Monthly Archives: December 2008

OBAMA-FEST.

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I happened to tune in to Radio 5 just after 9pm and caught John Piennar interviewing some liberal US journalist on just how wonderful a job President-Elect Obama is doing. It was a five minute tribute to Obama with Piennar joining in the adoration of The One. Honestly, now the BBC have their man in the White House the very notion of criticising the US President will desist. Makes a change after 8 years of non-stop BBC led vitriol!

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General BBC-related comment thread!

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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.

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SAVIOUR OF THE UNIVERSE (Cont)

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Have you noticed the shameless shilling for Prudence Brown the BBC has engaged in today? It has been leading with Prudence’s exhortation “to the world” no less to do something about the situation in Zimbabwe. Brown is full of hot air on Zimbabwe and for eleven years he has sat complacently at the heart of a government which has impassively watched Mugabe systematically destroy his own country. Yet the BBC is now presenting Brown as some sort of political dynamo behind a global effort to shift Mugabe from power.

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‘Cos Doctor says.

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A BBC report, Patients going ‘private’ on NHS by Nick Triggle, says:

Thousands of patients a month in England are using a government reform to get what is effectively private treatment paid for by the taxpayer.

Patients have the right to opt for any NHS hospital or private unit that can offer the care at NHS cost.

In little over 12 months, the number opting for private hospitals has risen 10-fold to over 3,500 a month.

This story caught the attention of Tom Bowman at the Adam Smith Institute blog, who writes

You might think that everyone would consider this a good thing, but unfortunately you would be wrong. Just read the BBC article I linked to above, the implicitly negative slant jumps off the page every bit as much as the organization’s left-wing bias. Take the first paragraph as an example: “Thousands of patients a month in England are using a government reform to get what is effectively private treatment paid for by the taxpayer.”

Couldn’t they just have said, “Thousands of English patients are now getting better treatment at no additional cost to the taxpayer”, instead?

That would be an equally valid statement of the facts. The question of why the BBC couldn’t just – and just couldn’t – have said it is an interesting one, covered elsewhere on this blog.

However there is an even worse example of bias in the next sentence from Mr Triggle:

Doctors said patients needed to think carefully as vital NHS money was being lost to private health providers.

Emphasis added. I note this partly in obedience to the necessary convention that quotes are not doctored without warning, partly because it helps the reader better amuse him or herself when repeating these words in a voice modelled on that of an awestruck student nurse rebuking a recalcitrant patient in Carry On Nurse.

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UN NO CHANGE

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Wee Dougie Alexander was on the BBC this morning talking about the cholera outbreak in Zimbabwe. He was boasting about the £10m of UK tax-payers money that he has given to various NGO’s and the UN to help bring relief in Zimbabwe. My question is why are we giving so much as one penny to Zimbabwe? The issues that afflict it all have a political origin in the shape of the marxist thug Robert Mugabe and it is for African leaders to deal with this – not British tax-payers. Does the BBC ever provide a platform for those who argue that throwing cash into Zimbabwe is an inappropriate use of our money? Dougie then moved on to discuss ….SHOCK HORROR “reform” of the UN. For a moment I paid attention. Was he going to launch a broadside on the serial and despicable anti-Israeli track record of the discredited UN? Nope. Was he going to tackle the UN’s pathetic failure to agree on a definition, never mind a response, to terrorism? Nope. Perhaps he was going to damn the UN for standing by when genocide occurs as in Rwanda and now Sudan? Nope. Instead wee Dougie was worried that the UN approach to climate change and delivering poverty relief could be less than ideal. Big deal. The BBC and the UN – both beyond criticism. Both beyond parody.

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QUESTION TIME WATCH

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It’s Thursday night and for all you who take a perverse pleasure in watching the bias that is such a distinguishing feature of Question Time, let the fun begin. Tonight the programme comes from here in Northern Ireland – although I was not given an invite for some reason. The good news is that they do have an IRA gunman on the panel, so the scent of cordite should hang over the audience. With half-wits such as Arlene Foster and bumbling Ken Maginnis, along with Mark “Where’s my Party” Durkan, expect this one to even worse than normal.

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THE SAVIOUR AND POLISH PROSTITUTES.

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Nice to see that the BBC are maintaining the high standards set by Mr Ross and Mr Brand. Chris Moyle, “the saviour of Radio One” reckons that Polish women make good prostitutes. Nice to see the license tax being put to such good use. Moyles, who earns a mere £650,000 a year for presenting his breakfast show, told those tuning in on November 19: ‘I’ve always found in my experience prostitutes make very good cleaners, and their ironing, brilliant. I just find if you’re Polish you’re just very good at ironing…and prostitutes (they’re) very good also at fixing cars.’

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NOT DROWNING, JUST SAVING.

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In all the BBC’s extensive coverage of what should prove to be another cut in UK interest rates today, why is the impact this has on those people who SAVE never mentioned? It strikes me that media focus is relentlessly on the plight of those who borrow – often beyond their means – whilst those people who wisely make provision for their future by saving their money are all but forgotten. It’s as of saving is a sin whilst borrowing is de rigeur. I’d like to see much more attention paid by the BBC to the plight of savers…but then again, maybe they aren’t the right sort of people?


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RELATIVELY BIASED.

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I know we have covered this before but since the government and the BBC keep banging on about “eradicating child poverty” in the UK, when we all know that there is NO child poverty in the UK, it seems appropriate to question why the BBC nevers allow a discussion on the precise nature of “relative poverty” which is a leftist scam. I caught a discussion on the Today programme early this morning on this and whilst the BBC interviewer did explain that in fact what we were discussing is relative poverty, there was no voice to point out the stunning stupidity of the concept in the first place! Gordon Brown may be moving to enshrine the removal of “child poverty”by 2020 in law, this is in fact fantasy politics. My point is that so often the BBC chooses to accept what are left-wing shibboleths as in relative child poverty and then debates around them, rather than allowing debate on their validity in the first place. That’s how nonsense such as child poverty becomes part of the political agenda and stays part of it. That’s how the child poverty industry prospers.

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