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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HSLD:
Correct I have used one myself, not that impressed. Their are no insurgents running around Iraq with those, of that I am sure. Relatively few PSDs used them in Iraq either. I think AGEIS issued a few for a while, but they fell out of favour.
Plenty of Iranian made mortars raining down on us though. The shrapnel was shining and new, like it had just been issued.
That has never been mentioned by the scum beeb.
last and this Anonymous is Tim.
I am stuck on a very dodgy Mexican computer with no “at” symbol working!
jeffD | 01.10.08 – 10:28 pm
i missed that.. thank god i did.
C4 news coverage was way more balanced.
also had a vox pox of “voters” , but it was a good mixture – all the way from pro-thatcher, to pro-new labour.
a good mix, and it reflected in the quality of the response.
generally, it was thumbs up for cameron. across the spectrum…
have to admit, and i’m a sucker for a good speech – so please excuse me – but cameron’s speech said one big thing to me that was missing from gordon browns.
and that was “hope”.
yeah.. its the obamessiah inverted. and in a way, i kind of understand the obama supporters a bit more now.
no doubt in the morning , i’ll wake up and look at it in a more critical way.
but for now, it hit all the right buttons.
Anonymous Tim
If you are using a PC
to get “at” ( @ ) –
make sure numlock is on.
hold down ALT (not alt gr)
enter 064 on numeric keypad then release ALT key.
(064 is the ASCII code for @.)
You should get @ displayed.
Anon, so branson was arrested TWENTY SEVEN years ago.
Wake me up when you have something a little more recent on the bugger will you!
Mailman
Thanks DC,
I am in a very dodgy Mexican Hotel.
your tip didnt work either – thanks all the same – I found a cut and paste has worked
In case anything seems a little questionable in Thursday’s VP debate, here’s some information on Gwen Ifill, the moderator:
Unreal! Pro-Obama Partisan Gwen Ifill Will Moderate Palin-Biden Debate …Update: Ifill Wonders If Palin Can Be Good Mother and VP Candidate!
Gwen Ifill stands to profit personally from an Obamessiah victory. Will the BBC tell you this? Seems kind of important.
Tim – My theory about 5.56 AK’s possibly being the source of the round is shot down in flames then. Can’t beat a bit of fact checking from boots on the ground.
Off topic, but I can’t resist talking guns. I converted my 5.56 AK to accept SA80A2 mags, because the Russian 30 round mags are hopeless ( although the ten rounders fed really well ). I had to manufacture a completely new mag well and braze it to the receiver, make a modified trigger guard, release catch, and manufacture a feed ramp ( because the newer AK’s use the forward section of the mag lips as a ramp ).
By the time I finished it looked a lot like a Galil, talk about re-inventing the wheel.
HSLD
Are you in the UK and a member of a gun club? (another of the beebs hate groups)
I used to run the Artist Rifles at Bisley for a while.
The best AK mags these days are the clear plastic ones, so you can see how many rounds (bullets to the civpop) are left in them.
I used to do a lot of boots on the ground blogging for this site from the red zone in Baghdad winter 06/07 and whilst being a UN election monitor in Northern Iraq 05 – What I was witnessing on a daily basis did not match the Beebs extreme views.
Cameron should call the beeb DG in for a meeting and tell him that if he doesn’t sort out the anti-Conservative bias within 6 months then the beeb news and current affairs division will be separated out of the beeb and privatised, with a commensurate reduction in the cost of the TV licence, as soon as the Conservatives are elected to government.
Make sure to tell the beeb to solve the problem internally and do not offer suggestions which they can debate to death.
I just caught a part of some interview with a US pol on BBC World News America about, what else, the banking situation. This is, of course, during the first half hour of the broadcast so the segment is part of the World News or News 24 production, and does not involve Justin Webb.
After whatever explanation about today’s news, the Beeboid asked, “Does this mean that Americans have turned against this kind of Capitalism?”
Which kind of Capitalism, exactly? No qualifier is given, because the pol immediately nods his head and says yes, people are concerned, blah, blah, blah.
This begs the question of why the BBC defaults to the schoolboy-level debate of Capitalism or Full-on Socialism. The idea that this current situation is due to a flaw in Capitalism is absolute nonsense, yet the majority of BBC reports seem to draw that conclusion. The BBC even did a “Is this the end of Capitalism” thing on Newsnight, and elsewhere.
What kind of adult broadcaster can only deal in such childish absolutes? Why isn’t anyone at the BBC capable of understanding – never mind explaining to the public – that the current situation is more due to failures of government in allowing corrupt misbehavior than in any kind of properly run free market?
Never mind – it’s a rhetorical question. Robert Peston may be capable of explaining the dry details of how bank transactions work, but no one at the BBC is capable of doing anything else except pimping for Socialism or Collectivism.
An unbiased broadcaster would have on staff consultants or talking heads who could explain the difference. At the very least their first reaction should be to report on how the system normally works instead of saying capitalism is fundamentally flawed. Instead, it’s the extreme silliness best left to high school debates or college campus bars.
If the BBC reporting on this situation was worth a damn, they would have on people who could explain how this came about due to mishandling of regulation in the first place, and the totally corrupt dealing with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the second place. Instead it’s “Bankers are greedy and Capitalism is bad, m’kay?”
Not professional, not impartial, not trustworthy.
Tim – I’m a UK subject, until I can get the hell out of here.
Not a member of a gun club, I work with firearms ( it’s a long story and not very exciting )
I do get to own stuff that ‘civilians’ can’t but the novelty of that wore off pretty quickly.
The only personal gun I own right now is an ex-RM Remy 870 which they used for opening doors without knocking, a very warry piece of kit.
I took the door breaching thingy off the barrel, converted it back to the short magazine tube and shoot wabbits with it.
Mailman:
“Anon, so branson was arrested TWENTY SEVEN years ago.
Wake me up when you have something a little more recent on the bugger will you!”
YOU were ASKING for a link to something that happened 27 years ago. That was in response to MarkE saying:
“Not to mention that his first Virgin venture was funded from an illegal purchase tax scam”
yes, TWENTY SEVEN YEARS ago…hardly worth the typing to even raise the point dont you think?
I mean what next, accusing someones husband of being a drunk beacuse they got arrested 20 years ago (when the someone happens to be Palins husband)?
The guys is rich, was fortunate enough to have parents who could send him to good schools, he choses to invest his money how he wants and he employs a hell of a lot of people in the UK.
Gee, that seems to be the kind of person that should be encouraged to invest in this country dont ya think.
Mailman
David Preiser (USA) | Homepage | 02.10.08 – 3:39 am | #
Well said. The current crisis is, far from proof that capitalism doesn’t work, actually an “illustration of the soundness of the Austrian theory of money, banking, and credit cycles”, as mises.org puts it.
http://mises.org/story/3128
While the world teeters on the brink of financial mweltdown the BBC 1 6pm TV News despatches a team to Africa to record a Hippo.
The BBC News has all the gravitas of Blue Peter.
Mailman
Sorry for the delay in responding. Others have covered the source of Banson’s purchase tax scam. I came across it in Tom Bower’s unauthorised biography (it is not mentioned in Branson’s autobiography); a bit hard to link to an offline source. As I said, this was how he funded his first business venture so it could hardly be recent news.
I have no objection to private education (my own children were privately educated). My objection is to Branson being beatified for being such a self made man which he is very much NOT. He has increased his wealth, which is no bad thing, but for such a man to be held up as an example of an entrepreneur is terrifying. There are many entrepreneurs who manage to be better human beings Branson, yet he is held up as some form of saint.