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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Very good panel on Any Questions tonight. Bob Marshall-Andrews has so far said he thinks that Gorbals Mick should resign immediately, and that Labour has a terrible civil rights record.
We’ve also got Brown being slagged off for looting pensions, wrecking the banking system, Equitable Life etc.
An enjoyable Friday evening for once. Clive James next… marvellous! Why can’t the TV side of the BBC learn from Radios 3 and 4?
BBC’s- “Mistaken report: Delhi airport”
by Peter Horrocks, Head of BBC Newsroom.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/2008/12/mistaken_report_delhi_airport.html
-Any other apologies from the BBC for any other of its misleading news reports?
News 24 are reporting on why BBC reporters never use the word ‘terrorist’ they claaim there is no official ban.
They of course do not use the M word or the I word in the same report as the T word.
Following up David USA’s comments on the last ‘open thread’;
There seems to be a distinct bias on the so-called ‘independent experts’ the BBC invites to talk about our current economic woes. There’s a chap from ‘citywire’ who is a regular guest, and seems to think the government’s performing just splendidly. The small local businesses they visit all seem to think Gordon Brown is excellent, but the chap they had on (whose name escapes me) last week who said the VAT reduction was stupid and increasing the tax thresholds would be far more productive doesn’t seem to have been invited back. I perhaps it was the mild look of panic he induced on the BBC presenters faces when he dared to criticise the government. They really do it seem scared.
To their credit Roz Altman was a guest on radio four this morning, and she was strongly critical of the interest rate cut, especially its impact on savers. But the reason she stood out was that she is a rare critical voice on the BBC.
Environment
Climate change
2008 will be coolest year of the decade
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/dec/05/climate-change-weather
read the comments. Even Guardian readers dont believe the BBC Climate Scaremongering.
Can someone please put a post up about Justin Webb’s “Are Canadians falling into the Obama trap?”
I’m from Canada and would like to comment on that story and what’s been happening.
Thanks!
Can someone please put a post up about Justin Webb’s “Are Canadians falling into the Obama trap?”
I’m from Canada and would like to comment on that story and what’s been happening.
Thanks!
George R,
I’ve tried quite a few times to respond to Horrocks, but I keep on getting this message:
There has been a problem…
Your comment contains some HTML that has been mistyped
Data at the root level is invalid on line 1
Removing the HTML didn’t help. Funny, no problem with the other BBC blogs – at least not now.
Someone on Justin Webb’s blog said he had the same problem, so he tried posting line by line and that seemed to work. Quite funny though to read a comment like that.
Perhaps this will be the BBC’s new way of censoring people whose opinions it doesn’t like:
Your data at the root level is invalid.
Anyways, I read Justin Webb’s blog and it’s pathetic.
He equates a recent quasi-coup by three opposition parties to replace the governing party without an election that almost created a constitutional crisis to ‘we Canadians must envy Americans because Obama is their president.’
Seriously, WTF!?
Phil- here’s a link to the story. I think Justin Webb describes the situation very badly, but what do you think? If you put a good comment here in the thread, it has the chance to be posted as a main topic.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/justinwebb/2008/12/like_most_of_you_i.html
Has anyone else seen this? I nearly missed it • an amazingly insightful article in Tuesday’s The Wall Street Journal:
Media Narratives Feed Terrorist Fantasies
It opens up:
For purposes of self-justification, Azam Amir Kasab, the only terrorist taken alive in last week’s Mumbai massacre, offered that the murder of Jews in the city’s Chabad House was undertaken to avenge Israeli atrocities on Palestinians. Two other terrorists cited instances of anti-Muslim Hindu violence as the answer to the question, “Why are you doing this to us?” before mowing down 14 unarmed people at the Oberoi Hotel. And if dead terrorists could talk, we would surely hear Abu Ghraib mentioned as among their reasons for singling out U.S. and British hostages.
One suspects the terrorists spent far too much time listening to the BBC World Service.
