is the phrase ‘daring operation’ (remember the BBC lied over Betancourt a couple of weeks back and tried to diminish the kidnap rescue)
No mention of the Paris demonstration.
Gone is the sentence ‘Farc are blamed for most of the Colombia’s ills.’
Gone are the protester’s chants ‘”No more Farc. No more kidnapping, No more terrorism,” screamed protesters.
What’s left is a watered down piece from that which appears in the Telegraph with the BBC version finishing with ‘The cry for liberty and peace needs negotiation……….”
http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7516550.stm
The BBC and censorship.
BBC Double standards and no credibility • Its what they do.
Another glaring discrepancy between the two articles is this.
Telegraph:
Farc are still holding 25 political hostages whom they want to exchange for hundreds of their comrades in prison. Some of those held have spend more than a decade in their jungle prisons, chained to trees at night and forced to march constantly to avoid army patrols and US monitoring aircraft that search relentlessly for their locations.
BBC:
Ms Betancourt was one of the political hostages held by the Farc. The rebels still hold 25 of these hostages, whom they want to exchange for hundreds of their comrades in prison.
Now why not include the bit about being chained to trees at night and forced to march.?
The BBC: Double standards and no credibility.
Now why not include the bit about being chained to trees at night and forced to march.?
The BBC: Double standards and no credibility.
TPO | 24.07.08 – 5:51 pm | #
Now if the FARCKERS were damaging the TREES, that would make it news.
watched the bbc 6 o’clock news is it today we have a very impotant by-election?
They have told me a lot about a politician from a foreign country visiting another foreign country, Do a lot of Germans have a vote in the American presidential election?
Did we need live coverage of an American speaking in Germany (but most definatly not in German) for an audience in America?
In contrast to BBC reporting of Libya’s Gaddafis (see 5:27 pm above), ‘swissinfo.ch’ has this:
“Gaddafi’s revenge riles Swiss press”
http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/politics/foreign_affairs/Gaddafi_s_revenge_riles_Swiss_press.html?siteSect=1521&sid=9367493&cKey=1216894714000&ty=st
G.Brown makes another predictable speech about ‘abolishing poverty’ today, which the BBC dutifully reports:
“Bishops march for poverty action”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7522217.stm
But the reality of poverty in Britain is there for all to see in Glasgow East (by-election today).
Whatever the result of this by-election (probably with Labour losing many thousands of votes, but just holding on), the reality of Labour’s failure to deal with poverty in Britain, is apparent to even the ‘World Socialist website’:
“Glasgow East by-election: Stark social problems, poverty”
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/jul2008/glas-j24.shtml
George R: I really don’t have anby time for the Glasgow lot.
Why are so many of the working class so thick? They keep voting Labour even though they get shat on every time and happily admit it.
Plenty of long time Tory seats went in 97 to throw them out of power.
I really don’t see any hard core Labour seats going Tory this time around.
I guess Labour voters like living in their own shit.
I see David Cameron has been a victim of those ever falling crime figures in London so spouted by Gordon Brown’s official bum wiper Mark Easton.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7523144.stm
I noticed in regards to the comment above that the BBC has another rather interesting piece on the Tories and cycling.
Here’s a little quote.
“…So what is causing this shift away from the chauffeur-driven car and on to the old fashioned bike – once considered by some to be the mode of transport of the left?…”
Since when have you EVER seen a left wing politician cycling, other than for a photo call?
Did commie Livingstone cycle?
Diane Abbot? Her fat lardy arse is stuck to a taxi
Bliar? I don’t think so?
Broon? Have a laugh
Harman? She is a bike
Typical BBC crap. Even the BBC spend millions on taxi’s.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7518925.stm
Did anyone watch Burn Up last night on bbc2? Oh my god! It contained every single liberal cliche you could imagine and at some points I thought the writers must have been taking the piss!
I think that something has happened in recent months. The Beeb has always been biased but lately it seems any attempt to hide it has been abandoned. I must say it’s beginning to make me a little angry!
Poor old BBC. looks like the fat one eyed jock might get a kicking in Glasgow (although I think he’ll sneek it just). It sounded like a Pravda news announcement after some Soviet leader had just died.
I notice that on the BBC news they keep spinning this story about the Labour MP in Glasgow retiring on ‘ill health’ grounds.
Not a single mention of the allegations of sleaze, even though that halfwit Michael Prick finally had to mention the subject the other night.