Bloody Hell. It seems that the penny really is beginning to drop across the Pond. For an op-ed piece in America’s most authoritative and respected newspaper to single out the BBC like this is quite possibly unprecedented.
If it isn’t, then I’ve clearly missed the previous articles that made the same linkage between Islamic terror and the BBC’s mind-bending global output.
Stop Press
On HIGNFY tonight, film was shown of Gordon Brown being interviewed by Frank Bough in 1985 defending his receiving information from a disgruntled civil servant and consequently raising questions in Parliament. Rare footage this, kept in the “BBC – Eyes Only Office”, and I saw it on the BBC!
There’ll be heads rolling at the Beeb for this cock-up 🙂
Good link Jonathan. A well written and enlightening read with facts (I assume) unknown to me such as the BBC and liberal media:
Well I know it’s bad form to make geralisations but certain members of the community are apparently more letigious than others, often citing racial and religious discrimination (or torture, why not?) remarkably consistently.
Such thoughts should be crushed and not given air time. So they wont!
Just to add that when I say “Good link…” what I mean is “your link doesn’t work so i had to root around a bit but enjoyed the article when I found it”
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122818128240470999.html?mod=rss_opinion_main
Ross | 05.12.08 – 10:56 pm :
Oops – I don’t know what happened there – thanks for posting the link!
One suspects the terrorists spent far too much time listening to the BBC World Service.
Jonathan Boyd Hunt
===============================
As a regular listener of the BBC World Service, let me be the first to concur with your comments.
I would also like to add that the BBC World Service reaches huge amounts of people, people who listen to the BBC as the ‘voice of the west’, which is rather worrying when you consider that listeners are exposed to a continuous barrage of left wing propaganda.
Major constitutional crises rock the government; and an economic meltdown rocks the country, if not the planet.
What better time to interview a third-tate, failed, ex-cabinet minister in a programme rushed on to the air, incidentally displacing the far more civilized Sue McGregor and A Good Read?
——————
BBC R4 23:00
On the Ropes
5 December 2008
John Humphrys’s guest is former cabinet minister Peter Hain, who talks about the ten-month police investigation into his finances and his future now that he has cleared his name.
——————
Hain’s been cleared; a grateful national can barely suppress a sob of emotion.
Huzzah!
But I leave it to wiser Biased BBC heads than mine to analyse just exactly what message was being given by the sudden transmission of this prog.
Hi Bryan – havent seen you around here for a while but I would hope that if you sent Horrocks an email in your usual reasonable researched intelligent manner you would get s response.
He is a pretty decent bloke IMO and one one of the (few)(IMO) beeboid SMs who understands that there are intelligent people out there who arent that happy with the beeb (whether their issue is one of portrayal or tax or…)
Did I put enough IMOs in that IMO etc 🙂
@ Ed
Politics in Canada Timeline:
Oct 14, 2008
– Tories win election with strengthened minority (143/308)
-Liberal leader Stephane Dion leads his party to its worst voter share result in Canadian history as well as piling millions of dollars of debt onto the party.
-during election, vows not to form coalition
Following week
-Stephane “Hermit” Dion finally comes out of hiding saying he’ll step down as leader of the Liberal party…in May of the following year
Sometime in November
-All parties agree to bring civility to parliament after last parliamentary session was labeled ‘dysfunctional’. They also agree to put partisanship aside to deal with economic crisis.
Late November
-Tory economic statement introduced. Includes measures to temporarily ban federal employee strikes, cancel pay equity claims, and cut $30 million in public funding to federal parties
-Throne speech passes
A day later
-opposition parties including Liberal (77/308), NDP (37/308), and Bloc (49/308) attempt to form coalition to replace Tories without another election via GG reserve powers. They say this is because there is no stimulus package (real reason is public financing cuts to parties would effectively bankrupt the opposition parties would can’t raise money for shit – who wants to fund a party that’s promising to tax them more??)
Weekend following econ. statement
-Tories facing the possibility of losing the Confidence bill on the following Monday withdraw ‘controversial elements’.
-Tories believed no party would want to force an election just to keep their public financing. Didn’t anticipate coalition possibility.
-Opp parties continue coalition talks determined to replace elected government.
-PM Harper makes public statement saying opp. parties trying to ‘reverse election results’ to put themselves in power. Compares it to a coup.
This Monday
-economic statement withdraw until new year.
-opp. parties bring confidence bill. postponed until following week
-Parliament sessions all chaotic. Completely dysfunctional.
-Leaders of the Libs, NDP, and Bloc sign coalition deal.
-Canadians go WTF just happened?
During the week
-Tories launch ad blitz
-PM Harper and Conservatives attack opp. parties – call them a ‘separatist socialist coalition’ (Bloc Quebecois is a separatist party)
-info surfaces that this coalition was pre-planed
-Western Canada (where a lot of Tory support is) goes crazy
-Canadians get royally pissed of at ALL MPs from ALL parties.
-Realization that Stephane Dion (universally disliked by all Canadians) might become the PM after just losing election.
-Constitutional crisis could happen if government falls and GG appoints coalition government to run Canada without an election.
*-Canada would end up with possibly to unelected PMs leading an unelected 3-party coalition government with one party (Bloc) dedicated to tearing Canada apart*
-Canada faces potential economic crisis, constitutional crisis, and unity crisis
Wednesday night
-PM makes national appeal to Canadians
-Leader of coalition, Dion, screws the pooch on his taped response to the PM. Tape an hour late for networks. Was also poor quality (cellphone, webcam) with some people saying that Bin Laden could do a better job. Background setting for tape had a book title “Hot Air”
Thursday
-PM asks GG to prorogue (end parliament session). 2 hour meeting. GG agrees.
-Not even a week old and the coalition starts falling apart. Liberals MP’s express frustration.
-Polls show Tories at anywhere between 44-50% versus Liberals 20-24%. Highest the CPC have ever been. Lowest the LPC have ever been.
-Most Canadians very much against coalition with Western Canada and Ontario the most against, Quebec in favor, and Atlantic Canada not able to make its fucking mind up again.
All in all, this is the Constitutional crisis that never happened. GG decision the best and widely supported.
Politicians still dumbasses though!
p.s. I’m not really sure how Justin Webb ended up with Obama. Nobody even mentioned him this whole time in Canada. Come to think about it, did Justin Webb even know we had an election in Canada?
Miv Tucker:
“Major constitutional crises rock the government; and an economic meltdown rocks the country, if not the planet.”
What country are you talking about here because that could be applied to more than one right now.
Phil –
I just kind of assumed that from the context most people would realise I was talking about the UK.
Peter Hain was, after all, a member of the British cabinet; even if you didn’t know, a swift Google would have told you.
Ok Miv, I didn’t know about Peter Hain being British but you mentioned a constitutional crisis and unity crisis on top of an economic crisis. For a moment, I thought you were talking about Canada.
The Canadian prorogue is on the International HYS at Beeb. Funny thing is the most recommended comments come from.
Syed A Mateen, Karachi, Pakistan
Just My Two Cents
[Ifancyapint], United Kingdom
rodney donovan, United States
[jocularnewshawk1], Canada
Lee, canada
Bolu’ Aladeniyi, Ibadan, Nigeria
Muhammad Zaman
[jpetrisor], Regina, Canada
Gerard Mulholland, Paris, France
Is it me or are there a lot of Muslims from other countries commenting on Canada? Not sure what they’d know about what’s going on but all their comments have many recommendations.
Phil –
A pardonable error, in the circs.
If you don’t already know of it, a must-read blog on Canadian affairs is here:
http://ezralevant.com/
Cheers.
Hey Miv, no worries. Ezra Levant is amazing! I’m actually from Canada so I’m aware of what’s going there but I’m not what the constitutional crisis you were talking about.
Phil –
Google “Damian Green” and it’ll tell you everything you need to know about the recent police attack on centuries of Parliamentary privilege, very probably connived at by the government itself, and the Speaker of the House of Commons (the UK one)!