Martin writes: “I notice that on the BBC news they keep spinning this story about the Labour MP in Glasgow retiring on ‘ill health’ grounds.”
I’m glad you mentioned that. The BBC has consistently attempted to suppress this story in the most shameful manner.
Contrast and compare with the treatment afforded to Caroline Spelman, or Boris.
“Scotland Office Minister David Cairns, who is managing Labour candidate Margaret Curran’s campaign, said: “As far as we are concerned, David Marshall stood down as an MP on doctor’s orders.
“Two doctors’ letters said he wasn’t fit to carry on, and we have accepted that.”
http://www.theherald.co.uk/politics/news/display.var.2405907.0.0.php?act=complaint&cid=1780661
Its just the BBC towing the party line.
Looks like Gordon is a gonna. Can’t keep the third safest seat in Scotland.
BBC spinning like mad.
Wendy Alexander having her hand in the till was just a storm in a teacup according to Jon Sopel. John Pinnear said this was just a protest vote. Rachel Burden couldn’t even remember the SNP candidate’s name and continues to spout on about the “global economic climate”.
Beeboids are scared.
In reviewing a book, ‘Save the Males’ by American, Kathleen Parker, the reviewer, Amanda Platell notes these key points:
[Extract]:
“It is the fiercest and most fearless defence of men, fatherhood and ultimately the family I have read in many years.
“American author Kathleen Parker’s courageous thesis is that initially, through extreme feminism, then via its craven implementation into society, women have demonised men and trivialised their contribution, especially to family life.
“I say courageous because, in the eyes of many women and of the liberal establishment, suggesting men have had a rough deal is nothing short of heresy. ”
‘Save the Males!’ (by Amanda Platell).
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1038469/Save-males-A-new-book-says-society-biased-AGAINST-men-Ridiculous-Hardly-says-Amanda-Platell.html
The time is overdue for the abolition of H. Harman’s office, which re-inforces social and economic discrimination against e.g. fathers, through the misnamed Equality and Human Rights Commission; and the time is overdue for the abolition of BBC’s Radio 4 ‘Woman’s Hour’.
R.Harribin, BBC’s ‘environment analyst’ presents a one-sided report, advocating a UK policy of more dependence on wind-power:
“Renewables mandate ‘undermined'”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7522667.stm
However, ‘Eureferendum’ provides a corrective on wind-power policy here:
[Extract]:
“For many month now, we have been banging on about the government’s obsession with wind farms and its neglect of conventional power generation but, if this story is to be taken at face value, Brown has now taken a major step in ditching the whole wind policy.”
‘Trouble at t’grid’
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2008/07/trouble-at-tgrid.html
George R: Actually the time has come to abolish Harriet Harman. If a man has such vile sexist views he’d be forced to resign. But this Harriden of the left is full of it.
I actually hope she does become Labour leader. It would fisih this nation off once and for all.
BBC goes Disney for Olympics and monkeys with licence-payers’ money. This cartoon the BBC will show time and time again. And the cost of this stereotypical, dumbed-down effort?:-
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/olympics/monkey/7521287.stm
“I do remember… the corridors of Broadcasting House were strewn with empty champagne bottles. I’ll always remember that”,
Jane Garvey, BBC Five Live, May 10th, 2007, recalling May 2nd, 1997.
Did you hear about the black arm-band seller who made a fortune outside Broadcasting House this morning?
George R | 25.07.08 – 10:19 am |
How long do you think this will last once Muslims get a look at the “Pigsy” character? Will the BBC pull it if there are complaints? If so, will they blame it on the production company, like they did with the Queen’s interview hatchet job? Or will complaints be ignored, hushed up, because the BBC have a lot invested in the Olympics and this promo? Has the character been anthropomorphized enough so that they won’t even notice? They call it “Pigsy”, so perhaps not. This should be interesting.
Still, I guess this puts the lie to any of our accusations of reflexive deference to Muslim sensibilities at the BBC. If they can have a Pig character in a prominent advertisement, without giving it a second thought, I’ll have to rethink my position that they always bend over backwards to avoid offending Muslims, but make zero effort to do anything that might offend Jews.
I do like the artwork, though. The China-pop music I can do without.
The Olympics trail was created by Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett (Gorillaz) and is based on cult 1970s tv series ‘Monkey’.
‘Monkey’ was based on an ancient Chinese story.