TIME FOR THE BBC TO CHILL OUT
Sadly, I thus think that the situation at the BBC is now a serious one with respect to their uncritical reporting of climate change. Around the world, the grand narrative of ‘global warming’ is dying, strangled by the cold realities of the economic crisis, by world politics, by the fact that an increasing number of people are seeing through the exaggerations and distortions of much of the Green movement, but, above all, because of climate itself.
The BBC really does need to chill out over its coverage of ‘global warming’, and quickly. Regrettably, however, I suspect that the ‘global warming’ corpse will still be twitching in the UK when the stake has gone through its heart in pretty well every other country.
http://antigreen.blogspot.com/
L in a B,
Its not just the BBC that engages in propagating AGW/MMCC lies and propaganda, the met office website is filled with the same dishonest and misleading trash science dressed up as ‘facts’!
Both are controlled by the NuLabour regime and both once highly respected organisations have become degraded and disgraced political shills not fit for purpose!
NuLabour have polluted the nations institutions like a cancer and they are doing it with almost no opposition, the MSM is almost blind to the wanton vandalism, when a regime can so poison the state for its own grubby hate filled ends it can only be described as treason, many Marxist/leftist commissars who spent their youth trying to sabotage the UK state now do it from positions of political power!
The commissars are destroying the UK in order to build their perverted ‘workers paradise’ a place where the Nu commissars enjoy eternal power and privilge.
I had a Have your say comment published yesterday on an unmoderated forum:
“Happiness is – an unmoderated forum.
It won’t last though – the BBC doesn’t like freedom of speech.”
It was doing well – top of the pile.
Guess what. The BBC introduced moderation and deleted the comment.
Got to laugh.
On HIGNFY tonight
Ross | 05.12.08 – 10:28 pm | #
It was a good one. Broad ranging in its targets, though Paul Merton seemed subdued.
The only odd one was on the matter of 20 (I thought it was 9) anti-terrorist officers.
Ian Hislop was pretty direct in his sarcasm on the need for such a number and provoked a very unfunny, and rather specific partisan (IMHO) response from Andrew Mitchell.
Rather killed the panel’s mood for a few minutes.
Thought you might be interested in the ‘result’ of a recent complaint I made following an Andrew Marr Show…
Always lovely to share in the interchanges of the host and carefully selected guests of a ‘news’ review, still called*, proving points on many levels, Breakfast with Frost
But it might be nice if they were well-versed enough in the news to know what they are talking about, or at least having the host correct any inaccuracies so the viewer is not misinformed.
Much as I am sure many in the BBC, and its friends, would like to maintain the Sarah Palin bashing, it would have reflected better on all the smart set sniding away, and been less ironic, if they had actually known that the smear on Mrs Palin’s country/continent ‘confusion’ was in fact a hoax that the MSM fell for hook, line and sinker by simply wishing it were true and not bothering to worry about ensuring it was.
In fact I believe some on the BBC have defended propagating this fabrication on the interesting basis that ‘it’s something she might have said’.
Not good enough.
This is the reply:
Thanks for your e-mail regarding ‘Breakfast With Frost’.
I understand you feel that both the guests and the presenter should make sure that they’re well-versed on the issue they’re talking about so that there aren’t any future inaccuracies. I also note you believe that we ‘bash’ Sarah Palin and would like to continue doing so.
Please let me assure you that we have no interest in ‘bashing’ Mrs Palin. We respect her as a politician and certainly don’t want to insult her.
Regarding the other issue, all of our programme contributors are appointed on the basis of their experience and talent, and we don’t engage any presenter unless we consider that they’re competent and possesses the necessary ability to meet the considerable demands the particular programme or broadcast may make.
I’d like to take a moment to assure you that your comments have been registered on our audience log. This is a daily report of audience feedback that’s circulated to many BBC staff, including members of the BBC Executive Board, channel controllers and other senior managers. It’s also published on our intranet site, so it’s available for all staff to view. In addition to this, we regularly compile tailored audience feedback reports for specific programmes so they can have an overview of all contacts received about their series. If a report’s compiled relating to this issue, then your comments will also appear here.
Thanks for taking the time to contact us with your concerns.
The cookie cutter ‘thanks, but we don’t think so, so p*ss off’ ‘we’re listening’ avoid the actual complaint response was of course anticipated.
This I just add to my collection for when they try and take me to task for ceasing to see why I should pay any more for a totally compromised service contract.
However, I’m not sure quite what to make of the fact that this person still seems unaware that Breakfast with Frost* ceased a long while ago.
*Have a scroll here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/newswatch/ukfs/hi/newsid_3960000/newsid_3961500/3961515.stm
Spreading the love…
Fishburn Hedges caused weeks of bad publicity for TV Licensing
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/alex_singleton/blog/2008/12/05/fishburn_hedges_caused_weeks_of_bad_publicity_for_tv_licensing
Who says there’s no such thing as bad PR?
One can only imagine such a company is hired, and paid for with our money, on account of its ‘expertise’.
Market rates for second rate ‘talent’ and third rate talent commissioners?
Hi Phil- very informative and helpful. Much of what you say was what I had observed to be the case; I couldn’t work out how Dion and his chums had come from nowhere to try a little pre-Christmas putsching. Thanks for that; I do think Webb’s post inadequate, misleading, and bizarre. Should really put something up top.
Cassandra | 06.12.08 – 5:54 am |
Whilst I’d agree that Labours placemen are currently running most, if not all, government offices it is interesting that the scientists at the Met Office are covering their backs.
If you take a stroll through their data, and you have to do some work to find it, you can cobble together the average British temperatures for the last forty years or so. What this data, published own their web-site remember, shows is that the average temperature in Southern England (the only part the BBC cares about after all) has risen by 0.3 degrees centigrade between 1960 and 2000. The published margin of error is 0.5 degrees of centigrade.
So their own figures show no appreciable increase in the average temperature over this period in Southern England.
Someone, somewhere isn’t telling the truth perhaps?
Can anybody here suggest why BBC Radio News is treating the annual muslim Hajj at Mecca as a news item in its bulletins and giving us fawning descriptions of its events? They’ve done this for the last few years, although they never announce any other religion’s festivals as news items, not even christian ones. By the way, I’m not a christian.
I find these fawning and unnecessary reports offensive because any non-muslim found in Mecca incurs an automatic sentence of death, and the BBC knows this because they always send or use muslim reporters to submit the on-the-spot reports, last year sending the egregious Alim Maqbool, yet the BBC reports the Hajj as if it’s the apogee of tolerance.
>One suspects the terrorists spent far too much time listening to the BBC World Service.
I used to listen to the Word Service every day when I lived abroad.
It was the anti-Jew channel. Barely an hour went by without an attack on Jews/Israel.
Any programme, whether gardening or golf could have a piece about Palestinians wedged in.
I once listened to a gardening programme and low and behold… a piece about Palestinian gardeners.
Listening to the World Service, you go the idea that Israel was the size of Russia, Palestinians had died in the tens of millions, and Jews were in charge of every government in the West.
The BBC is an anti-Jew channel. I know it is the no 1 News service in Afghanistan.
Anyone wonder why those Pakistanis wanted to kill Jews?
Sarah Jane | 06.12.08 – 12:12 am,
Yes, I’ve been doing battle in the lion’s den.
I might send him an e-mail, though I don’t know it if it will go directly to him or to some assistant who will send it down the memory hole.
Are you friendly with the aforementioned Peter Horrocks? If so you might like to ask him why HYS chose to wait a full five days before putting up a topic on the Bombay atrocity and then closed it after two days with under 300 comments published and 1200 left to languish unseen by the public:
http://newsforums.bbc.co.uk/nol/thread.jspa?threadID=10191&edition=2&ttl=20081205190741
The BBC might as well scrap HYS if it can’t show the people who try to comment some respect.
I’m not saying everyone has an automatic right to be published on the BBC or anywhere else. But the BBC keeps on censoring hot topics and this latest one was an obvious example of pure censorship based on ideology.
If any BBC insider wants an insight into the bias of the “moderators” at HYS, he should delve into the rejected and unpublished comments on topics like Islamic terrorism.
Fatboy: every thinking person in the UK is well aware that the preponderance of muslim-related pieces on all channels of the State Broadcaster started after September 11. If Christians, Hindus, Buddhists etc want the same coverage, they know what they need to do.
Interesting Newswatch on this week about the BBC’s refusal to use the ‘T’ word to describe the atrocity in Bombay:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/newswatch/ukfs/hi/
They had an Indian guest on the show but the BBC chickened out. Here’s Raymond Snoddy:
This week the BBC refused repeated requests for an interview with any senior manager and would not even give us the reasons for the refusal.
I guess the subversives know their stance is indefensible. But not all of them. Here’s one claiming, “The fact is terrorist does not have a universal meaning. It translates as freedom fighter in certain languages. We are not alone in not calling them terrorists.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/india/3539646/BBC-criticised-for-refusing-to-call-Bombay-gunmen-terrorists.html
The BBC just has to go.
I meant to add that on the same Newswatch programme they had the shadow Culture Secretary discussing the BBC. From his doubtful response to the question of dividing the licence fee amongst other broadcasters, there ain’t much hope that a new government will do anything about the BBC.
Peter | Homepage | 06.12.08 – 7:30 am |
That’s a classic. The mindless automatons defend a programme that doesn’t even exist!
Absolute proof of the corporation’s contempt for the public.
Has anyone noticed how the BBC bigged up Peter Hain NOT being banged up for any wrong doing?
Shame they NEVER gave the same publicity to the allegations in the first place. Remember the endless hatred spewed by the wankers on Newsnight to Caroline Spelman?
tt | 06.12.08 – 11:41 am,
I agree. I have been listening to the World Service most weekdays for years now and there ain’t no doubt at all that it is anti-Israel, which of course often goes hand in hand with anti-Semitism.
About a year ago a radical far left Israeli pressure group conducted a “poll” that concluded the majority of Israeli Jews were racist towards Israeli Arabs. The World Service reported this as the second most important story on its newscasts on the hour and half hour for a day. They even featured it on programmes like World Briefing and it was also on the BBC website.
But the World Service is silent on Palestinian polls, conducted by the Palestinians themselves, which show that the majority support suicide bombing against Israeli civilians.
The World Service is not simply biased. Its “journalists” actively campaign against those they don’t like and those they perceive as the “other.”
i noticed martin and i think if tango man was found guilty, they wouldnt report it anyway
and the met office is getting sold off, hopefuly, in the private sector, it wont waste mponey on that global warming crap
Was Africa really a utopian Garden of Eden before the Europeans arrived? David Loyn on today’s From Our Own Correspondent seemed to think so:
“…just one of the European practices that so brutalised Africa that by the late 1950s eating Belgians felt justifiable.”
Later in the same programme Hamilton Wende informed us:
“Crocodiles have been on this earth for some two hundred million years. Now, in this corner of Africa, because of pollution and global warming caused by humans, even their ancient existence is threatened.”
Shouldn’t that be “global warming caused by the Europeans who so brutalised Africa”?
funny utube here from that guardian global cooling thread, funny worth watching
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=xjfiIow-eW0
Martin | 06.12.08 – 12:53 pm,
Yes I remember Crick’s long list of possible offences allegedly committed by caroline Spelman and the endless programmes and articles on the website about her. It was as if she had been instrumental in committing genocide and was about to be tried in the Hague rather than simply giving her nanny some extra work at government expense.
The BBC might regard itself as a News organisation but it is really just a propaganda outfit, producing mindless crap not far removed from that of a state broadcaster in a third world dictatorship.
BBC report:
Apparently everyone in Scotland supports sado-masochistic behaviour on ‘climate change’:
“Climate bill ‘could lead world'”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/glasgow_and_west/7767061.stm